Busting up concrete

Anonymous-0

Well-known Member
I want to build a new machine shed this summer but first I need to remove an old grain bin foundation. The concrete was poured around 1971 and there are no cracks that I can see. I dug on one side and pushed with my Cat D7-17A with no results. Are there any tricks to weaken the concrete so I can get it broke up? How about building a wood fire on top? Thanks for any help.
 
How thick is the concrete? If it"s only 4 inches or so you can use a sledge. Dig around an edge so that there is no support for that part of the slab and then whack it with the sledge. Concrete is weak in tension so by having it unsupported and whacking it with the sledge it should break. I usually rent an electric jackhammer and that"s a lot easier. You just start punching holes along the edge and cut off chunks.
 
Escavator with a hydraulic hammer should solve that problem. May I ask why you need to remove it. If it isn't in bad shape or have metal sticking out of it, why not make it a square and have a place where you can work on equipment and still find all your tools and parts. HTH

JoshuaGA
 
That fire trick will work, but it will have to be a pretty hot fire to weaken it enough to make a difference. I have demoed a lot of old corncribs and some of them are real boogers to get the foundation out. If it's possible to burn the wood on top of the concrete it does help.
 
Get it with the cornor of your blade as you almost sideswipe it. Make sure you go low it the dirt and raise the blade as you roll out a small section. You can not hurt it by pushing on it straight on. Most likely the outside two foot is very strong. With a cat straight tractor you can not do much damage from driving on it or pushing from on top of it.
 
How about drilling some holes and fill with water and let freeze, that is if you're far enough north. Seen that on PBS. I have built a concrete breaker out of a 4ft piece of railroad rail welded to a 10ft piece of pipe and mounted it to my loader bucket. Haven't tried it yet but saw a contractor have one on a Bobcat the other day. Got about 200ft of washout concrete to bust up. We'll see if it works when it warms up.
 
Both excellent ideas, especially squaring it. If its high, pour a ramp. With the cost of concrete and since it has no cracks, I'd keep and use as much of it as I could. If someone asks about the round and different shaded part in the middle, give 'em "Used to be a grain bin/drier there".

Keep as much of it as one can, cut costs.
 
Don't know if this would help, but in this territory, round bin foundations were offten poured as follows: shallow footings dug maybe a foot or so deep and eight inches or so wide, the center of the bin foundation was partially filled with sand and compacted.
The concrete in the central part of the bin was therefore only a few inches thick.
 
Go to the tool rental store and get one of the 110 volt jack hammers and bust out a small section and then the cat will finish the rest you just need to open up a 6x6 area .
 
Thanks guys. Yes, the round slab has a rat barrier around it. The place I dug with the dozer showed it to be at least a foot thick. My grandfather and dad poured it. That was when concrete was cheap. Neither of them had a whole lot of experience with concrete. I am afraid the whole thing is pretty thick. The slab has to go inorder to get a proper grade. I have some old fire wood. I might build a fire on top of it.
 
If you have a Cat D7 then just tilt the blade dig in under a side then lift it up it break up pretty easy if it doesn't have any Re-bar in it. If it does then get an electric jack hammer and break it in few places then dig under and lift it up.
That D-7 should have plenty of power to do the job.
Walt

A fire won't do anything but discolor the concrete.
 
Go down to your local rental agency and get yourself an air compressor and a 90lb. jackhammer. Or, you could rent an excavator with a bucket, thumb, and hydraulic jackhammer. I was just running our Komatsu PC400 with a hammer on it, works slicker than heck if you're trying to break up a large area of thick concrete. If you can, go with a bigger machine (200 to 400), you'll be glad you did.
 
Compressor and 90 lb hammer, get a fracture line started and work a face, similar to blasting rock in a quarry. Hoe hammer on an excavator,or possibly a rubber tire hoe should make short work of this, be careful of rebar and tires, hopefully the thick area is just a skirt around it, if not, the hoe hammer on an excavator would make it an easy job, you want to fracture not punch holes through it, machine does the work.

Couple of years ago, I demo'd a pool with a new D4G Cat, the walkway surrouning the pool was concrete. The walls of the pool were also partly concrete, and strengthened by metal panels. This dozer having a 6 way blade on it, required some care and took quite a few tries to find a weak area in the walkway, it just would not budge, I cleared a deep layer of top soil from around it on all sides first, and ramped up to the edge of it, eventually I saw some movement and finally got one piece out, that weakened it, and I was finally able to place all the pieces in the hole.

With that size tractor, it should push it out, but it sounds like the slab has a good bite into the subgrade still. You would need to dig down low around it, and get a push on it that kind of faces upward, gaining some leverage, hopefully you have a straight blade 7S type and not the 7A angle blade, both are very strong with outside push arms. When you start pushing on something like this without using the center of the blade and or a cushion of dirt you can damage it, more so the 7A type, being wider, and still being very stout blade, there are some serious forces at work, just have know when enough is enough.

I pulled the pin&bushing end of a tilt cylinder out of a D6D straight blade when grading off blasted rock spoils, whil'st using a blade corner to get one rock up and moved, mind you the pin bushing was worn and thin, track pads worn out too, but it still put some substantial force to the blade and peeled the end off it like it was nothing, it just failed, easy fix, not as strong as I thought it was though.

Not sure what the size of this pad is but it being a grain bin it must not have a large footprint, I'd fire up that D7 and start pushing and cutting low all around it if you can, just undermine all around it, you will then have much better leverage having the tractor lower even ramp up to an edge of it if you have a cable blade, if that is the case you will have to use some care to not break the cable, a stronger multi part line set up would be best, mine is only 4 part, have to watch the cable with something like this, keeping tension off it as much as possible using the ground as a guide, also have another set of eyes close by to watch for the smallest movement of the slab, once it is seen moving it tells you whether you are gaining an edge or not, use a cushion of dirt to protect the bowl of the blade, you might still get it out, if no go, once fractured it will definitely come out.
 
Did you lift while pushing?
I've broken some concrete with a 4H. I just hook a corner and lift it, flip it... and keep going. I am talking 4" though. What exactly are you up against? Seems to me that even an old 7 ought to be up to the task.

Rod
 
Neighbor had the same problem. What you need is a bigger tractor, say a 4020 or a 756 or 1855 or bigger, and a westendorf loader with forks on it. This is a two-man operation in that you can"t see what you"re doing worth a d*mn from the tractor seat, but the guy out front can direct you. If you can get the tips of the forks to dig into the ground enough to just get under the slabs of concrete, when you lift the loader the cement will break up in chunks. Then you can remove it without any problems. The hard part is getting the forks to start digging into the soil just a little ways ahead of the concrete so they can get down far enough to get under the slab. This is easy if it"s just a cement slab, it"s tougher if you have concrete footings 18 inches deep.
 
Did mine with a big sledge and helper with spud. Have helper pry up on slab while you kill it with sledge. Course I was 50 when I did that.
 
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