Day 1

Dad! There’s a big machine bustin’ up the concrete!

Jerry’s custom-welded Bobcat attachment made removing old concrete look easy. Most of the time he simply lifted a corner & dropped it, and the slab would break into pieces small enough to load in his truck. The job was made even easier around the big tree due to the tree roots having already cracked the concrete in many places.

The job got a little more challenging when we found that I actually had a slab on top of a slab around the back door. The original slab, which measured around 12’ X 12’, must have been too low in addition to being too small because it had three inches or so of new concrete on top of it. Noting its intactness & general appearance, Jerry inclined that the slab was made of good concrete, and was probably going to put up a good fight.. He was right! The slab was too heavy to pick up outright, so Jerry used his forks as a lever against another piece of concrete, and slowly got one corner a foot or so off the ground. Then he tossed some heavy chunks on top of it, and drove his Bobcat on top of it. The slab finally yielded to his tenacity.

While Jerry was off dumping a load of broken concrete, Billy dropped off the backhoe he will use to dig the footings, and dig up the tree stump.

End of Day 1, and 90% of the concrete is gone. If Jerry had not had to go so far to dump his loads, he probably would have completely finished what he set out to do. Of note, Jerry’s method of concrete destruction is the second way I have seen it done, and is by far the best. When we had a similar amount of concrete removed in another project, the contractor brought in a Bobcat with a jackhammer attachment. The operator spent an entire day busting up the concrete, and then another entire day hauling it off.