Hello All
I have (waves arms) about 10m2 of concrete that's 2-4" thick. I need to get rid of it so I can lay some decent paving without going about the DPC of the house.
I was wondering, would a biggist cheap SDS drill do this? (I'm thinking of the 2kg 40 quid Ferm jobbies in Screwfix). Even if that takes a bit longer than a hired breaker I'd be happy as I'd have another tool at the end of it, but would it actually do the job?
the easiest thing to break concrete at 2-3 inches is a sledge hammer. Once you have the edge broken it goes very quickly. At 3-4 inches you may well find that you need to hire a heavy breaker. Your SDS drill will not do it. You may well buy a new one then use it and it may break to start with but I am sure that by the end you will need a new SDS drill as it will have worn out
Don't bother with a cheapo SDS Simon, it'll die long before that job is done. Yes it'll be under warranty, but that's another trip to the shop etc.
As AndyM said, hire a kango for £20 - should make a very quick job of it.
If you want an SDS, spend £100 on a DeWalt 566 - you won't regret it. But I still wouldn't want to do that area with it, takes too long.
Quite. two people, one long crowbar and a sledge hammer. Once you have got under an edge(*) just prise it up a few inches and whack it with the sledge, at a point where it has no support underneath. Concrete is excellent in compression but next to useless in tension, thats why you have to put reenforcement into it for areas that are in tension.
(*) That might be the bit you need a power breaker for but a cold chisel an lump hammer will do.
Or a pickaxe, I reckon the more concentrated impact from a pick starts cracks better, and you can alternate between thumping and levering.
But I agree with the others, this is a Kango job
Hello wanderer
Yeah, but you've seen where she keeps her muscles...
I tried it with a bar, nothing doing. It's not a nice big flat slab you can get underneath, it's a 4' wide strip between two buildings, including a large haunch to one.
Hello Grunff
Yeah, and I've already got a few cheap tools that expired but I never got around to taking 'em back.
Gotya, and thanks for all the replies. I'll do that over a weekend soon. (Got me little trailer to refurb first though)
Understood. I don't really have a need at the moment for one, and the bosche 20 quid normal drill I bought 7 years ago is still doing a good enough job for me.
Don't forget, it's much easier to break if you can undermine it (i.e. remove whatever is underneath it)
In message , OldScrawn writes
Nah a sledgehammer
If you can get underneath it then one good way of breaking up the concrete block is to light a fire underneath, then sit back and wait.
That's one of the methods that they used in days gone by to bring down the walls of a fortress - dig a hole beneath the castle wall, fill it with firewood, set it alight, then have a party whilst the castle dwellers shat themselves knowing what was going to happen.
Andrew
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In message , wanderer writes
Well, yeah, but surely the point is that Simon is really just looking for an excuse to buy a new toy :-)
Not that the rest of us would do any such thing
You do need to have a large stone tower on top of it for this to work though. The bit you missed out is that, as they dug under the defences, the miners put in a large number of very heavy wooden supports, to stop the tower falling down on top of them. The fire was to burn the wood away, allowing the tower to fall under its own weight. Fred Dibnah demonstrated this technique on TV, when he was demolishing a building. He also demonstrated how difficult it is to know just when the timber is about to give way and ended up running off the site as bits of masonry started to fall.
Colin Bignell
You may be correct - but that's not entirely the way I understood it.
Yes, for sure you need to prop up the structure above. But the damage to the concrete comes about because the concrete gets some localised heat which it doesn't dissipate very well. And it can't expand and contract like (for example) a piece of metal. And so it shatters.
However I'm happy to accept that I could be wrong.
Andrew
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True, but use a digger. Then you won't have to carry all the bits into the skip.
Ah. Barely enough room for a minidigger then.
Kanga, and mini digger if it will get in teh space.
But you've got mares with much bigger muscles than her Simon. Can't you get a few of them round to do the job...
As a few others have pointed out...a BFH is your best and cheapest option. I smashed up about 20 square metres of contrete slabs on top of about 6" of conrete & hardcore...the sledgehammer head weighs about
10kg....picture your mother in laws face on the concrete....BAM! A nice bif crowbar helps too..The hard bit was getting rid of the concrete...my local dump will only take 5 bags of rubble...when i turned up there with two tons in a trailer and another ton in the back of the truck.... Had to pay £10 per load at another "commercial" dump...still cheaper than a skip though...
In article , Simon Avery writes
I'd doubt it, but you could drill lots of holes all over the concrete, pack them all with timber and wait for rain...
On the other hand, you could ask your local scout troop to smash it up for you with a few sledge hammers. That's the *best* way of saving effort -- get someone else to do it!
In message , Graeme writes
Some of us need no reason
No, so the defenders could attack the miners before the mine got under the walls. Since they were cutting through rock the defenders eventually found them by sound. The castle was eventually taken when some French warships arrived off the coast and bombarded it. This was during the religious strife during the reformation when Mary Queen of Scots was very young and there was a series of regents.
Peter
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