Breaking up a concerete

BoBoo

We recently moved into a new house in which the front garden was covered in stone chippings, under which I assumed was earth. Unfortunately, my assumption was wrong and although there is a margin of about 12 " or so of earth at the side, the rest has been concreted over.

I'd like to get some things planted and would like to break this up, but not really sure how to go about it. Could anyone offer some advice? I'm not sure a sledge hammer is going to do it. I'm worried about damaging the boundary wall in the process.

Ebe_Scrooge

Hire a breaker for the weekend - something like this :

http://www.hss.com/c/1014415/Breakers.html

though any tool hire place will have them. Just make sure you hire an electric one rather than a pneumatic one - the pneumatic ones tend to be heavier and more for professional rather than DIY use, and they require a separate compressor to work :-) Most tool hire shops will have a wide range of electric ones available, and will supply a transformer if one is required ( some tools run on 110 volts ).

A breaker will make your job a lot easier.

Gloomendoom

If you are feeling energetic, a 6' chisel and point crow bar does the job. I used one to break up a floor slab.

sancho

I've just broke up a large piece myself, I used a sledgehammer. I found that if you can jimmy something underneath it and then whack it it breaks quite easily, getting rid of it was the hardest bit!

olias

Cheapest way, as said, is to crack it by whacking with a sledgehammer, then levering up the resulting slabs with either a pick axe, or long jemmy or length of iron or similar - put something underneath them (brick, lump of wood, something like that) and whack the slab again to break it up smaller. A good analagy is if you put a biscuit on a flat surface and tap it, it's unlikely to break. prop it up on a pencil or something similar under one side and then tap it, and it will probably break in two.

Don't forget you will likely need a skip, and they arent cheap (£150ish?)

olias

DVardysShadow

BoBoo wrote: »

... I'd like to get some things planted and would like to break this up, but not really sure how to go about it. Could anyone offer some advice? I'm not sure a sledge hammer is going to do it. I'm worried about damaging the boundary wall in the process.

I suggest you do a little exploratory digging to find where the concrete goes. If it is close to the wall, hire a diamond wheel cutter and cut it way from the wall before you do any breaking.

baldelectrician

I put in my hut when I built my extension

The hut base is left over concrete- it is 50N concrete and it has a bit of steel reinforcing in it

Apparently it doesn't break up easily as the concrete that strong just chips away in little bits and doesn't break easily

it was intended for the foundations in my extension, but there was some left over

i hope yours isn't like this :rotfl:

ormus

if its got rebar in it, then use an angle grinder to cut off the bars, in sections as you progress.