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O/T removing large rock

B

BigTone

Member
I am building a barn in the spring and right in the middle of where i plan to pour the floor I have a 2'x3'x? deep rock just sticking out of the ground...need to break it up (cant afford a large enough excavator to dig yet) so I drilled holes and filled with water hoping the freezing of the water would crack the rock but it has not seemed to work. Thought about using feathers and wedges, building a fire on the rock to get it white hot then hitting it with cold water....

Any suggestions? Excavator is my last resort, trying to save some cash....
 
BTDT Poured a footer for daughter's house. Hit a rock in the corner that seemed to be as big as a car. Had to rent a backhoe with a 1000 pound hammer to get it down to pass inspection. Cost me $900 for one day's rent.
 
I have done this, and it works.

Go to a gun shop and buy a pound of black powder.
Also buy a length of cannon fuse. Most gun shops that cater to muzzleloaders will have this.

You will also need a length of 7/8" wooden dowel rod and a 3/4" concrete bit.

Cut the dowel rod in about 1 foot lengths. Using a plane or rasp, taper one end so it will fit in the 3/4" hole you are going to drill in the rock. Then using a saw, cut a groove in the dowel lenghtways so the fuse will fit in the groove.

When the dowel is done, and several hours before the project, soak the dowel in water.

Drill a 3/4" hole in the rock as deep as you can.

Make sure the hole is dry, then fill about 2/3 of the way up with black powder. Just leave 2 inches or so from the top, enough space to drive the dowel in securely.

lay the fuse in the groove in your dowel, then preferably using a wooden headed hammer or a rubber hammer. Drive the tapered end of the dowel in the hole as tight as you can. Drive it in against the powder to compress it.

Then, make sure there is no exposed powder, and that you have a good long lenth of fuse. Streach the fuse out and keep your body as far away from the hole when lighting the fuse.

Light the fuse and retire to a safe distance.

I needed to remove a huge limestone rock from a friends back yard. Using this method we blew it into 6 or 7 managable pieces that we could carry away.

Plus it is a heck of a lot of fun!

Gene
 
Was a lot more fun when ya could go down to the hardware store and buy a case of dynamite LIKE we use to with out the gov. getting involved .Then you could either bring the rock up out of the hole or you could make vary fine gravel , what ever suited you that day or how bad ya wanted to rattle the neighbor windows.
 
I have used the fire and water trick. Worked well for me. Just stand back when you hit it with water. Sometimes it is like a grenade going off.
 
There's a product named Crackamite that'll break rock up. My BIL used it in his hay fields to remove what was sticking above ground so he could cut hay in those fields. He lives in the mountains and has plenty of rock. You drill the hole, add Crackamite and then finish with water. Search Crackamite and they'll send you a sample to try the product. My BIL was very pleased with what he did.
 
Dont think you really need a big hoe to solve your problem, what I have done before was use a rubber tired backhoe and dig a deeper hole beside the big rock and rolled the rock in the deeper hole then covered it up. I cant see that costing to much.
 
Big Tone, On the same line of reasoning as Ky Hauler just "Rent" a Air compressor & Jack Hammer or Backhoe , Trackhoe with a Hoe-Ram (Jackhammer attachment) ans get it worked out in short order. probably the best and least expensive way to get your project underway. Hope this helps.
Later,
John A.
 
Oh you mean like the one that USE to stick up out of one field , it was dead smack in the middle of the field on a farm i use to farm. First year i went around it . The next year i figured it had to go . I had just bought a demo 310 G case and just knew that that rock was going to be history . Yea wright the more i dug the bigger it got . After almost a full day of digging around this and now being close to ten feet down and some twenty feet on each side of this small little pesty rock the mighty 310 was not going to move this . Maybe with the neighbors TD 14 and the 310 , Ah maybe the two 450 D the MD the M gas the 504 and the H to help Could not shake it . Then came the rock drill and lots of hole drilling and there sticks to a hole . Now that got it to sizes that were more manageable.
 
might do that in the spring but the ground is froze right now so im looking for alternative forms of removal
 
Yep, I would move it. If you don't want it put it on the side someone just may want it for yard art. or to keep people from driving into something.
 
Just take a tile spade and dig around it and see what you have. You might get lucky and be able to get a chain around an edge and get it loose. If you find you can't move it after digging deep around it you are going to have to call in a back hoe. years ago, my dad would just go to the local hardware store and get some dinamite and blow it to pieces.
 
I like your black powder idea up to the point of driving the wood dowel in on the powder as tight as you can get it... hammering on the dowel...doesn't that cause a potential danger of "ignition, blastoff"? (I've never used black powder... just asking)
 
GENE wrote: "....retire to a safe distance."

What that means is light the afterburners when you RUN LIKE HE!!
 
GENE wrote: "....retire to a safe distance."

What that means is light the afterburners when you RUN LIKE HE!!
 
What size drill bit? how deep can ya go ?
Try drilling a 1" hole @ 30 degree angle on far side of rock, deeeeep. Then insert HEAVY rebar, attatch chain, pull out with PU truck. NOT tractor.
Of course, nothing will remove it out of frozen ground, short of DynOmite.
 
I ran into that problem recently and the rock was twice that size. I decided to dig a hole next to it - even though it was already in a pit I dug. I dug next to it an reburied it about four foot deeper. Too big to move - at least with my Ford 4000 backhoe/loader.
 
Gene did you know match heads off the paper matches work as well and cost a lot less then the black power?? Oh and by the way some one may tell you that you have bomb making material on hand LOL
 
There is a comercially available compound that is mixed with water and placed into drilled holes that expands and breaks up reinforced concrete foundations. I have seen this used in chem plants and refineries. You can Google concrete breaking expanding compound.
HTH
 
The black powder will work, but black powder is scary in things like that and you might find out you're into the unauthorized/improvised explosives category. Most of BATF folks that do firearms and explosives got moved into homeland security but I'm betting they still don't have a sense of humor. To tell you about the BATF boys, when in Explosive Ordinance Disposal School they told us anytime we had to deal with BATF we were not going to have a good day because they did not have a sense of humor.
 
WE have removed large rocks by digging around them to the depth of the rock. Then dug a taper grade, wrapped chain to make the rock roll up the grade. Takes a lot less pulling prower to roll them than to pull them.

My brother worked a coupla days and rolled one out with his 4020 that Dad had to hook his 1800 on ahead of the 4020 to drag it out of the field.
 
We have the same problem in our hay fields. We do the following:
1) try the pallet forks on one, then two tractors at a time. Can get up to fridge sized rocks this way.
2) Generator, rotary hammer and either cracking powder or pins and feathers. The pins and feathers are a lot of work, but the results are immediate. The cracking stuff takes a day and doesn't work well on soft ledge type rocks.
 
Here"s how we dealt with the ones in our pasture. This one was too big for the "hoe to pick up so he buried it so that the top of it was 3 feet below the ground.
a62634.jpg
 
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