Concrete Demolition & Tearout

The tool that comes out first depends on thickness, what's inside the slab, and what sits around it. Most residential driveways and patios in the four-to-six-inch range come out with a saw-cut perimeter followed by a pneumatic breaker or a mini-excavator with a hydraulic hammer. Thicker footings and structural pads (eight inches and up) shift to heavier breakers or a hoe-ram.

• Saw-cutting the perimeter — full-depth wet cut along the edge that stays, so the tearout doesn't chip or crack the adjacent slab
• Jackhammer and pneumatic breaker — the standard for four-to-six-inch residential slabs, small enough to work close to a house
• Skid-steer breaker or mini-excavator hammer — faster on open driveway pours where there's room to swing
• Rebar handling — cut with a torch or angle grinder, pulled from the debris, and hauled separately to a metal recycler
• Wire mesh handling — folded, bundled, and included with the rebar to metal recycling

Disposal is where a lot of demo quotes hide cost. Clean concrete goes to a Piedmont recycler and gets crushed for base stone, road subbase, and drainage rock — that route is cheaper than a construction-and-demolition landfill and it keeps the material in the local supply. Mixed debris (concrete with soil, asphalt, or trash) has to go to a C&D landfill and prices differently. We separate on site and quote based on the actual disposal path, not a worst-case add.

The clearest way to keep a demo job on-scope is to draw the boundary on the property before anything comes out. Most residential tearouts have a few edges that get sorted before the saw goes down.

• Driveway apron — most NC municipalities own the apron and the curb cut at the street. If the apron is coming out with the drive, we coordinate with the city or DOT on notification and any encroachment paperwork
• House tie-in — where a slab meets a foundation, garage wall, or existing porch. that edge gets saw-cut cleanly so the structure isn't disturbed and the new pour has a clean joint to key into
• Utility clearance — 811 gets called before the breaker starts. Shallow irrigation, invisible fence, and low-voltage lighting aren't on the 811 map and get walked with you first
• Adjacent hardscape — pavers, brick borders, retaining walls, or existing sidewalks that stay get protected with plywood or a physical setback, not just "we'll be careful"
• Landscape and turf — access paths get boarded, tire pressure adjusted for lawn work, and any turf damage inside the access path noted in the scope so nothing is a surprise
• Where the debris stages — a defined spot on the property for the load-out truck, so grass and pavement outside the drive aren't torn up during haul-off

Those boundaries live on the written scope alongside the demo method and the disposal path. A tearout without those edges drawn is where scope creep and side-damage disputes come from.