Old concrete has a way of overstaying its welcome, like the last guy at the bar on a Tuesday, and most of my concrete removal calls start with somebody finally admitting the back patio has been junk for six or seven winters. We break it up, load it out, and leave the yard looking like people live there. Our concrete contractors company works Springfield proper, Sixteen Acres, Forest Park and straight up I-91.
What we won't do to you: show up at noon after saying eight, talk over you in your own driveway, dust your siding down because nobody wet the saw, or leave a rebar stub in the grass for the dog to find.
Below you'll find how the work actually goes, what moves the price, and the questions folks ask first. Call me at (417) 464-6822 and I'll come look at it.
Concrete Demolition
Concrete demolition is the part folks underestimate. That patio behind your Forest Park two-family looks like a weekend with a rented hammer until you find out a 10 by 20 slab at four inches weighs close to four tons, and no, it isn't going in the back of the pickup.
We saw cut a clean line first. Skip that and the breaking travels, and the section of walk you wanted to keep splits along with the part you're paying to lose. Old slabs here are full of wire mesh and rebar, so we cut it out rather than dragging it up in one wrestling match.
Our concrete contractors company sizes the breaker to the slab instead of hauling the biggest one on the trailer, and we mark the gas and water service before anything gets swung.
Hydro Demolition
Hydro demolition is the one job where we show up with water instead of hammers. A high pressure jet, in the 20,000 psi neighborhood, chews the salt rotted concrete off a garage deck or a bridge repair and quits when it hits sound material, leaving the rebar clean and roughened so the new pour actually grabs. Do that same patch with a 90 pound breaker and you micro fracture everything under it and nick the bars you were trying to save. Two Springfield winters of road salt later, you tap it and it sounds hollow.
The part nobody photographs is containment and slurry handling, because that runoff is high pH and it can't go wandering into a storm drain. It's slower to set up than most concrete removal our concrete contractors company does, and on a deck you intend to keep, it's the right call.
Concrete Demolition Removal
Concrete demolition removal is the half of the job nobody pictures until the slab is in pieces on their lawn. Breaking it up is the easy part. Getting it out is where the day is won or lost, because a four inch slab runs roughly fifty pounds a square foot, and your average patio is a couple of trucks worth of weight before you count the wire mesh and rebar tangled through it.
What moves the number is access. A driveway off Boston Road we can back right up to. A backyard patio in Sixteen Acres behind a thirty inch gate means wheelbarrows and plywood tracks, and that is hours.
Our concrete contractors company sorts the steel out and runs clean broken concrete to a recycler instead of burying it in your yard. Skip that, and you feel every lump under the new pour.
Robotic Demolition
Robotic demolition is how we get a slab out of a basement on Sumner Avenue without wrecking your stair treads or your hearing. The machine is remote controlled, walks through a 30 inch doorway, and works happily under a seven foot ceiling where a skid steer would never fit. I stand off to the side with the controls, so nobody is hugging a jackhammer for six hours and shaking their hands numb.
It also hits harder than a crew can. An eight inch reinforced pad that would eat three days by hand usually comes out in one.
Where it earns its keep is next to things you cannot replace. Old brick foundation walls, a boiler, tile you are keeping. The breaker energy goes into the concrete instead of rattling the whole house, which is why our concrete contractors company reaches for it on interior work first.
A 1 Concrete Cutting Demolition
People type "A 1 Concrete Cutting Demolition" into a search bar when what they're really after is a clean cut line before any concrete removal starts. That line decides how the whole job goes. We wet saw the perimeter first, usually a couple inches deep on a four inch slab, so the break stops where we put it instead of running off across the rest of your garage floor like a windshield crack on I-91. Skip the saw and swing a sledge cold, and you get feathered edges, spider cracks a foot or two past where you wanted the seam, and a patch that never quite matches. Thicker slabs with rebar in them get a wall saw or core drill first. Most cut and remove work our concrete contractors company takes on runs a day, two if there's a footing hiding underneath.
Northwest Rock And Concrete Demolition
Northwest rock and concrete demolition is the name I give the jobs where the slab is the easy part and the ledge underneath it is the fight. Dig eighteen inches in half this valley and you hit traprock, the same basalt that makes Mount Tom look the way it does, and a mini excavator with a bucket will just skate across it. We bring a hydraulic breaker, work the rock in lifts, and pull it out in pieces small enough to load without cracking your driveway apron on the way to the truck.
That changes the day. A patio slab might be gone by lunch; add a boulder or a buried footing and you are into a second day of hauling.
Our concrete contractors company sizes the machine to the rock, not to the schedule.
What the job involves
Concrete removal starts before anything gets broken. We saw cut a clean line at the edge so your good slab, the neighbor's walk or the garage apron doesn't come up with the part you wanted gone. Then the breaker works it, and we cut the wire mesh and rebar out as we go instead of dragging a snarled steel mat across your lawn. Before any of that, the crew our concrete contractors company sends out locates the water shutoff and the gas line by hand, because surprises down there are the expensive kind.
A single driveway off Sumner Ave is usually a day, two if the only way out is by wheelbarrow through a gate.
The part that gets skipped is the bottom. Leave a soft, rutted subgrade and your new pour is sitting on pudding by March.
What it costs
Your concrete removal cost comes down to four things: thickness, what's inside the slab, how close we can get a truck to it, and where the broken pieces go. A four-inch patio slab comes up quick. An eight-inch driveway apron with rebar and wire mesh through it is a whole different afternoon. If we can back right up to the work, that saves you money. If we're wheeling busted slab down a narrow side drive in Forest Park, that's hours of labor nobody enjoys paying for. Clean concrete dumps cheap; concrete mixed with dirt, old asphalt and brick does not.
That's why nobody at our concrete contractors company will throw you a concrete removal cost per square foot over the phone sight unseen. Call me at (417) 464-6822 and we'll come measure it.
Most single-slab jobs are one day, unless the ground's frozen solid.
Why choose us for this
Concrete removal is a job you want done once, done clean, and then never thought about again. You've got a cracked slab, an old patio, a set of steps nobody has used since the Bush administration, and you don't want to spend your Saturdays babysitting strangers with a jackhammer.
So here's what we won't do.
We won't quote one number on the phone and hand you a bigger one on the invoice.
We won't pull the crew off your driveway to start somebody else's.
We won't lean on you to sign today.
We won't leave broken slab and cut rebar sitting on your lawn.
We're not the cheapest concrete removal service in Hampden County, and that's on purpose. Hauling and clean disposal cost real money, and skipping them is how a cheap quote gets cheap. The estimate from our concrete contractors company costs nothing and books you into nothing.
Frequently asked questions
Will taking out my old slab damage the driveway or foundation next to it?
Not if the cuts come first. We saw a clean joint along the edge of the concrete removal area so the breaker never travels into what you're keeping, and near a foundation wall we work in smaller bites instead of dropping a big hammer three feet off the footing. Older Forest Park homes with fieldstone basements get extra care there. Utilities get marked before anything starts, because the water line into a 1920s house is rarely where you'd guess.
How long am I without my driveway?
For a typical two-car drive, one day to break and haul, sometimes two if there's wire mesh or an old slab poured over another slab. That happens more than you'd think. If you're repouring, plan on the base being reset and compacted the same week, then roughly seven days before you park on new concrete and 28 before it's at full strength. Winter changes that, so we schedule demolition and pour close together in cold months.
Should I remove the whole slab or just the bad section?
Remove the whole thing when the base has failed, patch when it hasn't. A slab that's cracked but still sitting flat usually has decent gravel under it, and a partial cut saves you money. If one corner has dropped an inch and water runs toward the house, new concrete over that same tired base will do the exact same thing by the second spring. Most concrete removal contractors will tell you the difference is in the dirt, not the concrete.
How do we get started?
Call our concrete contractors company at (417) 464-6822 and we'll come look at it. We're out on jobs weekdays nine to five around Springfield, Chicopee and Sixteen Acres, and we walk the site with you, check access for the truck and dumpster, and talk through whether this is a full concrete demolition or something smaller. If a job genuinely can't wait, we'll come out on a Saturday.