Hydraulic Breaker Recommendations

[bsmith]

I have three tractors from 45 to 85hp and I have set them all up to use Bobcat Kwiktach style attachments. I have about 15 gpm at 2500 psi on average available to run attachments with.

There is a concrete mixing plant down the road from me and they bring me concrete washout material about twice a month that I spread on my ranch roads. I have started allowing them to bring me washout material that has very large chunks of concrete in it. In this way I get more material, but have to separate the large chunks with my dozer before I can scraper load the clean material and spread it on my roads.

I now have enough large concrete chunks (some as big as 1' x 3' x 5') in a big pile that I would like to break up into fist sized chunks and smaller to spread at creek crossings. Being washout material, these chunks break fairly easy often by just moving them with my dozer and of course there is no rebar in them.

Using a breaker mounted on a tractor front end loader, is it a reasonable task in terms of the time required to break these large chunks into smaller pieces suitable for use on creek crossings?

And if so, what size hydraulic breaker in terms of ft-lb rating should I be looking at for the size equipment that I have? Does anybody have any specific recommendations on brand and models that would be ideal for this task?
Bill

 

[KSSS]

I have never seen a breaker on tractor before. Not to say it cant be done. What would work better than a breaker would be a concrete pulverizer. You would need a backhoe or small excavator. It replaces the bucket on a hoe and crumbles the concrete with pressure created by pinching the concrete.

The breaker will break it up into smaller pieces but it will be difficult to keep the point on pieces that small. You tend to push the pieces into the ground. The breaker needs to be preloaded with pressure (down pressure from the bucket) before you fire it. You can get different bits for the breaker one of which is a flat steel piece about 6"X6" that may work better for what your doing. A hand held air breaker or even an electric one may also work.

I have had Stanley and Okada breakers. Both are good. You could easily get by with a 250 pound hammer. They are not cheap even the smaller ones. I doubt it would be worth it. Other options would be to get a pile of it and hire a local crusher to come in and crush it down. or Get a pile and rent a hoe with a pulverizer.

 

[bsmith]

Ksss, You make a number of good points. An excavator mounted breaker will break concrete up into smaller pieces, but it will be difficult to keep the point on pieces as small as I need to make them. A hand held air breaker or even an electric one like this one http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=94882 might be more manageable in making fist sized and smaller pieces.

At lunch today I used a regular sledge hammer on some of the chunks and many of them broke up quite easily. Others took a number of blows to break off even a corner of a chunk. Overall, being wash out material, the chunks are much weaker than fully cured chunks from broken up slabs. It may be feasible to use some kind of hand held equipment to make a pile of useable material.

I think I will try using some kind of light equipment first to see how that works out. If too slow and hard, I will wait till the pile is big enough to justify renting an excavator with a pulverizer. Thanks again for your comments Ksss, those were all good ideas.
Bill

 

[Squizzy246B]

I would have to say that; for what you want, a hydraulic breaker is uneconomical. They are phenomenally expensive to purchase and maintain, unless you have a regular well paid work for them. 2nd hand is a nightmare as a breaker rebuild can be easily 50% purchase cost. In my part of the world a breaker for a mini-ex can top $10K easily.

Spread you lumps of scrag out and hire something heavy to run over em...maybe something that vibrates as well

 

[bsmith]

Concrete washout material is quite variable. Remember, it is excess concrete coming back to the mixing plant. The plant then dumps it into pits full of water and hopes that the concrete doesn't solidify and turns mostly back into sand and rock so that it can be easily removed later. Fortunately, most of the material does just that, but about 20% of it still manages to harden into chunks of all sizes and different levels of hardness and its that material I am trying to utilize along with the other clean 80% that is ready to spread.

Squizzy, I have thought about trying to crush the chunks in some way by running something heavy over them. My JD 650g dozer weighs 19,000 lbs. but the problem is that the material is delivered to me and dumped on bare ground. When anything heavy runs over the chunks, they break a little bit but mostly they get embedded into the ground. To have any chance of crushing these chunks by roll over, say from a large heavy steel drum, I think the chunks would have to be spread out first on a high strength concrete pad.

I have been getting this free material for several years with no end in sight so maybe it would be worth pouring a 5,000 psi slab where the material is dumped. The question is whether such a slab could stand up to having low strength concrete washout waste material crushed on its surface by walking a dozer over the material or by pulling a large heavy steel concrete filled drum over the material.

Anyone have any idea how crushing concrete washout chunks against a high strength concrete pad would work?
Bill

 

[CM1995]

Fortunately, most of the material does just that, but about 20% of it still manages to harden into chunks of all sizes and different levels of hardness and its that material I am trying to utilize along with the other clean 80% that is ready to spread.

I have been getting this free material for several years with no end in sight

My question is why do you need to reclaim the other 20% of material that is "chunky". If I am reading this right you are getting mostly (80%) clean material, why spend so much time, effort and machine wear busting up the other 20%. Do you have an area on the property that needs to be filled in? Just dump your loads close to it, push the chunks into the hole or low area and use the rest on your roads. Cover the chunks with a layer of dirt and keep pushing the chunks out.

If you are getting the material for free and abundantly, then I would not even worry with the chunks - moreover spend money on a hammer or 5K PSI concrete slab.:beatsme

 

[greywynd]

I would think that if you are wanting to use some of these chunks around culverts on creek crossings, placing large pieces (might need an excavator or sling them with the loader you already have) would be the way to use them up. After the larger ones are in place, go to smaller pieces, until you can go to the finer stuff on top and grade with your dozer.

 

[bsmith]

CM1995, the owner of the concrete plant said exactly the same thing to me, ie. why don't I just use the clean stuff and bury the big chunks somewhere? Instead, I have been stockpiling the chunks in a big pile while also placing some on the down stream side of low water bridges and some at the exit of culverts to help break up erosive water flows as Greywynd suggested.

But even with using some of the big chunks for these purposes, I still have a quite sizable pile of these chunks (growing bigger all the time), probably equivalent to about eight 25 ton end dump truck loads of these chunks. The pile makes me wish I had my own cone type crushing plant. But when you look at Rock and Dirt magazine for what those things cost, even small used ones, I can't justify buying one. I would have to be able to get a lot more free material to make that worthwhile. Maybe I could get more material if I made it known locally that I could take concrete waste material from anyone.

Whatever I do with the chunks takes some time and effort. Just can't bring myself to simply bury them yet until I experiment some more to see if there is any low cost, low effort way to make them more useable as road material.
Bill

 

[Squizzy246B]

Bill, thats a lot more than what I imagined you had. Whats the chance of hiring a crusher plant for a day or two??? It would make hell good roadbase and as it doesn't have any reobar in it a smaller crusher would do the trick....if there is one available.:beatsme

 

[digger242j]

Maybe I could get more material if I made it known locally that I could take concrete waste material from anyone.

There is (or was--I haven't been by there in a few years), an oufit here locally, that would take old concrete for free. They'd build one heck of a pile of it, and then once a year or so, they'd have a mobile crusher come in and turn it all back into aggregate, which they'd then sell. If you have the room to store it, you could provide a service, and maybe make a couple of bucks too.

As a matter of fact, here's a picture of the pile, from GoogleEarth:

 

[CM1995]

Bill - I'm with squizzy, that's a sizeable amount of washout material. Question - what is the price of aggregates in your neck of the woods? The reason I ask is the same a few others have suggested, making a business out of it. Here in my neck of the woods we are blessed with abundant amounts of limestone - some of the best in the world. There are "lime plants" and quarries all over the place making everything from gravel to food grade calcium.


Now I am talking about my specific area of the country - (I don't want the title of America's #1 business man )
For the above mentioned reasons, there are no concrete recycling facilities in my area - the numbers just don't work. You can get #57 size stone for $7-8 per ton at the quarry. Waste rock from the quarry runs $3-4 per ton. Landfill rates are $18-22 per ton and most waste concrete goes to inert fill facilities at $35-50 per load - or free if you get lucky. A concrete recycler just can't make it work in my area with the cost of the equipment and maintenance. Another issue is getting your recycled concrete material DOT approved - if your customers require it, otherwise you would be competing with the waste rock prices from your local quarry.

Now if you are in an area of scarce aggregate sources, the concept may work. Check out the prices of aggregates in your neck of the woods. I know there are green waste guys that do contract grinding - don't know much about the hard stuff.

 

[bsmith]

One reason I have been reluctant to bury these concrete chunks as I separate them from the sandy, gravely, easy spreading washout material, is that I believe crushed concrete makes a much stronger road base. Sandy washout material does not make near as strong a roadbase as the crushed limestone that I have bought in the past. And if crushed concrete behaves like crushed limestone, as I suspect it does, then crushed concrete is much more valuable than ordinary sandy washout material.

As Squizzy suggests, I am going to investigate what options I have on hiring a crusher plant to come in for a day or two. Maybe I could make enough quality roadbase from the concrete to justify hiring a portable plant. Although the case Digger cites where a company took in free waste concrete and then "once a year or so" has a mobile concrete crusher come in to process it indicates that you may need quite a bit of material to process before it is economical to bring in a mobile crusher.

I have 470 acres just on the edge of the College Station, TX city limits so I have the space needed if I wanted to be open to the public. Not sure that I would want to deal with that although my my software office, www.elitesoft.com is already located on the property.

As CM1995 points out, local costs of aggregates play a big factor on what the good options are. Smooth river rock is cheap (that's what is in most of my washout material) and crushed limestone coming from quarries around the Austin, TX are not too bad on cost either.

I appreciate all the suggestions. I am now encouraged that maybe it has been worthwhile to stockpile all the chunks from the washout material. Provided local aggregate prices are favorable to my cause (don't really know that yet because why isn't the concrete plant trying to reclaim the material?), at some point I should have enough to justify bringing in a mobile crusher.

I will check on aggregate prices and check on mobile crusher rates and report back. Thanks again for all your help guys.
Bill

 

[tylermckee]

We rented a decent size jaw crusher recently, $2,500 a day. Made a nice 4"-

 

[Orchard Ex]

One local concrete plant stockpiles the haul back from the trucks and crushes about once per year (takes about 2 weeks or so the crush the pile). The crusher charges them about $4.?? a ton to crush and they sell 2 products: a 2"-4" @ $11.99 per ton and a RC-6 (crusher run replacement) @ $10.05 per ton. They sold out of the RC-6 in about 3 weeks this time. Not too bad since they are actually selling the concrete twice... If you have the space to stockpile this may be the way to go.

 

[Turbo21835]

The is another option here. Sounds like you know how to operate equipment. So instead of hiring a crusher to come in, look at an equipment rental option. See if you can find someone to rent an excavator with a concrete processor. It wont take you long to chew apart these left overs from a washout pit. You will be able make the size material your looking for. It wont make a fine crushed material, but you should be able to make 4inch plus material no problem. You should be able to find a 30 ton machine to do this with, so your cost is going to be way less than bringing in a crusher. It should only take a day to chew up your 8 25 ton truckloads.

Josh

 

[Demoguy324]

Josh,

I was about to say the same thing, Especially since there is no rebar in the concrete to pick out, a 30-45 ton hoe with a mechanical processor should be able to burn through a 200 ton pile in under a day.

Eric

 

[bsmith]

Chris,

Thanks for the note on the breakers you have available. That will be of interest in the future. Of the two companies that were bringing me concrete washout material, one of them, Knife River, bought reclamation equipment so they can process the unused concrete coming back from their trucks. So no more washout material coming from them.

But the other company, Aggieland Ready Mix, took a different approach and asked if they could just bring me live unused concrete coming back from a jobsite that might be a bit on the "hot" side, but still placeable. Since my ranch has two full time workers, I said yes to that, and we now keep forms set all the time to make a road. We have to drop what we are doing when the call comes from Bubba that they are sending a truck.

The road is now over 1,000 feet long and Bubba has asked me to name it the "Bubba Super Highway" which I have gladly done. I have received thousands in free concrete, but Bubba says it's a good deal for them too because they don't have to store and later load and transport all the washout material. Definitely a win-win situation for both of us.