Concrete removal for driveways, patios and slabs around Gahanna

What kinds of concrete get removed from homes here

Most residential concrete removal falls into a handful of familiar jobs. Each one has its own quirks in how it is broken and what sits under it:

• Driveways and the apron where the driveway meets the street
• Back patios, often poured in sections with an older addition beside them
• Front walks and side walks, sometimes lifted by tree roots
• Front stoops and steps, which may be solid or hollow and tied to the foundation
• Garage floors and old shed or carport pads
• Footings and piers left behind from decks, porches or structures that are already gone
• Window wells, retaining walls and odd pours nobody remembers placing

Signs a slab needs to come out rather than be patched

A hairline crack is normal and usually harmless. Removal starts to make sense when a slab has settled so one section sits lower than the next and creates a trip edge, when water runs toward the house instead of away from it, or when the surface has scaled and spalled across most of its area. Heaving from frost or roots, large pieces that rock underfoot, and a driveway that has broken into a pattern like a dry lakebed all point the same way.

Sometimes the problem is not the concrete but what is beneath it. A patio that sank along one edge may sit over a soft spot, old backfill against the foundation, or a place where a downspout has been washing the base out for years. Breaking the slab out is the only way to see that and fix it before new concrete goes down.

How concrete is broken: hand tools, breakers and machines

The method depends on how much concrete there is, how thick it is, and how much room there is to work. For a short walk or a small stoop, a crew may use electric or pneumatic jackhammers and pry bars, loading broken pieces by hand into a wheelbarrow or a skid steer bucket. That is slow, but it fits through a gate and is gentle on the yard.

Larger slabs and driveways usually call for a hydraulic breaker mounted on a skid steer or a compact excavator. The hammer fractures the slab into pieces small enough to handle, and the bucket then pries them up and loads them into a dump truck or a roll-off container. On thinner slabs, an operator can sometimes get a bucket edge under a crack and lift whole slabs without hammering every inch, which is faster and quieter.

Noise and vibration are part of any breaking job. Contractors working near a foundation, a basement wall or a neighbor's garage keep the hammer back from the edge and finish the last strip by hand or with a saw cut so the vibration does not travel into what stays.

Why thickness and steel reinforcement change the work

Two slabs of the same size can take very different effort to remove. A thin patio poured directly on soil breaks easily. A garage floor or a driveway built to carry vehicles is usually thicker, sometimes thickened along the edges, and slows a breaker down noticeably. Old slabs that were poured over a previous slab, which happens more than people think, effectively double the thickness.

Then there is the steel. Many slabs contain welded wire mesh, rebar, or both. Wire mesh holds broken pieces together like a net, so the crew has to cut or tear it apart as they go. Rebar laid in a grid makes pieces cling to each other until the bars are cut with a torch or a saw. Fiber-reinforced concrete is harder to read from the surface. None of this is visible until the first section is opened, which is one reason a contractor may want to core or break a test spot before giving a final price.

Saw cutting a clean edge where old concrete meets what stays

When only part of the concrete is coming out -- a driveway but not the public sidewalk, a patio but not the stoop, one damaged section of a walk -- the line between them needs to be cut, not broken. A walk-behind or handheld saw with a diamond blade cuts a straight groove along the line, and the crew breaks up to that groove. The result is a square, solid edge that the new pour can butt against cleanly.

Skipping the saw cut usually means a ragged edge that cracks back into the slab that was supposed to stay, and a replacement that never quite lines up. Saw cutting is typically done wet to keep silica dust down, which leaves a gray slurry that should be rinsed or scraped off nearby surfaces before it dries.

Protecting the house, lawn and buried lines around the slab

Concrete removal happens right up against things that are expensive to fix. Before work starts, a careful contractor looks at:

• Buried utilities: an OHIO811 call is the free way to have public lines marked before anyone digs below the slab
• Private lines the public utilities do not mark, such as sprinkler pipes, landscape lighting and wiring to a garage or lamp post
• Foundation walls and basement windows next to the slab, where hammering should stay back from the edge
• The path machines take across the lawn, often protected with plywood or ground mats
• Mature tree roots running under walks and driveways, which can be damaged by heavy equipment
• Neighbors' driveways, fences and parked cars within reach of flying chips

Where the broken concrete ends up

Clean broken concrete is valuable as a raw material. Most loads from residential jobs around Columbus go to a recycling yard, where the pieces are crushed and screened into aggregate that ends up as base under new roads, parking lots and slabs. Steel mesh and rebar are pulled out during crushing and scrapped. Some contractors keep clean crushed material and reuse it as base on later jobs.

Recyclers typically want concrete free of trash, soil, wood and asphalt, so mixed loads may be refused or sent to a landfill instead. That is why the crew may sort as they go, keeping chunks of concrete apart from sod and dirt. Asphalt from an old driveway is handled separately and is also widely recycled.

What the base underneath tells you about the replacement

Once the slab is gone, the ground under it is exposed for the first time in decades. Older slabs in the area were often poured with little or no gravel base, sitting straight on the dense glacial clay. Newer work usually has a layer of compacted crushed stone. Either way, this is the moment to look for soft spots, wet areas, voids under the old edges and organic soil that should not be built over.

On clay, drainage is the key. Water that collects under a slab softens the subgrade and, in winter, freezes and lifts the slab from beneath. Yards in the creek bottoms along Big Walnut and Alum Creek drain slowly and may need extra base or better grading to move water off. Soft areas are dug out and replaced with compacted stone, and the grade is shaped so the new slab sheds water away from the house.

Getting the site ready for the next pour

Some owners hire one company to remove and replace; others have the old concrete taken out and bring in a separate flatwork contractor. If the removal crew is preparing the ground for someone else, it helps to agree in advance on where their job ends. A clear handoff usually looks like this:

1. Old slab, steel and loose debris removed to the agreed limits
2. Edges saw cut square where new concrete will meet existing work
3. Soft or wet subgrade dug out and the area rough graded to drain away from the house
4. Base stone placed and compacted, if that is part of the scope
5. Site left level enough for the next contractor to set forms

Driveway aprons, public sidewalks and when the city gets involved

The part of a driveway between the public sidewalk and the street, and the sidewalk itself, usually sits in the public right-of-way. Many cities around Columbus have their own standards for how that concrete is removed and replaced, and work there often needs a permit or right-of-way approval from the city. Homeowner associations in newer subdivisions can have their own rules about driveway width, finish and color too.

Interior slabs inside a garage that is coming down entirely are usually handled as part of that teardown, covered on the garage and shed demolition page.

Factors that set the price of breaking out a slab

Every slab is priced after it has been looked at, and the number reflects a handful of predictable factors:

• Total area and the number of separate pieces being removed
• Thickness, thickened edges and any second slab poured over the first
• Wire mesh, rebar or fiber reinforcement inside the concrete
• Access for machines, including gate width and whether equipment crosses the lawn
• Saw cutting along edges that stay
• Hauling distance and how cleanly the load can go to a recycler
• Base repair, regrading and any new stone placed after removal
• Permits for work in the public right-of-way

What a complete concrete removal proposal should include

A written quote should mark the exact limits of removal, ideally on a sketch or with paint on the slab, and say where saw cuts fall. It should state how the steel and debris are handled, where the load goes, how machines reach the work and what protects the lawn on the way. It should also be plain about how the ground is left: rough graded, base repaired, or ready for forms. If an old pool deck is part of the job, the pool removal page explains how that fits with the shell.

Large-lot yards in New Albany and ranch-era driveways in Westerville both come up often. Send the address, a few photos and a rough size through the contact page, and we'll put you in touch with a contractor who can look at the slab in person.

Concrete removal for driveways — common questions

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