The wheel couldn’t quite reach the deepest sections of the concrete pad, but it got close. Once that was done, I started into concrete removal. The right tool here is a jack hammer. This tool is quite expensive though and I didn’t feel like spending even more money at the rental place. Looking back, I completely under-estimated the strength of the concrete pad.

As I said, concrete has a weakness. Laid flat and without support, concrete doesn’t survive well. Think about the karate people who demonstrate breaking concrete pavers. To make them stronger, reinforcement is added to concrete that supports it on those weak axises. We can exploit this by hitting the concrete with sufficient force to break it up into chunks and remove it. I did this to a concrete pad for a side door and in one hit to the center of the pad, shattered the entire pad into four quarter sections.

First we need to create a small hole so that there is room for the concrete to expand as it is shatters. I pulled out my Hammer Drill and put in four half inch holes to start opening it up. A few hits to the center of the area and eventually I got a small hole opened up in the center of the concrete.

This is a process where it gets continuously easier as you go further and further forward with the process. Getting the first hole opened up took what felt like a long time. As there was more and more space for the parts expand into and separate, it became easier to get bigger chunks out of the concrete.

You might have noticed that Mateo is supervising my work. Clearly Mateo is a supervisor on the job site. He’s looking out over all the work without getting dirty. Stella helped out later on in the project.

After a lot of hard work and hits with the sledge hammer, the final pieces of the concrete finally came out and I was able to start digging.