concrete crushing

[Randy88]

I've been tearing out old concrete and as of today we've done maybe 40 loads in a 22 ft. end dump with about 60 plus loads to go, I can use the crushed material if I can cost effectively crush it otherwise we've been hauling it 30 miles round trip and dumping it into a ravine and buying gravel back to replace it with.

Is there anything out there to crush this with that maybe I could rent for a short time, I've looked for someone to crush it for me and nobody wants to come in for such a small amount.

There is very little rebar in it and we've been breaking it up with a skid steer with a hydraulic breaker on it. We looked into a crushing bucket on a skid steer and all the rental shop said was for the volume I've got forget it and look elsewhere, you'll never live long enough to get the job done with one of those. I'd thought of a crushing bucket on an excavator but neither of my excavators are plumbed, I might consider adding it on but I haven't been able to locate a bucket crusher to rent anyhow. I've seen the small tracked units that would work but none that I could rent, only buy and for what little I have to do that's not cost effective. Unless someone has any ideas we'll probably just haul it out and replace it but I thought that was a waste of time and material.

I've been offered a place to dump it for now until I have enough stockpiled to crush and that's at an abandoned quarry about two miles away, but they didn't want it left there forever.

I'd need it crushed anywhere from 1-3 inches for different needs. I'm open to any ideas or thoughts, thanks in advance.

 

[mitch504]

maybe you could buy an old bare jaw crusher, then sell it again or keep it for the next time

 

[Randy88]

Any ideas where to even look for one and what size would you recommend? I've found nothing other than almost brand new and way too high priced.

 

[mitch504]

I've done business w/ this guy, I know he's a long way from you, but he does business all over everywhere. If can't rent or sell you what you need, he'll probably know somebody nearer to you who can. He's always been straight w/ me, and helpful.
http://www.sandscience.com/
Last time I was on his yard he had a lot of cheap stuff that wasn't on his website.

There's also Rock and Dirt magazine, and several quarry equip sales papers.
Good Luck

 

[Randy88]

No leads or ideas with anyone I contacted so far, does anyone have any experience with either bucket crushers on skid steers or else the bucket jaw crushers on an excavator? I've only ever seen one skid steer unit and never seen it run in person only on videos, not really impressed but the bucket jaw crushers on an excavator maybe but nobody I've talked to had any actual expereince with one either, any thoughts?

 

[Abscraperguy]

These machines are terribly expensive for what you get and used ones are hard to find but I think they do an ok job. I've been thinking of building one for myself.

http://www.impactor2000.com/

 

[ScottAR]

In the future, my area will run out of rubble fills and concrete will be a nuisance to bury. My idea is to have a dumping area that I could crush every so often and sell the product if I could keep costs down to cheaper than crushed limestone. ($400-$450 a quad load last I checked when fuel was slightly cheaper) I have also thought of keeping portable so I could move if there was enough product to pencil out.

This entirely an air castle at this point so feel free to give me the bad news.

My workforce would be 1-2 people preferably.
How would you set it up? What type of crusher? What are the issues what said machine? I don't know enough to know what I don't know.
I hope this hijack is at least entertaining.... let the replies begin!

 

[plowking740]

i would look for a small uesd tracked impact crusher. Jaw crusher and rebar do not go well together.
try a terex or pegeason. good place to start would be machery trader.com

 

[grandpa]

Randy...... to effectively crush concrete takes some serious iron at serious prices. To start the process your gonna need an excavator with a thumb to feed the crushing spread. Then the next piece in the line-up would be a primary jaw crusher, which at the least should be 22x34. Next would come a magnet to remove the iron from your concrete.
The primary crusher will only crush it down to a 4 to 5 inch size so if you prefer a smaller spec. material your gonna have to add a secondary crusher be it cone, roll, or impact.
A stacking conveyor or a loader will be needed to put the material in a stockpile.
A generator will be needed to run the whole spread unless each unit has its own diesel/gas power
So you see it takes alot to reduce concrete rubble to a saleable product and in my opinion your gonna have a tuff time find someone to move in to crush a hundred truck loads..... Good luck, Grampa

 

[big b]

My friend just demo a bucket jaw crusher for his pc 400 and said he hated it. The bigest complaint is it takes to long. He is trying to get a moble jaw crusher for his site.

 

[Boss]

I'll do it for roughly $650 an hour . I'm sure there has to be some equipment rental outfit around you, most rental places have only newer equipment for rent. I personally as a contractor would rent any one anything for the right price, so keep checking out other screening and crushing companies.

 

[bobb]

ive seen a bucket crusher on an excavator in action. it can crush a chunk about one foot thick and two foot square. it can take it down to maybe two inch. its heavy and the bucket is not very big on the inside. i would say that speed is not one of its strong points. also seems kinda pricey to me. also if dust is a concern you may need a hoseman to go with it.

 

[Randy88]

I haven't come up with anything usable for options on this so until I do it looks like I"ll haul it all offsite and use it for fill to fill up a neighbors hole he didn't know he needed filled until I told him he should and haul all crushed rock back in, seems like a lot of work and expense until you compare what few options I have and how slow they are to do, even if we did it and took no consideration for our time we'd end up behind, as they say it cost a lot of money to save a little, reminds me of a government operation, spend 5 bucks to save 10 cents and call it recycling and going green but thats a whole different discussion. If someone comes up with the miracle cure all for this problem let me know, I was just hoping someone had the answer I didn't know about.

 

[DGODGR]

I know someone in CA who uses an Eco Crusher. He runs it on Cat 330s and he likes it for small jobs like you are describing. I looked into buying one too but the bottom fell out right before I pulled the trigger. While it will not keep up with the production rates of either a portable or static it mkaes up for it in lower capitol outlay, and transport/setup costs are practically nill. Furthermore, the entire operation can usually be accomplished with ONE machine and operator. I was going to run one on a 315C that was not plummed. It was going to cost around $6k to get set up (I was talking to HKX, very knowledgeable and helpfull) and it was going to cost around $70k for the crusher. My model was to use it on custom residential that required rock blasting. Cost per ton was slightly higher than what I could buy crushed rock for but I would not need to export or import. IMO it would not have any trouble keeping up with the productivity of a skid steer with a breaker. Area required to work in should be small enough to allow you to keep all material on site if you need it for backfill. These machines are not good for creating spec. material and take longer if you want to crush into small rock. I think 1.5" is the smallest but you will get better info from EcoCrusher. I did not especially like that these are imported from Italy but my friend says that the ones made in the US are not as good. His EcoCrusher is a jaw unit (I think that's all they offer) and he says that rebar is not a problem. Concrete may take longer to crush than rock because it is not very hard when compared to many natural rocks. Oddly enough he says that the harder stuff breaks faster because the crushing energy is not "absorbed" by the material. Check it out on the web. They have lots of info and you can find lots of video of these units in action.

 

[Colorado Digger]

how ig do you think you could crush on a 315 1.5'? or not even.it seem that size rock 1-2.5' only work to bury and build debris flows.

 

[Zeke]

Have a look at the Genesis units.They have some concrete crackers & pulverizers that fit onto the mechanical end of your stick.(3rd member)They run off the bucket hyd.You never find them used,but you could probably sell it when you're done.I just looked it up & the smallest machine is s'pose to be 40,000lb.They also have a multiprocessor that can be put on a small excavator or skidsteer...saw it at ConExpo last week.

 

[Randy88]

Looked at them and thanks for the imput but I think it'll be way to slow to attempt to recrush already broken out concrete to be reused as fill material for cement work, maybe if I needed it for building fill or something like that where size didn't matter much but I'm needing it broken down to 1.5-3 inch stuff, looks like the dump it in a ditch type operation is going to be the most cost effective way to go to me and replace with gravel.

 

[CMSMOKE]

I worked at a place that we used a 10 x 24 jaw crusher driven with a 671 Detroit PTO unit with a flat belt. It was on a stand high enough to get a conveyer under it. We switched the head and tail on the conveyer so that it was driven by the flywheel of the crusher. There was a chute on it that we loaded with the front of a backhoe or track loader. The chute was angled about the same as the conveyer. You had to watch how fast you fed it so that it wouldnt jam up. It would do 50 to 75 tons/hour depending on how tight the jaws were set. We had it set to abot #4 size and smaller. We dumped onto a dual screen deck and got #4 off of the top, #2 out the middle and dust or pipe bedding out of the bottom.
If the concrete was hoe rammed small enough that one of the dimensions fit in the crusher jaws, it would go through. It worked as well with bricks, blacktop, sandstone and oversize bankshale.
If you do this type of work frequently, it may be worth the time to come up with a design that works for you.

 

[Randy88]

CMSMOKE, did you do any with rebar in it and if so how much and how did you remove the rebar? I've been asking around and there might be a need for some kind of outfit to crush concrete, I've still got about another couple hundred loads to go, the job got bigger over time and now we are removing more buildings and concrete lots to go with them to make room for a new bigger building. Seems I'm not the only one tired of doing nothing but hauling out old and bringing in new gravel, others are wanting to eliminate trucking as well but the new larger units are out of the price range completely for me. Mine has virtually no rebar in it but others will have some.

 

[OBPM]

We used a small crusher to process about 300 tons of 4" thick concrete with no rebar. I was pretty impressed with it's capability for such a small portable machine. It took about 4 days to crush the material. We did the same as you by reducing the material into manageable chunks before processing. We found that just because it fits into the hopper doesn't mean it will crush it effectively. It takes much longer for it to grab a large chunk rather than a smaller piece. Once we found the sweet spot, it went remarkably well.

I believe it sells for around $12,000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAGVZIlSegU

http://www.ezgrout.com/pages_products/material_recycling_systems/products_hog_crusher.php