CONCRETE REMOVAL & DEMOLITION — GOLD COAST & BRISBANE

Concrete removal is one of the most common pre-build jobs we do — old driveway out, failed pool surround broken up, garden path removed for a new garden, slab demolished for a granny flat extension. Concrete is heavier than people think, harder to break than people think, and twice as much rubbish than people think. We come prepared.

Our 5T excavator with a hydraulic breaker takes most residential concrete apart in 2–6 hours. Standard 100mm-thick driveway concrete breaks at 8–15m² per hour. Reinforced 150mm slab on a footing breaks at 4–8m² per hour. Old concrete with mesh or fabric on a granular base is fastest — modern concrete with steel rebar in a footing is slowest.

Cart-off volume is what surprises owner-builders most. A 30m² driveway breaks down to 4–5 cubic metres of broken concrete — that's nearly a full tipper load at $150–250 per load tip fee plus haulage. We give you the cart-off figure up-front so it's a clear line in the quote, not a surprise at the end.

Where concrete can be reused on site — broken into 100–150mm pieces and used as fill under a new driveway base — we'll do it. Saves a tipper load and gets you a free engineered fill base. Where it has to come off site, we tip to a licensed recycling facility (concrete crushed for road base) and you get a tip docket for your records.

Pool surround demolition is its own kind of work — usually tight access, often above the pool shell which we have to protect, sometimes with reinforced shotcrete around the coping. We protect the pool with ply sheets, break the surround into manageable pieces by hand-control, and lift it out with the excavator bucket. Patient work but it leaves the pool ready for a new surround.

Other concrete demo we do regularly: garden paths, courtyard slabs, shed slabs being moved or extended, granny flat slabs, pool pump and equipment slabs, BBQ area slabs, retaining wall footings being replaced, and steel post concrete footings being dug out for new fences.