Big rock---I give up----I'll just move my new house instead

[gordon21]

The teeth on the 12,000# excavator and my own backhow would only create little grooves after repeated scratching and gouging. If you dug trenches an inch or so deep with multiple passes and then moved the teeth over a few inches and centered them between the grooves, you can slowly chip away pieces of rock. However, that method is slow and yields pieces about the size of a piece of bread.

I eventually took out about 15 cubic yards of this rock. 70% of it came out as powder or pieces smaller than a softball. 25% came out as pieces the size of a volleyball or smaller and only 5% came out in decent sized chunks.

Needless to say it was depressing looking at rock being chipped away 8-10 cubic INCHES at a time with 40 cubic yards to do and rental machines running at the rate of $40-50 per hour. More depressing was the fact that I thought the whole rock excavation portion was going to be a one weekend project by renting a huge skidsteer with hydraulic breaker. Ten weeks later, I gave up and decided to move the house.

My original plan was to go back into the hill another 5', but that would have meant dealing with the final 25 cubic yards of solid rock.

 

[MarkV]

Had a very similar situation in the N. Georgia mountains, even the rock looked very similar and finely dictated the size of the cabin. Hope you have better luck with the septic field. We hit rock out cropping in the only possible place for ours and it really broke the budget.

MarkV

 

[hunterridgefarm]

Lewis,

You are a couple of weeks ahead of me in the building process. I have footings and should be having block laid this week. I ran into the same thing when digging the basement, but not as bad as you. A track loader and large backhoe chip away at the rock for a couple of days and was able to move it out. Different rock than what you have, yours looks much worse.

I cut into the ridge the same way you did only we did not have to step dowm the footings for the basement, but did have to step down on the attached garage.

Your building site is almost identical to mine. I noticed in the pictures you have some trees close to the house. Did you loose any a couple of weeks ago with the high winds? I have taken most of the trees down that had a risk of falling on the house except for one and I am trying to decide what to do with it.

Good luck and keep posting picks of the house. I hope to start a thread soon on ours house.

David