On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 13:18:22 -0800, Winston
wrote:

wrote:

(...)

Can you burn the wood posts (maybe with gasoline) out of the concrete?

NO, they're usually soaked with water, but if you did, the concrete
would gall and send shards everywhere. Ixnay.


I kinda doubt it because of all the water, though
to be honest, I have not tried it. I expect that the
wood would act as a wick and merely draw water from
underneath as it steams off the top.

Redwood is a nasty thing to burn, too. Ixnay atthay, ootay.


Do the posts go all the way through the concrete, i.e., after burning
out the posts you will be left with a square hole all the way through
the concrete?

Yup. I'm sometimes left with the world's ugliest, stalest, biggest
donut. Normally burning isn't necessary, as the rotted wood *does*
come out of the hole in pieces, with a little convincing.

If so, you could probably find some square steel tubing that will fit
in the hole and fabricate your own "toogle bolt" type of device.

Yup. I was thinking of an internal 'scissor grapple' that would
tighten against the inside of the square hole as lifting force was
applied for those rare instances when I have a 'complete'
footing to remove.

That would simply break it apart, as my digging bar does, unless you
excavate under the concrete plug and can get the jaws to expand beyond
the hole. Then it would simply lift, not spread while it tried.


Just
put it in the hole of the concrete so that its spring loaded "toogles"
will flair out on the bottom side of the concrete block and yank out
the block with whatever lifting force you want to rig up to this
gadget.

Most often, I'm left with a few teensy tiny concrete rocks or a
leetle concrete ring. There normally isn't a lot of area to grab.
So the challenge is to find a hand tool that'll generate the couple
hundred lbs of force necessary to grasp and pull little shards out

The concrete ring would be a heavy bear, but a 1/2" hooked rod should
do it.

of the clay a couple feet below grade. My slate bar is a champ for
loosening this stuff up, for example.

Whoa, how'd you make a bar out of _slate_, Mr. Wizard?
Ain't she fraggle, er, fragile?

sniff, sniff Hmm, smells like my teriyaki boneless beef ribs are
getting done. Time to make the rest of supper.

--
Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins
when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in
order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.
-- Peter Minard