On Sep 23, 3:37 pm, (Lacustral) wrote:
How would you demo a small cinderblock wall? It's about 20 cinderblocks
long, not attached to anything except to a section of wall I want - but
there's a crack between the section I want to take out and the section I
want, so that may be fine. It's about 3 cinderblocks high, the bottom
cinderblock was apparently halfway buried in the ground as a footer. It's
mortared. I don't know if it has any metal reinforcement, it probably
doesn't need any.

Laura

Well, I have read the entire thread. Seems hardly anyone has actually
removed a block wall. I have, several of them.

Unless the cores have been poured or there is reinforcing embedded in
teh mortar joints, it is a simple job, not requireing power tools.

Your top course may give you problems that a few easy thumps with a
sledge hammer will take care of. After that course the rest will
probably just pick off or only require a mild tap. Mortar is not a
'glue'. Once the blocks are free, a chipping hammer will usually
remove any remaining mortar with a few taps. Try the simple way first
and you will be surprised at how minor a job it is.

Harry K

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 20:53:30 -0700, Harry K
wrote:

Mortar is not a
'glue'.

The guys who buillt my house got mortar over a lot of the bricks, and
extra mortar at the edges of where it was supposed to be also.

I got loads of it off with a box cutter with the blade in sideways**
so it was a scraper. This worked better than a dedicated single-blade
razor scraper, because the blades didn't break anywhere near as often.

You're right that the extra mortar barely stuck to the bricks and the
hard part was where it was attached to more mortar, and even that part
wasn't very strong.

**There are two designs for the simple two piece, very flat box
cutter. Only one design can be used also as scrapers. You can tell
by the inner piece. It holds the razor at one end as a box cutter,
and at the other end, the two pieces of metal when viewed from the
side form a sharply pointed triangle, like a thumb and forefinger
holding something

"Harry K" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Sep 23, 3:37 pm, (Lacustral) wrote:
How would you demo a small cinderblock wall? It's about 20 cinderblocks
long, not attached to anything except to a section of wall I want - but
there's a crack between the section I want to take out and the section I
want, so that may be fine. It's about 3 cinderblocks high, the bottom
cinderblock was apparently halfway buried in the ground as a footer.
It's
mortared. I don't know if it has any metal reinforcement, it probably
doesn't need any.

Laura

Well, I have read the entire thread. Seems hardly anyone has actually
removed a block wall. I have, several of them.

Unless the cores have been poured or there is reinforcing embedded in
teh mortar joints, it is a simple job, not requireing power tools.

Your top course may give you problems that a few easy thumps with a
sledge hammer will take care of. After that course the rest will
probably just pick off or only require a mild tap. Mortar is not a
'glue'. Once the blocks are free, a chipping hammer will usually
remove any remaining mortar with a few taps. Try the simple way first
and you will be surprised at how minor a job it is.

Harry K


Apparently you missed my post where I had removed 100' of six foot wall with
rebar, footers, and poured cells. The top part is usually easy, with most
of it falling over with a few slaps from a big hammer. It's just when you
get down to the bottom course when you find out if it is truly an easy job.
If you have a large footing, it gets complicated from there.

Removing a cinderblock wall of any size is no simple job. And the longer it
has been in place, the more the indication is that it was put up strong with
a lot of reinforcement.

I do hope the OP keeps us posted as to just how easy/hard it was.

Steve

Steve