The previous owners put a basketball goal next to the driveway in 1992. I bought the house in 2004, and lived here by myself for about a year before remarrying in 2006. Her boys shot a few buckets, but it hasn’t been used for the better part of 15 years. Last year, a heavy rain and then a hard freeze blew a hole in the middle section of the post large enough for chickadees to build in it. Unfortunately another rain drowned the nest. I kinda figured the post was about rusted through from the inside out and decided it was time to take it down.
So I got the sledgehammer and pickaxe out thinking I’d just crack the footing around the post and yank it out and be done with it The first whack with the 10 pounder took a corner off near the edge of the driveway. The next swing bounced. Okay, hit it harder. The hammer bounced higher. Hmmm, Houston, we have a problem. I knew my water line was close but not sure exactly where, so digging it out with the stump bucket was not an option until I found the exact location. I chipped away at the edge closest to the driveway until I made sure the footing wasn’t doweled to the driveway slab and saw dirt all the way across, still having no clue just how big the footing was nor any wiser about where the water line was, and figured I’d buy a small demolition hammer to finish breaking the footing. I chipped away at it and managed to cut about 6 inches off the top and from the pole to the gap I’d made, so about 2 cubic feet of concrete removed and that pole still ain’t budging. So I put the drawbar on the LX, backed up to the pole and tried to lift it with the 3-point hitch. I saw it move about 1/8 inch and heard the hydraulic pump on the LX bypass. Okay, gonna have to cut some more. I took the chain off and moved the tractor and discovered the EXACT location of the water line. The hard way.
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As you can see, the PO thought it would be okay to pour the footing next to and over top of the water line without marking the concrete for embedded/covered piping. These are the same home renovation experts that cut 4 floor joists under the kitchen to install HVAC ductwork for a basement bedroom, but that’s a whole other story. I poked the chisel point all the way through the pipe which has about 150 psi on a bad day. I grabbed a wrench and ran out to the meter and cut the water off and then lowered my blood pressure with the appropriate amount of swearing and throwing things. Now that I knew where the line is and had the water cut off, I decided to try to pull the footing out from the other side. I used the same approach as before with the 3-point and managed to lift it about 6 inches, during which process, I discovered I was also correct that the post was rusted through.
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As you can see, it’s now dark, I have a broken water line, and a broken basketball goal hovering over my precious LX. I grabbed a rope, lassoed the top of the goal, and snatched the top two sections of the post and the goal off leaving the bottom section to finish removing the footing, which I was still thinking was about a foot thick. This is the part where I was wrong. VERY wrong. I swapped ends with the tractor, which happened to have the grapple on. I started lifting the footing, and it just kept coming out of the ground. I finally got the bottom of the footing to clear the hole and found out there was nearly a whole yard of concrete on the end of the post. Strangely enough, I was able to lift the massive chunk of water soaked concrete with nothing but a light weight tow bar and quick hitch on the back. This convinced me that loading the rear tires IS effective. VERY effective indeed with the load that close to the curl pins.
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My grapple is 54” wide (4.5’), so you can see I’m not exaggerating the size of the footing. The post is 4” diameter. Needless to say, I probably wasn’t going to finish breaking that footing with the puny little demolition hammer, and I now understand why the 10 pound sledgehammer bounced on the second blow
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Finished repair on the water line. You can see part of the knee high pile of rubble I’d taken off the footing just prior to being water blasted in the face. Fortunately I developed good eye safety habits a long time ago because the chips of concrete that came with the water did not feel good at all. Don’t know how I didn’t hit the pipe sooner.
I forgot to mention that the large crack in the edge of the driveway slab is where a 30” diameter water oak was blown down by a tornado on 05/01/2005, six months after I moved in. I had 36 trees down that morning on less than three acres with nothing but a riding mower, chainsaw, and a brand new 6.5HP chipper/shredder to clean up with. The LX made a humongous difference in how I clean up.
