Staten Island, NY
Concrete Cutting and Removal on Staten Island
Basement slabs, garage floors, patio slabs, driveway aprons, pool decks and openings. Cut to a line, broken down to pieces the route out can carry, and taken out.
What concrete cutting and removal covers here
On an island of houses with yards, most of the concrete work is at ground level or below it. Basement slabs cut for a new drain line, a sump or a lowered floor, garage floors, patio slabs and pool decks broken out for a new layout, driveway aprons and walkways, boiler pads, and the stoops and steps that go with all of it.
In the shopping strips and the warehouses it is openings and pads: trenching in a slab for new services, a penetration for a duct or a drain, and equipment pads and curbs coming out ahead of a fit-out.
We work for general contractors, mechanical and electrical trades, pool and landscape contractors, fit-out teams and owners through their contractor. Where an opening touches structure, an engineer decides its size and its reinforcement, and the filing goes in before we cut.
01 Getting it out
Cutting is the easy half
Concrete cuts to a clean line with the right saw. The work is deciding how the pieces leave.
In a detached house that is a basement stair, a side door or a garage, and a container in the driveway, and the pieces are sized to what two people can carry up the stair. In a townhouse the garage is the route and it is a good one. In a yard it is a path over protected lawn to the container, a gate that may need to come off its hinges, and a fence panel that may need to come out.
We plan the cut backwards from that route. A slab broken into pieces nobody can lift is not progress.
Where structure is an engineer's decision
A slab on grade in a basement, a garage or a yard is not holding anything up, and cutting it is a matter of method. A suspended slab in a commercial building, or the garage ceiling in a townhouse where the living room sits above it, is structure, and an opening through it is an engineer's decision: where it goes, how big it can be, what reinforcement it cuts through and what has to be added around it.
That drawing is filed with the Department of Buildings by the engineer or architect, and the permit issues before we cut. It adds time at the front of the job and it is not optional. We will tell you which kind of slab you have on the first call, so the schedule you plan against is a real one.
A stripped commercial floor
Working inside a house that is still lived in
Water
Wet cutting keeps the dust down and the blade cool. In a finished basement or an occupied house the water is contained and collected, not left to find its own way into the next room.
Dust
Where wet cutting is not possible, dust is captured at the tool and the room is sealed and, where warranted, put under negative pressure. Silica dust is the reason, and it is not negotiable.
Vibration and noise
Sawing is loud and breaking is louder. Both are grouped into agreed windows, and in a townhouse or on a close street the neighbours are told which days and hours before the first one.
What stays live
Drain lines, gas, electrical conduit, the sprinkler feed and, in a townhouse, the neighbour's services in a shared slab are located before the saw touches it. A scan costs less than a cut pipe.
Common questions
Can you cut concrete inside an occupied building?
Yes. On Staten Island the normal case is a house the family is still living in, and a basement slab coming out under an occupied kitchen.
It changes the method rather than the possibility. Cutting is kept wet where the finishes allow it, the water is contained, the room is sealed from the rest of the house, noisy work runs in agreed hours, and the pieces leave by the stair or the garage to the container on a schedule the family has agreed to. Nobody upstairs should be surprised by a breaker at eight in the morning.
How do you keep the dust down?
Mostly with water, and where water is not possible, with capture at the tool and containment of the room.
Wet cutting suppresses most of the dust at the blade. Where the finishes or the location rule that out, the saw or breaker runs with dust extraction attached, the openings into the rest of the house are sealed, and the space is put under negative pressure where the scope warrants it. Concrete dust contains silica, so this is a health measure first and a housekeeping one second.