Timeline depends on slab size and project complexity. A small patio slab takes one day. A standard residential garage slab takes two to three days. A full house slab might take a week when you factor in utility protection, methodical demolition, and complete site cleanup.

Commercial projects run longer – a large warehouse floor demolition can take several weeks when you’re working around business operations and managing huge quantities of waste.

Weather can delay work. Heavy rain makes sites inaccessible and creates safety issues. Extreme heat or cold affects crew productivity and equipment operation.

Demolished concrete gets trucked to recycling facilities where it’s crushed into aggregate for road base and other construction uses. The ACT has excellent concrete recycling infrastructure, and nearly all demolition concrete gets recycled rather than going to landfill.

Reinforcing steel gets separated and sent to metal recyclers. Mixed loads – concrete with significant contamination from other materials – cost more to dispose of and might not be recyclable.

Asbestos-containing concrete goes to licensed disposal facilities with full documentation and tracking.

If you’re determined to do it manually, here’s what actually works. A 6kg sledgehammer is your main weapon – anything lighter just bounces off without doing much damage. You’ll also want a cold chisel and club hammer for working along cracks and breaking up the chunks once you’ve created some initial fractures.

A pry bar helps lift broken sections, and you’ll definitely need a wheelbarrow because concrete is heavy. A square metre of 100mm thick concrete weighs about 240kg. That’s not something you’re carrying in a bucket.

For Canberra slabs, expect to deal with reinforcing mesh in anything poured after the 1970s. That means you’ll need bolt cutters or an angle grinder to cut through the steel once you’ve broken the concrete around it. The mesh doesn’t just sit there – it holds everything together, which is exactly what you don’t want when you’re trying to break things apart.

Short answer – you can, but you probably shouldn’t, especially in Canberra. I get asked this constantly by homeowners who want to save money by covering up their cracked driveway instead of removing it.

Here’s the problem: whatever caused the original slab to crack – reactive clay soil movement, poor compaction, tree roots, bad drainage – is still there underneath. Pour new concrete over the top, and within a year or two you’ll see cracks appearing in exactly the same patterns as the old slab.

Canberra’s clay soil is particularly nasty for this. The soil moves with moisture changes, and a failed slab underneath provides uneven support for anything you pour on top. You end up with a new slab that’s essentially sitting on broken pieces that shift independently. Recipe for failure.