Hi and a Boulder splitting question

[Jeff Spencer <jeffespencer@zzzzzzzzz>]

Many of you suggested learning more about the rock by digging around it and
cleaning it. I decided to take that advice. So to learn more I've; dug
around the whole perimeter of the rock, cleaned it to find any natural
cracks and whacked on it some with an 8lb sledge to see if it could be
broken easily.

Well the verdict is. The rock gets bigger the deeper I dig. And it's not
nearly as tough a rock as I thought and has numerous cracks. The area I
decided to whack on had visible layers vertically and broke along those
layers when hit downward at a 45 degree angle. The rock breaks relatively
easily and is going to be easier to remove than I thought.

I dug down 12" to 18" all the way around it. I didn't dig further because
the more digging I do, the more filling and compacting I have to do. Or the
more concrete I have to buy. But I did find that on two sides of the rock it
shelves out another 12" to 18". I have no idea what's below that. It could
be near the bottom of the boulder, or it could be the tip of a small
mountain. There's a crack at that shelf on both sides of the rock that runs
2/3 of the length of the rock. So it looks relatively easy to use that crack
to pop the top 24" or so of the rock off once my wedges arrive and I take
some crow bars to get into the cracks. Once that's off I'd only need to
remove another 12" of stone. Which I'm confident can be done either with
hand tools or a jack hammer.

Eventually I'll have a large excavator on site, and I've considered waiting
to remove the rock with that. However, the rock is approximately 5 feet by 7
feet at the depth I need to excavate to and continues an unknown depth below
that (at least a foot). So the excavator would either not be able to remove
it, or more likely leave me a very large hole I'll have to fill to put the
foundation on top of. And I don't like the idea of pulling a large rock out,
just to spend more money buying rock or concrete to fill the hole.

At this point I'm waiting for permits to be issued so I'm not in a big hurry
to remove the rock. Instead I'm seeing what I can do with large amounts of
labor and small amounts of money.