Pier foundation on boulders

[Kainkelly]

By the way, there are boulder houses too (something I stumbled upon looking into earthbag construction).

Somebody is an artist with explosives or has the patience of 1000 men....

[Kainkelly]

Welcome to the forum!

Somewhat local engineer, 170 miles west of you, and my opinion would be to find a bigger excavator. If you could squeeze a septic system in, a crawl space should be easy. Personally, I'd daylight a basement since you're on a grade. We deal with rock daily, and a decent operator on a 330 cat can move mountains. If not, there are plenty of blasting guys around to make the pieces smaller. You're not far from Stillwater mine, so there should be some blasting contractors in your area. The last pier foundation I spec'd required geotechnical bore holes(read $$$) to find the bedrock layer with average pier depths of 12'. Shop around and get a few opinions. I have family in Red Lodge, my cousin has a pharmacy there.

Levi

If all else is out English Mason's have ways of drilling and splitting rock. Would be slow going and take a long time, but will remove them in time.

[ponderosae]

I tried it the other day on some kind of granite boulder, that stuff really doesn't drill or chisel easily (I managed to drill down and get the chisel stuck for a minute though). I also tried drilling shallower holes and slamming a spiked chisel between them, but it ricochetted and flew back at me (which I suspected might happen, just not that fast). So I would have had to pulverize it with a chipping hammer for hours and hours, or get a powered version of one (but didn't need to break it up that badly).