What exactly is Demolition?

Demolition-Demolition is the tearing down of buildings and other man-made structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for re-use purposes. Before any demolition work can begin, there are many steps that must be carried out prior to demolition beginning, including requesting an asbestos abatement, removing hazardous or regulated materials, obtaining necessary permits, submitting necessary notifications, disconnecting utilities, rodent baiting and the development of site-specific safety and work plans. Demolition itself may look “easy” but its actually a highly difficult and sometimes dangerous job. It involves the use of hydraulic equipment with special attachments, cranes, loader, wrecking balls and some cases EXPLOSIVES!

The Demolition of a building is finished as follows:

Hydraulic excavators may be used to knock down one or two-story buildings by an undermining process. High reach excavators are mainly used more for tall buildings where explosives are not amicable or possible. Excavators with shear attachments are typically used to dismantle steel structural elements. Hydraulic hammers are used for concrete buildings and concrete buster attachments are used to break concrete to a manageable size, and to remove reinforcing steel. For taller concrete buildings, where you can’t use explosives or high reach demolition excavators, the “inside-out” method is used, where a remotely operated mini-excavators demolish the building from the inside, while still maintaining the outer walls of the structure as a scaffolding, as each floor is demolished.What exactly is Demolition and it strategy? The strategy is to undermine the building while controlling how a building falls and direction in which it falls. The demolition project manager/supervisor will determine where undermining is necessary so that a building falls in the desired manner and direction. The walls are typically undermined at a building’s base, but this is not always the case if the building design dictates otherwise. Safety and cleanup considerations are also taken into account in determining how the building is undermined and ultimately demolished. A popular new approach to demolition is the deconstruction of a building with the goal of minimizing the number of materials going to landfills. This “green” approach is practiced by removing the materials by types of material and separating them for reuse or recycling. With proper planning, this approach has resulted in landfill diversion rates that exceed 90% of an entire building and its contents in some cases. It also vastly reduces the CO2 emissions of the removing of a building in comparison to demolition. The development of equipment has allowed for easier separation of different types of waste on site and the reuse within the construction of the replacement building. On-site crushers allow the demolished concrete to be reused as type 1 crushed aggregate either as a piling mat for ground stabilization or as aggregate in the mixing of concrete. Tree waste can be ground up using special timber grinders and composted or used to form manufactured timber boards, such as MDF or chipboard.

Safety is paramount; a site safety officer is usually assigned to each project to enforce all safety rules and regulations.

Demolition is more than just knocking down some walls and calling it good. When you break it down demolition is an elaborate set of jobs done individually that all contribute to the structures takedown. Job site clearing, salvaging, recycling are just a few jobs that are completed to finish demolition as a whole.