Garage Demolition

[Muz]

Today I had to demolish a garage and out house in its own space .. the garage was a lean-to of a house and the wall on the left was about 8 feet high of rotten common brick so it had to come down.. I used one of our Kubota U-25's .. perfect for this as it has no tail overhang.

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Managed to peck the wall from the neighbours side to control the demolition, then pulled some remaining wall down before reversing a bucket to collect the debris, which worked well, so it could be moved to the front of the property for collection.

Can you spot the Mecalac driver in training ?

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[245dlc]

Good work Muz, never had to tear down a brick garage before I've torn down plenty of wooden ones in the past, they can be more tricky than a house sometimes since there are no interior load supporting walls to help keep the structure together. How many do you have in your arsenal?

[Muz]

Good work Muz, never had to tear down a brick garage before I've torn down plenty of wooden ones in the past, they can be more tricky than a house sometimes since there are no interior load supporting walls to help keep the structure together.

Thanks fella .. brick can be a bit tough to work out what its going to do, too, especially on a free standing wall.. On this one I knew the neighbour was clear about the job,and consequences but from a professional point of view I didn't want any collapse that was unexpected on his side. Ive taken down some serious walls over the years and as always .. you need to prepare for the unexpected and have your areas clear, whilst you pick away at it. The mortar on this one was weak , so it was easy to pick apart , but the space to do it was very very small

A bit of breaker work on the leading edge allowed me to take it down bit by bit .. that was the key .. I used a Rammer S21

How many do you have in your arsenal?

Only got 2 of these guys

[245dlc]

Thanks fella .. brick can be a bit tough to work out what its going to do, too, especially on a free standing wall.. On this one I knew the neighbour was clear about the job,and consequences but from a professional point of view I didn't want any collapse that was unexpected on his side. Ive taken down some serious walls over the years and as always .. you need to prepare for the unexpected and have your areas clear, whilst you pick away at it. The mortar on this one was weak , so it was easy to pick apart , but the space to do it was very very small

A bit of breaker work on the leading edge allowed me to take it down bit by bit .. that was the key .. I used a Rammer S21




Only got 2 of these guys

Aye, I got some training and experience about 5 years ago on tearing down brick structures we tore down a 120 year old building that was deemed to costly to repair or rebuild. It still had a wooden structure comprised of fir with tongue and groove flooring, but the brick mortar joints were largely rotten and took very little effort to break apart and most of the time the bricks themselves from 120 years of freeze and thaw cycles were rotten themselves and just turned to dust. And at one point there had been a fire in the building and the fir timbers had been replaced with steel I-beams requiring a different approach to tear apart. The fir timbers however were salvaged by the general contractor. The top floor and roof had to be torn down by hand with power tools, sledge hammers, and crow bars as the 20 tonne excavator I was operating couldn't reach high enough and we had power lines on side of the structure that we couldn't drop anything on to. Plus there was a common wall where I had to pick very slowly and carefully with a single tooth on the bucket to take that single and in some cases double course of brick. The unfortunate part of demolition in this country is that most outfits in my experience are either small companies and dont have consistent work or are often sketchy companies and don't take safety very seriously as I found out when a piece of sprinkler pipe broke off and flew in to the windshield smashing it, I thought the windshield was safety glass but it turned out the owner being a cheap skate had already broken the window and replaced it with tempered glass like on the back window of a car. And he refused to put a safety screen or even better Lexan over windshield so I had to wear a respirator to keep that dust out of my lungs.

[Muz]

Well bits of the roof on this was asbestos fortunately the newer stuff but it was still face mask teritory It all got dealt with separetly

[245dlc]

Did you have to call in a crew to do an asbestos abatement?

[Muz]

Did you have to call in a crew to do an asbestos abatement?

The builder dealt with that side, AFAIK it was fairly modern roofing profile stuff so not anything nasty. I was just being over cautious.

I dont know who decided a mini excavator should have boom offset, but by god is it a useful thing !! ... Ive tried the 'Z' boom type offsets, which are no good IMO, I much prefer the king post ones

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[245dlc]

Yeah use to see lots of those Z boom types on the grey market machines imported here from Japan. They had one where I was working and it's a useless piece of scrap not strong at all either.

[Muz]

Yeah use to see lots of those Z boom types on the grey market machines imported here from Japan. They had one where I was working and it's a useless piece of scrap not strong at all either.

They added a lot of weight to the boom, which reduced the machines lift capacity, and those types of machines often had shorter dippers to compensate. Also earlier ones didnt like being used with hammers as it was very sore on the joints.

The other thing I didnt like about them on a mini was the reduced angle they gave you at the bucket. This is only applicable to machines with a dozer blade, but when you put the blade all the way down and jack up the machine, then use full offset, then go back to 360 slew, you could vary the angle of the bucket quite substantially, which can be handy for picking at things as required, or grading off items on a bank