Valentine's Day goes with a Bang for DSR Demolition

Early yesterday when most people were opening Valentine cards, the team at DSR Demolition were hard at work bringing down the Cow Green car park in Halifax.

The tricky job was close to an existing tower block, adjacent to a dual carriageway, and very close to a number of other properties, but came down without injury or damage to surrounding buildings.


Well done to the whole of the DSR team and to Mike Kehoe who was the C&D Consultancy demolition engineer for the project.



DSR Demolition has a great write-up about the implosion on their Facebook page.

Halifax tower block demolition timelapse

Last week we shared video footage from AR Demolition of their Brackley Sawmill remediation work summarised in 30 seconds. This week, it's the turn of a tower block project in Halifax, which you can see a timelapse of above.

C&D customer DSM Demolition bring the house down in Hockley

C&D customer DSM Demolition have successfully carried out the explosive demolition of a tower block in Hockley, Birmingham, which you can watch above.

The Hockley block is the first of eight blocks within the Birmingham area marked for demolition as part of a £26 million Birmingham City Council programme. The reason for the removal of the blocks is one of efficiency. Council Housing is removing properties that would otherwise require a large amount of investment in the near future. It also frees up the land for redevelopment and the creation of new housing stock.

For more information and images of the Hockley block demolition please visit the Birmingham Updates website.

Pear Tree Court demolition begins

The images you see above are of Pear Tree Court off Churchill Way in Salford -- a tower block in Pendleton. Demolition is being carried out by Forshaw Demolition and they have decided to use a 100-tonne high reach demolition crane. Apple Tree Court will follow, with an expected completion fate of October 2014.

Source: Salford Online

120 foot Abbey Court tower block is slowly getting shorter

Tower blocks are usually destined to be imploded, but there's situations where that's either not desirable or even possible. In the case of the 120-foot high Abber Court tower block in Lenton, Nottingham, a team of demolition workers from Total Reclaims are demolishing it a floor at a time.

Each day the team climbs up 16 flights of scaffolding stairs to reach the top and continue their work. It's already 28 feet shorter than when they started, which account for the top 4 floors.

In total the contract has created 24 jobs, including 4 apprentice positions, and is using a Brokks electro-hydraulic breaker to take down the concrete panels the building is constructed from one at a time. There was 17 floors in total, and when they get that down to 11 the crew moves out and the 360 Excavator moves in to finish the job quickly.

When the block is down, Nottingham City Homes will begin building 400 council homes.

Source: Nottingham Post

C&D Consultancy appointed as demolition consultants for a major tower block in North Scotland

Demolition consultancy orders continue to arrive at C&D with the company having been appointed as demolition consultants for the Top Down demolition of a 13 storey tower block in the North of Scotland.

This appointment will see the C&D team in Scotland for the next 60 weeks as the building is slowly demolished and cleared. This new appointment North of the Border will see C&D in Scotland on 3 major tower block demolition schemes during 2013 and 2014.

Full details of the project will follow shortly.

New Zealand's first controlled implosion

According to the Associated Press, the videos above and below represents footage of New Zealand's first controlled implosion.

The building in question is the Newstalk ZB offices, a 14-storey tower block that was originally damaged during the Christchurch earthquake. The implosion was carried out at 8am on August 5th

Hull's Orchard Park Council flats first block demolished

Yesterday, the Orchard Park Council flats in Hull were imploded, changing the skyline of the city a little, and signalling the first of 5 blocks set to fall by 2015.

Once the 5 blocks are gone, regeneration will see them replaced with 115 new homes and 100 refurbished flats.

The dates for the other blocks falling have yet to be released publicly, but if you want a bird's eye view of the next block falling, the council did allow local residents to watch from the roof of one of the other towers. It might be worth investigating how you can get up there next time. If you do, be sure to take a camera and send us the footage.

Source: BBC News

Dangerous tower block in Glasgow to be demolished this week

Earlier this year a tower block in Glasgow located at London Road had to be evacuated. The building was deemed unsafe after tenants noticed large cracks appearing in the walls seemingly overnight. The owners were given until April 27th to either repair or demolish the building. That order lapsed with no action having been taken.

Now the local council has decided the block needs to come down and the wheels have been set in motion for the demolition to happen this week. The quick turnaround is due to the fact the building continues to show signs of movement, suggesting it could soon come down on its own potentially causing injury to passers by.

Source: 24dash

Excavators dismantle leaning Chinese tower block from the top down

The building regulations in China leave a lot to be desired, if they are followed at all. But one of the growing problems in the region is newly built tower blocks starting to lean shortly after being built. The problem seems to be with the land they are being built on.

A lot of new buildings are sprotuing up across China built on land reclaimed from the sea or some other body of water. The problem is, that land does not settle evenly, meaning a heavy structure on top of it is going to sink. In the case of the tower block you see above, it started leaning almost immediately after building work was completed. The construction company then attempted to reinforce the base, but one of the main support pillars broke a few months later rendering the structure dangerous.

As you can see below, lots of health and safety rules are being broken to demolish it. Those machines have been lifted on top of the building by a crane and are working precariously to break up all the concrete floor-by-floor. We hope they can finish before the other support pillars decide to crumble.

Source: Daily Mail

The leaning tower of China

Living in the UK I believe everyone has a respect for the building regulations we work under. When a new building is erected, we all expect it to be safe and remain so for decades. In China, those regulations either don't seem to exist, or at least are well below what the western world has come to expect.

An example of how bad the building work can be in China has become apparent as we've progressed through 2011. A number of tower blocks were built and completed in January of this year in the Zhejiang province of China. Each block is 68 meters high and is used for residential apartments. The problem is, one of those blocks started to lean soon after building work was completed. At first it was dismissed as the building settling, but then the angle of the lean continued to get worse.

An evacuation was carried out over the weekend, and now the construction company has to decide how to proceed. The problem is made worse by the fact several other blocks are in close proximity meaning if it does collapse it could take other blocks with it in a domino effect.

It looks like the only way to proceed is to call in the professionals and implode the tower block thus saving the surrounding blocks. But even then, if the foundations of this block are not sound, what's to say the others are?

Source: China Explosion blog (Chinese language)