Silo Demolition Project | Santa Fe, New Mexico

2014

Santa Fe, NM

Demolition / Concrete Cutting / Commercial Building

Silo Demolition Project

The project consists of removing 2 very stout water inlet concrete silos each of which are located at the base of a dam at 2 separate reservoirs, the first silo is the one that we successfully completed in 2014 and it is located at the Nichols Reservoir it was 60’ tall, 10’ diameter and 2’6” thick fully reinforced with rebar.

The other silo located at McClure Reservoir that we will return to complete next year in the fall is 100’ tall, 8’ diameter and 2’ thick fully reinforced concrete structure as well. Both of these structures are part of the very vital water shed that provides culinary water to Santa Fe and the surrounding valley. The purpose of removing the silos is because in their current state the silos are not very easily or safely accessible to crews that need to open and close gate valves to regulate water intake and flows, the current process requires personnel to take a small row boat out to the structure, climb up an increasingly deteriorating rusting ladder to a platform where the valves are located.

The new method of completing this process requires that we remove the old silos down to a designated elevation where a new concrete box culvert will be built down the face of the dam and tie into the existing structure allowing crews to access and control these functions from the top of the dam. Initially the specifications of the project required that we wire saw the silos into 6’ sections and crane these sections off individually and once on the ground we could break them up and haul them offsite, this method was a good one but required a lot of time, work platforms, set up and cutting that would generate a lot of slurry, the slurry we created had a very high probability of entering the water source below as the center of the silos are open to the river below, this method also had a lot of risk involved with picking such large and heavy sections of old concrete that high in the air. Faced with these challenges our Demolition Division devised a secondary method of demolishing these silos which had to be drawn up, engineered and a written plan had to be submitted to several teams of the projects engineers and management for review and approval.

After many meetings ultimately the plan and process was approved and our Cutting and Demolition Crews moved into action to flawlessly execute the plan. This plan involved hanging a BROKK 330, 60’ in the air attached to a platform that our A-core Team had previously designed, engineered and fabricated for a different project. We used a 120 ton crane to lift and move the apparatus into various positions around the silo as our operator ran the BROKK 330 remote controlled from a boom lift a safe distance away to demolish the structure all the way down to required elevations. Despite the very difficult logistical aspects of the project like no loading or unloading area within 5 miles, the inability of transport trucks to get up to the job site on the 1 lane road, the cold weather and often wet and very slippery, muddy surfaces our great team met the daily challenges head on and worked through all of the issues to get the job done safely and efficiently slightly ahead of schedule.