Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Bottom-up Demolition

Amazing stuff. It's like watching the tower melt into the ground. Said to reduce environmental impact. Probably saves a lot of demolition space too.

According to the company, this method greatly reduces the environmental impact of the demolition, as well as the time. Kajima says that it speeds up the task by 20%, while making it easier to separate materials for recycling, as well as reducing the amount of products released into the air.

The process is called daruma-otoshi after a Japanese game that makes players take the bottom parts of a column—using a hammer—without disturbing the rest of the parts above.

For those of you who don't understand how this is faster, you need to remember that in normal demolition, a company needs to place the explosives in the positions where it will do damage, but not damage the surrounding areas. They don't just put a load of TNT inside and hope for the best. Usually it begins with talking to the building planners while trying to get the blueprints for the building. Afterwards, they need to go level by level drilling into walls to get to the support structures that they need to break down. This takes a long time, especially on a buildings that has more than five floors to it.

It's really saving time to remove one floor slowly, depress it, and remove the next. It may sound longer, but most videos of demolitions ignore the planning phase that wastes time.





Thanks to Gemssty for the link.

International Year of the Reef - Singapore Celebrations


Date: 9 Aug (Sat)
Time: 2pm
Venue: Function Hall, Botany Centre, Singapore Botanic Gardens (above Taman Serasi foodcourt), more about getting there.
Contact: iyor08singapore@gmail.com

Schedule of talks and activities

10.30am: "Life and Death at Chek Jawa" sharing experiences of a study of mass deaths on Chek Jawa following flooding in 2007, a talk by Loh Kok Sheng (more about the talk)

11.30am: “Wishing upon a Star” about our Knobbly sea stars, a recent emergence of baby Knobblies and discovery of a large population at Cyrene Reef, a talk by Tan Sijie, Star Trackers (more about the talk)

12.30-1pm: MAD for turtles (make a difference for turtles) : Games for kids about threats to turtles and how kids can help, by Cicada Tree Eco-Place and the Raffles Institution with four stations. Suitable for kids aged 4-8 years. (more about the event).
  • Fishing for help: a 'fishing' game .
  • Turtles and jellyfish: a story and animation with a simple computer-based game.
  • Turtles and reefs game: a more vigorous activity.
  • Pledge card signing.
2pm: “Are there reefs left in Singapore?” lifting the veil to reveal the hidden biodiversity of this almost forgotten realm, a talk by Jeffrey Low, NParks Biodiversity Reference Centre (more about the talk).

3pm: “Southern Haunt” about diving at Pulau Hantu, bringing clarity to the usually murky waters with underwater photos and videos, a talk by Debby Ng, Hantu Bloggers (more about the talk)

4pm: "Green, Mean, Photosynthesizing Machines!" a talk by Yang Shufen, TeamSeagrass and NParks Biodiversity Reference Centre (more about the talk)

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Looking forward to the talks.
Click HERE for more details.