A little more video of the big machine from this morning.  I think the excavator is almost done, if it hasn't already finished its work today.

It was surprising to see how big the crawlspace was underneath the old building.  I spoke with Dennis, and he said that they will remove the giant chunks of concrete, and pull up the footings.  Before they start on the new building's slab, they will excavate down to more compacted soil or bedrock, then bring in a new base of soil and compact that down.  After they have a solid base to work on, then they'll pour the new building's slab.

All of the recyclables seem to be gone at this point, except for some rock we hope to reuse.

We're working to reuse much of the stone facade for a project somewhere on-site, to preserve a little of the old building.

Most of the recycled wood is already on its way to Mexico.

Here is a video of the excavator operator carefully pulling the wood framing apart.

Here's a video of the excavator moving into place before it starts to take the building apart.

José gave me a quick tour of the excavator's cockpit.  The two joysticks control the arm, allowing the operator to move the scoop forward, back, and side-to-side.  The foot pedal and two poles control the treads, allowing the operator to move the excavator around the job site.  José has been doing demolition for 28 years, and his ability to control the excavator to take down the building without destroying the wood shows his deep experience.

The demolition crew loaded up most of the wood onto a flatbed truck.  This wood is headed to Mexico to be reused in new buildings.

Here, a member of the demolition crew pulls some usable beams from the pile.

Here, the giant excavator is gently pulling apart the wood framing of the building.  José, the operator, applied just the right force to pop the top beams off, then gently pulled the whole wall down, keeping the wood from splintering into unusable pieces.

The big machine made short work of taking the building apart, but it was surprising how gentle the operator could be.  He was working hard to disassemble the building in such a way as to preserve as much of the raw material as possible.

The big machine was used for scooping up materials today, but will be used to remove larger chunks of the building tomorrow.

Many of the materials removed will be re-used for other projects.

The construction workers carefully removing the different materials.

...and this arrived today.

 

Hopefully we can catch some shots of it in action as it clears space for the new building!

The construction crew is clearing out the building, recycling what they can.

The construction fence is up, and demolition is now underway!