Snazy

Reason I ask is im currently staring out of the window watching a massive building (TSO on Nine Elms Lane) be torn down.
Watching it go, being ripped apart just captures my attention lol

Other must still love to watch big crane work, demolition etc too.

I think....... lol

Leslie

Its always interesting to see how they do things like that and get around all the problems which can show up.

Its like seeing how they make things in factories etc.

Les

mamoon2

I can stare at old big old buildings for hours. Some of the engineering in these 1/200 year old buildings is amazing.

A lot of old mills and viaducts here in manchester that will outlast all these modern buildings and they are already 100 years old

urban

iTrader: (1)

Whats really facinating is an explosive demolition (Controlled of course ).

There was such a demolition in Belfast a few years ago in the centre of the city with very nearby buildings.

Simon K

Im like that. I used to love cranes, bulldozers, trucks when I was younger. I had so many different Tonka toys ( Wow, remember Tonka toys ? ).

I would love to spend a day in a crane with a recking ball !! I was going to write to Jim'll fix it ( Wow, remember that old boy ? ) asking him to fix it for me.

Funnily enough, I think of Discovery home + lesuire or turbo tonight there's a demolition
program starting. Looked pretty good !!!

SBK

mr_D

iTrader: (12)

i love all taht stuff as well. but i love knowinig how things are made, broken and how they work

Foofighter

Yep,same here.Always watch this sort of thing on the discovery channels.Had all the Tonka toys too when i was a kid,dozers,diggers,low loader and a variety of trucks.Also when i was a kid i wanted to know how things worked so i used to strip them down and investigate.The bollockings i got off my parents . Good thing now is,i'm 42 and get to play in real life-size diggers as part of my job

Snazy

Sorry the pics are a bit shabby, but this is whats goin on

The booms and crashes are fantastic lol.

Markus

Have to agree I do like to watch construction/demolition. Obviously demo is due to the old "smash it up!" little boy feeling Hmm, I wonder if there's a Canadian version of Diggerland?

Simon K

Amazing ! I would love to have a job knocking that down. Then looting around, seeing if anything has been left behind, to then sell.

foofighter, :-) I used to take everything apart. I was like Syla on Heroes, had to know what made it tick. Like you, I was always told off for breaking things as half the time the item would never work again. I then moved onto bikes. I used ot strip them down, alter it, well `improve it` was my usual phrase :-)

I used to love my Tonka toy. I had a CJ Jeep and I could never really break it. Ok I bent the wings, and scratched it, but I used ot play with it all the time.

Awwww childhood ............. :-)

Snazy

Simon, its shocking how much "waste" there has been if thats the right word.
All the newly installed CCTV has gone with the walls, lighting, and other fittings etc.

The machine they are using to tear the building apart is amazing, I would love a go.
Giant jaws of life make terrifyingly light work of the main structure.
I took a video of one of the walls being "cut" down with its jaws.

Snazy

There is a concrete works on the other side of the road also being torn down too. Thats been interesting to see too. Day by day, a little more disappears.
TSO is being cleared to make way for the new American Embassy.
Cant wait to see the rest of it come down, and the new stuff start going up

Simon K

Mmm must be the pikey in me, but I would trotter over there and see if I could get all those bits / cctv / lights etc. Im sure you could ebay that lot.

Im always sniffing around skips on my local trading estates / building sites.
SBK

Foofighter

Lol,me too Simon,but i'd put them on ebay after stripping them down to see how they work first At least i won't get the bollocking now though!!

Snazy

lol once upon a time I would have too, but they clear up the days work every night, and the site is quite secure.
Really cant be bothered with all that these days, but in my past. definatly.

fitzscoob

I always watch things like this in amazement at how they put them up and take them down.

On a similar subject I was recently in Northampton at a leather tannery I used to buy from, they were a family business and had been producing for something like 60 years. Walking around the inside of that building seeing where all the machines used to be and you can almost feel the history there. It was actually quite a sad experience, maybe thats just me thinking about it more personally as we have a family business but to see the doors shut for the last time is a complete shame.

Right - off to the pub!

BOB.T

I like looking in roadwork holes

Bob age 32.5

Snazy

I like watching roads being resurfaced.

Snaz age 36 lol

Markus

In a similar vein I'm interested in the workings of certain buildings/objects. For example, there's a large shipping canal near here (Welland Canal) and there are quite a few locks there and it's rather cool to see how it all works.

Another place is the Hydro-electric power plant at Niagara Falls, you can get tours (no photos can be taken though ) and I've got some free passes to it so will be popping down to have a look around.

When doing some auditing many years ago we had a contract with Eli Lily and had to audit some of their premisses, including their R&D center (guess who got the job of going into the animal center to audit the computers! Fully gowned up, in one of the offices auditing, looking at the pricing chart for animals on the wall), plus two of their manufacturing facilities, one in, I think, Basingstoke, (they were partway through development of Raloxifine, aka Evista), and the other in Speke.

We were given access to basically everywhere on the sites as we needed to audit their machines. They knew how many Macs they had, but not where all of them were, and only knew "there is a computer in that tower over there" so we had to see if it was a Mac and if so, audit it, if a PC, let the other team doing the PC side handle it.

So I was up in tall towers, across gantries, looking for machines. Going into rooms with biohazard suits hanging up. Looking through into the sterile rooms in the production areas (alas I didn't get to go in there, someone else on the team did, had to scrub up on the way in and out!).

The Speke place was effing huge and their new biotech lab was just about to open, but alas no computers in there yet so we didn't go in.

Another place I fancy having a look at are the Steel Mills in Hamilton.

PaulC72

Yes & I work in construction so get to go and see some of it up close ;-)

Snazy

I have got to go to Electric Mountain up around Snowdon one day. I got Snowdon a fair bit, but never popped over to the power station. Facinating place.

Anything big and powerful, I love it.

Watching them cleaning up was almost as exciting as the building coming down today. Almost artistic with the way they use those machines.

b road blaster

@ snazy i drive dozers and diggers for a liveing and we also do a fair bit of demo work yes it is good fun but its not quite as straight forword as just go in and rip it down,also nowdays all the scrap and fittings are sold and all costed into the job so not much left to "pick up" and take home

Account deleted by request

I've just knocked down a 15000 sqft warehouse/retail unit. Had contractors in and it was facinating to see them take it from what it was to soft strip, to roof, gable walls, roof trusses etc down. Took 2 weeks and they recycled a fair %

The construction industry is far more than bashing things down and throwing them up again.


Chop

BOB.T

Yup, there's tea drinking, sitting in vans, bacon sarnie eating, letching, reading the paper, more tea drinking...

Funkii Munkii

Tall Buildings for me, Burj Dubai is something else, love the discovery programmes on anything BIG, planes, ships, building etc.

I think it's in all blokes genes

Simon K

When I was around 15, I remember being up in London with my Dad, visiting one of his friends pubs. Its near the BT tower, and on that same day it was having a new satillite dish installed.

For 4 hours I just sat and looked up at amazement how a series of cranes, connected together, managed to lift a huge satillite dish up the many floors, to eventually be attached to the top.

I can still remember driving home with my Dad, having a sore neck where I'd looked up all day !

Any program regarding tall buildings, large cranes, planes, diggers, ships, space, spaceships, rockets, bikes, cars, lorries, trains, boats, model aircraft, and Im watching it :-)

SBK

Snazy

Back to watching it again today lol, more photos of the progress.

Cheers for the practical input guys. Always interesting to know what its like to be the one doing it, is it half as exciting, or double, getting paid for it too lol

Discovery Channel rocks !

dunx

iTrader: (3)

They are tearing down a city centre swimming pool in Leeds, to see a massive roof structure supported on so few, relatively spindly legs is cool....

Sad or what ?

dunx

b road blaster

its a bit lke most things snazy it starts off as good fun but ends up just another job driveing one of these at the mo YouTube - Cat d8 dozer running #2

used to drive one of these on the demo work YouTube - THE GIANT: DEMOLITION EXCAVATOR KOMATSU PC450

Snazy

Im jealous.