Nottingham high rises fall

Total Reclaims Demolition, a Nottingham UK based contractor, is currently working on behalf of Nottingham City Homes to demolish five 1960s generation 16 storey blocks of high rise flats in the city as part of an ongoing decommissioning and regeneration programme, NCH manages all 28,000 council properties that are owned by the City Council.

Lenton Court was the first one of the five to be demolished, clearing the way for the construction of 142 new council homes to be completed by 2017. Part of other regeneration planned in the Lenton area, this scheme comprises a lower density housing mix of 62 family houses, 54 independent living flats, 16 bungalows, 10 flats and 3 retail units. Prior to Lenton Court, Total Reclaims had successfully carried out the demolition of Highcross, Clifford and Highhurst Courts in Radford, Nottinghamt. The compamy is now working on the final stage of demolition for Digby Court in Lenton, and will start on Abbey Court in the near future.

To carry out the demolition, Total Reclaims first constructed a scaffold structure around the 16 story building and carried out a manual dismantling operation, aided by a Brokk 90 demolition robot, to bring the structure down to the 10th storey, from which point the company’s 27 m (88.6 ft) Komatsu PC450LC high reach excavator was used to bring the remainder of the structure to the ground. Total Reclaims reports that it achieved a 98% recycling rate for the demolition debris that was generated during its operations on the site.

Of the accompanying video, Richard Taylor, Director at Total Reclaims, said: “When you’re working on projects like this every day the change is so gradual, you don’t always appreciate what a huge feat it is. It’s great to see our work in time lapse, to watch what a difference our teams actually make. It’s also interesting to see the high-reach machine in action. This piece of equipment takes a great deal of skill to operate, the operator in that cab is a long way away from the work he is doing, but he has to be so precise.”

The video was supplied courtesy of Inside Out Time Lapse Productions