US contractor Nuprecon brought its wrecking ball out of retirement to tackle a unique project.
Nuprecon recently used old-school technology to bring down an old-school building at Paradise on Mount Rainier National Park. Instead of remote-controlled robots or excavators equipped with processing shears, the Snoqualmie-based contractor resorted to a wrecking ball to take out part of the aging Henry M. Jackson Memorial Visitor Center.
The 6,000 square metre, flying-saucer-like building has given visitors 360-degree views of the mountain and the surrounding landscape since 1966. But it had a flat concrete roof that had to be heated to keep snow from piling on. Heating the interior and the roof required as much as 1,800 litres of diesel a day.
Shawn Smith of Nuprecon said the wrecking ball was used on the top ring portion because of its height and the tight site. Track hoes equipped with concrete processors tore apart the two lower levels.
“It’s not a preferred mean or method for us, but there are some ways it’s the most prudent method to go,” Smith said. “It’s time-consuming and arduous. It’s yesterday’s technology.” Nuprecon used a wrecking ball on a job last year in Portland, but the ball had been idle for five years before that, he said.
Nuprecon is working as a subcontractor to CMEC on the Rainier job, which included asbestos abatement and site work such as underground tank removal and some soil remediation.
Smith said a 19,000 litre capacity fuel tank was pulled from three metres of soil last week and now the site has been shut down for the winter because of snow. Crews will return in the spring to crush the concrete debris, which will be stored on-site and used for future National Park Service projects.
Smith said the biggest challenge has been the remote location. “It’s hard to co-ordinate work because there is no cell phone service there,” he says. “We tried using a satellite phone, but that didn’t work either. Communication was coordinated through a pay phone in a nearby parking lot.”
Another big factor has been the weather. “We’d get there one day and there would be 2 feet of snow and then it would melt by the end of the day,” Smith concludes. “That made it tough for equipment operations to sift through the debris.”
