Fast and furious

In less than two hours, AlliedBean Demolition, a Broward County, Fla.-based firm, was able to bring a 50,000-square-foot, three-story concrete office building to the ground. It was all about having the necessary tools to make quick work of the demolition.

According to AlliedBean President Kevin Bean, “We decided from the beginning that we were going to bring in specialty equipment on this project so that we could get this done in a very timely, efficient manner.”

AlliedBean rented a Stanley LaBounty Demolition Processor (MDP) from Carroll, Ohio-based Company Wrench for the demolition project in Delray Beach, Fla., for J Raymond Construction, specifically a MDP30R with a Concrete Cracker Apex jaw blade.

With two 50,000-square-foot office buildings to demolish, AlliedBean rented a Komatsu PC350LC with the MDP30R to handle the majority of the demolition work. Support machines on-site included a LaBounty HDR Contractor grapple on a Komatsu PC 200 LC, a LaBounty CP100 concrete pulverizer, a Dust Fighter 20,000 dust suppression system and three Bobcats with demolition grapples and buckets.

The MDP is equipped with interchangeable jaws, swift lock concrete cutting edges and a crushing force of 160 tons. Its Apex blade is designed to allow crushed concrete to flow away from the cutting area, leaving the blade surface free to snap rebar in the same bite, according to Company Wrench.

“I was actually first introduced to Company Wrench and the LaBounty MDP30 by driving by a demolition site in Pompano Beach where a Company Wrench high-reach machine equipped with the MDP30 attachment was demolishing an ocean-front hotel. Through some online research, I found a video of the demolition and was very impressed with it and couldn’t believe how quickly the building was taken down to the ground,” says Bean.

“The first phase of this project was to gut the interior of the 50,000-square-foot office building to bare concrete,” says Bean. “This has proven to be the longest phase of the project. We had big challenges on the roof with the tar which required six men on task with three skid steers.”

Once the skid steers finished, the interior strip-out and the tar removal on the roof was completed, the LaBounty MDP30 began work. “We brought down each floor on top of each other, and as you can see from the video (www.cdrecycler.com/alliedbean-case-study-video.aspx), it literally took less than two hours to bring this building down to where it is now.”

The demolition processor also was used to break up some of the reinforced concrete. Smaller equipment with concrete pulverizers broke up the concrete into smaller pieces to be hauled away. This phase took approximately one week to complete.

As of late 2013, AlliedBean was working on five projects and looking toward the future with a very positive outlook. The types of projects that would benefit from the demolition processor’s capabilities are plentiful, according to Bean. “One of the other projects … is a Cemex cement plant dismantling, three miles south of here in Boca Raton. This machine will be leaving for two or three days to bring down five 50-foot stack silos and a metal batch plant.”

AlliedBean plans to use the demolition processor on several upcoming projects including multibuilding apartment complexes to be demolished in Miami and a Walmart Superstore demolition.

“AlliedBean takes pride in doing somewhat more complicated structural demolition,” says Bean. “We get involved in selective demolition so an attachment we would use needs to be powerful while still being agile and very maneuverable.”

Established in the beginning of 2012, AlliedBean is grateful for a very successful start in its region with 17 employees.

“AlliedBean’s vision for the future here in South Florida is to be the formidable demolition contractor that we know we can be,” says Bean. “We feel it’s all about team effort, and we look toward Company Wrench and Labounty to offer us the best tools in the industry so that we can see our vision through.”

The article was submitted by Carroll, Ohio-based Company Wrench.

Watch a video of the Delray Beach, Fla., office building demolition in action at www.CDRecycler.com/alliedbean-case-study-video.aspx.