Inside Costello Dismantling’s South Boston garage demolition

Sometimes the most valuable recyclable product the demolition contractor reveals is the land underneath a building, particularly when it is located in South Boston, one of the hottest real estate markets in the country.

To highlight this, my team at Costello Dismantling was recently called upon by Randolph, Massachusetts-based Sea and Shore Contracting to carefully dismantle the roof and internal structure of a former contractor’s garage in South Boston. The garage spanned between East 5th and East 6th Street in a heavily residential area.

Prior to the start of the dismantling work, Sea and Shore installed augured piles and a shoring system to support the brick walls of the garage, which were to remain in place after removal of the remaining structure. We provided some hand labor, working from manlifts, to bring the exterior brick walls to a new desired elevation. Interestingly, the piling and support system was engineered to allow excavation within the building footprint for planned underground parking. Parking spaces created off-street and below grade are an extremely valuable component to this project.

Using a combination of careful manual and mechanical methods, we separated structures from the perimeter walls to remain and lowered small sections of roof and truss to the ground. Sorting all building components for recycling took place within the building footprint. The congested nature of this residential area did not allow for on-street truck loading, so the crew created access for haul trucks to the footprint by removing building bays in succession.

There were four streams of materials generated from the dismantling process.

The majority of material derived was classified as construction and demolition (C&D), which was brought to Stoughton Recycling, Stoughton, Massachusetts. Stoughton uses a state-of-the-art mechanical process to recover wood from the waste stream, which is then sorted and sized into a specified biofuel for a regional wood-fuel-derived power plant.

We were also able to extract and salvage a number of sizeable wood timbers from the truss system that we sent to a local sawmill, which will create new wood flooring from the 100-year-old timbers.

Both ferrous and nonferrous metals are important recovery items on any job—this job was no different. We separated and prepared the scrap metal to market standards for resale. Since mixed and dirty material has little or no value, we try to ensure clean, prepared material to be traded as a commodity that has a recognized commercial value.

Brick and concrete were also derived from the building. These materials enjoy a recycling value that offsets a great deal of the cost of disposal.

It is important to note that comingling of any of the “waste” streams greatly increases disposal costs and reduces revenue on a project of this type. We are always vigilant in our personnel training, equipment selections and market awareness to try to find the correct application of resources to reduce disposal costs and increase recycling revenues without driving job costs out of budget, fully realizing that every job is different.

While the recycling byproducts of the job included wood fuel generated from C&D materials, new flooring from old timber, commercially specified metal products, concrete for crushed aggregate recovery and reused bricks for façade restoration, the demolition process in itself made way for a new modern and adaptive residential structure in the garage’s place within this historic urban neighborhood in Boston. Now, that’s priceless!

Dan Costello is the president of Costello Dismantling Co. in West Wareham, Massachusetts.