The Old Gas Works Bolton

This selective demolition project required the removal of a number of sections of heavily reinforced concrete slabs within the Old Gas Works in Bolton Lancashire. The solution involved a partnership between our Brokk Electronic excavator division and our Diamond Sawing teams using a newly released HILTI diamond tipped blade.

The success of the project provided compelling confirmation of the effectiveness of our technology compared to methods employed by the traditional Diesel excavators that had been utilised prior to Gnat's involvement in the project.

The images above show work progressing on the heavily reinforced concrete slab. Gnats powerful Brokk 250 and the Brokk 330 robotic demolition machines were used to percussively break and crunch the heavy reinforced concrete slabs. Gnats Hilti track saws were then used to make good the apertures by cutting cleanly through the concrete and the reinforcement.

The openings were 22.00 metres long, 6.00 metres wide and the slabs a full 780mm thick in places. The slabs removed here were twice as thick as the upper slab previously removed using traditional diesel powered machines- A task which took the other contractor over Fourteen days to complete!

Compare this to Gnats timescale for this phase- Seven days- including the saw cutting... Put simply- Three times the work, completed in less than half the time!

Owing to the depth and quantity of reinforcing scheduled for removal on this project, Gnat performed extensive field tests on a range of diamond tipped blades. The Hilti Diamond Saws trialed have out-performed all other blades we have used.