We have begun a new project, this time in Estherville, IA. When I say we have begun, today was the first day that it seemed that the project was officially started, as some of the junk on the second floor of the building is ready for disposal. We started this project late last fall and started with the removal of all the cast iron radiators that were installed in 1913. I used a sledgehammer to reduce them to manageable chunks and then needed to decide the best way to remove them from the building. Winter is about over so it is time to move forward with the demolition phase of the project. Today I constructed the 4-foot X 8-foot box behind the building and a 2-foot wide chute from the second floor window.
Since the cast iron is recyclable we have found a guy who will haul it to the scrap yard once it is on the ground. So this box made a great way to keep it contained until he arrives with a truck and trailer. Once the cast iron is gone we will use this as a way to get the broken plaster to the ground and then load it into a dumpster. It would be nice to have the chute directed into a dumpster to save handling the material twice, but the problem is getting a dumpster that close to the building and then having it picked up. We need to be careful in not using the neighbor’s property for our project so this method will be the best we can do. I am estimating that this load of cast iron is about 2,000 pounds. Our scrap iron guy reported that the final weight was about 3,300 pounds!
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