A TIME FOR TEARING DOWN ENDED IN A CLOUD OF DUST

I decided to post the tearing down of our second silo for the benefit of my family and for those who are interested. If you haven't seen my previous post, I've showed some photos of after the first silo was torn down but this one shows you how it was done

The steel cables were cut in several places around the silo.

Holes were pounded through with a heavy mallet to tie a chain and haul the silo in a safe direction.

The chain is attached to the  New Holland tractor at a safe distance. The pasture is wet because we had two days of rain this week.

The cap or dome  from the first silo is rolled out of the tractor's way.

More holes need to be hammered out with the big mallet to weaken the structure so it will collapse in somewhat a heap. My grandson, Liam looking to see how it's done.

Notice that I have moved safely way out of the way so everything looks smaller.

The cement has deteriorated so it's fairly easy for the strong men to poke holes with the mallet. The silo is not anchored in the foundation, it is just standing over a strong cement base and is held in place by weight alone. More holes needed to weaken the structure to make it fall in the pasture and not on the road. Archie in the white shirt is a big strong young man and wow, can he swing that mallet....

Archie is in need of a rest so Reid  in the black shirt is taking over pounding.

The tractor pulled on the chain and the cement blocks crumbled around where the chain was attached and left an open gap but the silo didn't fall as expected.

Archie pounds some more cement blocks and hears the silo groaning... and starts to runs to safety.

The silo is now listing heavily and has started to crumble. Notice that the silo is already shorter as you can see the white chutes are close to the ground when you compare it with the previous photo.

Coming down nicely.

like in slow motion as I'm clicking away on my camera at a far distance.

Getting shorter...

and shorter... and the dome is coming detached

 The silo is being reduced in height as it comes down

while my husband in the yellow vest looks on,

pleased as could be. The cloud of dust is rising...

and the silos are no more, just a pile of rubble and steel rods and crushed metal.

Emerging from their safe place to survey the result as the cloud of cement dust rises.

The only mishaps this morning was that my husband lost his Smart phone before the silo was being being worked on. Everyone looked and called his cell number but it kept forwarding the call to our house phone so we could not hear  his smart cell phone ring.  That's a bummer.

Hope that you enjoyed viewing how the men  demolished the second silo. The cleaning up of the second silo has begun and is half way done. I chose to mow my lawn and mulch some fallen leaves as the lawn has been neglected these last couple of weeks so I didn't lift cement blocks today.

Someone was asking what we did with the rubble and metal. We will sell the metal .
We have been approved and given a permit by the Dept. of Environment to use the broken cement blocks  along the river's edge where we have severe erosion to our land during spring flooding. The unbroken blocks have been saved and put on pallets to be recycled.
Thanks for visiting and leaving your comment.  Happy weekend everyone.
JB