A Scrapper's Dream - Page 13

This series of pictures are of two sets of coils. 12 ft. in diameter and eight feet deep, the air cooling fins had to be cut out in 2 ft. x 2 ft. sections working down. The last layer of coils provided exposure of eleven stories to the basement. The center hub is estimated to weigh about 2 1/2 tons and was dropped in one piece. It was a work of art watching the crew dismantle two of these.

WoW Patriot, you make SD proud!!

Too bad you weren't around back in the early 1960s when they scrapped the USS South Dakota out east. Maybe we would have gotten more of the ship out here!!

Hi, Patriot,

I got a chuckle out of the garbage truck as well...your comment about patriotic caused me to look closely at the first photo...I figured that seeing "Abe" on the door of that truck brought a vision of Old Abe driving it. I saw the paint on the scrap trailer a minute later in the next photo.

6 months ahead of schedule!! That's incredible. So I guess you'll be home before snow flies?

Without mentioning actual dollar numbers, would you be willing to divulge the following percentages?
1. Scrap revenues divided by cost of removal, as a %. So a 50% number would mean that you made about 1/2 of the removal costs.
2. Of the scrap removed, what are the % of the different sorts you are being paid for? In other words, how much copper, brass, aluminum, steel, exotic alloys, items sold as goods rather than for scrap metal? Of course, the above sorts may not be how you actually did it.

Item 2 would be interesting in both % by weight, but also by % of the dollars received for a particular sort. So if you did only copper/steel you might have 10%Cu/90%Fe by weight and maybe 20%Cu/80%Fe by dollars. I'm sure the prices you are getting for metals, due to the volumes, are in the clouds compared to what us schmucks on the curbs can achieve!!

Not sure how secretive your boss wants the job to be, but the % would be interesting to say the least.

Did you pick up any interesting souvenir(s) from the job you'd care to share with us?

Best of luck to you and I hope the conclusion of the job is done safely!!

Jon.

Saw, since you were the previous poster, I will not respond with your quote. For now I can tell you we are shooting for a salvage operation that cost less than the metal recovered. Not quite there, but close. Given the quotes to scrap this plant we have saved the owner a lot of money. Although it is the intent to help everyone on the forum, I am no at liberty to share other details. Let it be said, this was a free education for this neophyte.

Patriot, I understand.

I realize I was asking for info akin to the length of ones dong!

Its cool, though, that you are able to shoot for breakeven. I had the opportunity to demolish a large sawmill and later, a large planermill, and those were my same goals. We were able to pay for most of the environmental cleanup, too.

Jon

It has been pointed out how everything had to be moved by hand. These pictures show one person moving a 500 - 1,000 lb. piece of pipe and dropping it into a chute to fall 10 stories to the basement. The walls on the pipe are 2 in. thick.

Another picture of moving metal by hand. Notice the solid steel hub in the center of the piece. A square foot of 1/4 in. steel weights 10 lb. The piece is 2 1/2 ft. tall and 3ft in diameter. Guessing it well over a ton, but calculating the exact weight would make my head hurt.

You will also notice they are on grating that extends all the way down 10 stories. Looking down 10 stories is not a good feeling when you hate heights.

We had to move a huge generator into and out of the building every day. This was my creation to allow us to do it quickly without devoting the skid steer to this job alone. The receiver was removed during the day to move metal and hooked up to move the generator in the evening and morning.

A view of the bottom of the boilers in the basement where all the metal was thrown. From here skid steers were used to move the metal to the hole where the excavator loaded it into the trucks.

This is the second exit point in the turbine hall. The giant turbines pictured earlier sat up above and to the right.

I'm really enjoying this thread, thank you Patriot76

Found a few more pictures to share. To much time stuck at the cabin and ready to get back to the real world at the ranch and scraping to the heart's desire. The first picture is the bottom of the boilers prior to removal. The next picture is of the hangers that held the boilers up and supported by the roof.

This has to be one of the most interesting threads ive found on smf. It would have been pretty amazing to be in that building while it was still operational as a power plant. Any idea how many people it employed?

A couple hundred was the number given to me just prior to shutting it down. This included some of the engineers for the Ft. Calhoun Power Plant that replaced it. Ft. Calhoun has over 800 employees on site as of today.

wow! hope you kept a few cool momentos out of the deal!!!