Lots of buildings are built with a limited lifespan or simply become unusable and unsafe over time. When this happens, the land space that the old building is taking up is often worth a lot more than the building itself, and so the building must be safely deconstructed so that the next construction project can take get underway.
Demolition is quite simply, the deconstruction of buildings and the recycling of the old materials for resale in the construction market. There is a high demand for recycled materials in the construction industry and so whatever can be salvaged from the old building is cleaned, repackaged and either reused to make the new building, or sold on to someone else in the industry.
An obvious factor that is taken very seriously on any demolition site is health and safety. The safety of the workers on site is obviously the number one priority and they must all wear industry approved hard hats, steel toe-cap boots, hi visibility / reflective jackets and where appropriate, ear and eye protection. Also, if asbestos is found on the site, then before any workers enter, it must be decontaminated under strict conditions.
Most of the composite parts of a demolished building will be recycled either as building materials in the case of some steel, bricks, tiles, slates etc while steel that cant be reused as is will be sold for scrap to be reused in a different form. Footings, concrete, roadways etc will all be broken up and then put through a crusher in order to make material suitable for new roadway construction projects.
How much it will cost to demolish a building greatly depends on the man-power required to sort the raw materials for recycling. If a big brick building needs to be taken down and the bricks need to be cleaned and stacked on pallets, then the cost will be considerably higher than that of a concrete building being pulled down by a crusher.
Finding a truly high quality demolition company can be a long process. The sort of company you should look for is one with a well established track record and a workforce with plenty of experience in order to have your demolition carried out with full confidence and competence.