Controlled Demolition

Innovative Drilling excels at precision blasting. Staff experience includes demolishing inner city buildings and blasting a wing off of a functioning hospital.

Explosives undercut the 250 foot chimney. Windmill Road, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

The chimney began to fall. Windmill Road, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

The chimney collapsed away from the operational building.

Pieces of the felled chimney rested neatly within 100 feet of the chimney’s original base.

Case Study – In 2000, the Halifax Water Commission wished to replace the roof on its Robie Street Reservoir. First, the existing concrete roof of the 3.5 million gallon reservoir had to be demolished. This roof’s post-tensioned ring beam had to be released simultaneously for successful demolition. Innovative Drilling performed. The company removed the 600-ton concrete roof without any damage to the walls or floors of the reservoir itself. Houses surrounding the reservoir were likewise unaffected.

Rubber matting and sandbags were placed above the surface charges on the dome of the Robie Street Reservoir, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

A surgical cut that left the piles unaffected was achieved. If the roof had collapsed into the reservoir, its weight would have pushed the piles into the floor, destroying the Robie Street Reservoir. Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“In terms of what I would expect and hope for, this is what I would call an ‘A’ blast.”
- Project Engineer C. Yates, P. Eng., Halifax Water Commission