If you are demolishing an old home on property that you have recently bought so that you can erect a brand new home, you may want to know how the old structure will be destroyed, meaning the kind of equipment that a demolition crew is going to use. So to help firm up your knowledge about demolition, here's a quick rundown of what equipment is most commonly used to raze a structure.

Wrecking Ball -- Wrecking balls are large steel balls that are attached to cranes and swung at structures with sufficient force to destroy the walls. In the old days, wrecking balls were the most common way that crews used to demolish houses and commercial structures, but new developments rendered the wrecking ball just one of several pieces of equipment that are in play. Demolition crews still use a wrecking ball on multi-storey houses or houses with large square meters so that the demolition is completed in a shorter period of time. Wrecking balls are pear-shaped with the bottom part of the ball larger and more powerful than the narrower top end. Wrecking balls are the fastest way to demolish a house, but they also require the most clean up.

Bulldozers -- You've likely seen a bulldozer before, a powerful piece of heavy equipment that runs on tractors and features a huge steel plate in front that is ideal for ramming into structures and destabilising them. Bulldozers are one of the most common things you will see at house demolition site, and they can be fitted with different size steel plates to account for larger or smaller demolition jobs.

Excavators -- Excavators are large pieces of heavy equipment that feature a single driver who controls a large bucket that is fixed to a metal arm. Excavators are a vital aspect of the demolition process as both facilitators of destruction and as the main method of cleaning up the debris created by bulldozers and wrecking balls. Excavators for clean up are fitted with large buckets that can pick up kilos of wreckage and place them in a transport truck for disposal. Excavators are built as mini excavators, medium excavators and large excavators. For normal house demolition clean up, a medium excavator is typically sufficient.

Excavators can also be fitted with hydraulic shears which are cutting tools that can penetrate through steel and rebar in a house. Shears feature jaw openings with standard sizes from 38 cm to 50 cm and shear sizes that range between 1,300 kg to 1,600 kg.

For more information, contact professional demolition companies, like Roach Demolition & Excavations.

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