Colby & Gale’s downtown service station has been around in various forms for a long time.  It’s a mainstay in town.  A lot of gas and diesel is pumped there and Daryl Fraser does a steady volume of maintenance and repair work in the service bays, so much so that the vehicle lifts need to be replaced.  The catch is that the floors also needed to be replaced to accommodate the new lifts.  I was fortunate enough to be hired to do the work.

The first order of business was for Daryl to have the old lifts removed and to clean out the garage bays.  Once he was done it was time to begin the work of demolishing the old floors.  To do so the concrete needed to be cut first.  This helps to ensure that the forces imparted by the breaker don’t translate to the walls and support columns, which are made of old brick and cement block. Tim Stegna helped me do the cutting.  Some of the cuts were done with a hand-held cutoff saw, although the majority was done with a walk-behind unit.  Once the floors were cut and the water from the saws was pumed out it was time to begin breaking up the concrete.   The concrete is reinforced with rebar and wire mesh and the only way to break it up is with the skid steer and a hydraulic breaker.

Once the concrete is broken up it needs to be removed with the excavator.  The ceilings are low, so a keeping an eye on the ceiling is  a key to removing the demo.