Safe breaking in Thailand
Published 15/11, 2017 at 18:15In Thailand the concrete sawing and drilling contractor C.S. Applicator has broken through a bank vault’s concrete wall with equipment from Tyrolit. The vault is in a bank in the Roi-Ed province and has changed ownership. The new owners needed to renovate the building and extend the size of the vault by dismantling the old front wall while keeping and reusing the vault’s safe door.
For over 30 years the building has harboured different banks, but the new owner wants to open a pawn shop and has decided to completely refurbish the building. CSA was recommended by the design and consultation firm KED and in August 2017 CSA was hired by the main contractor KEES to open the vault’s front wall. “KED is our favourite customer. They know the capabilities and readiness of the CSA team and the tools we have. So we were selected for this job”, said CSA director Kasit Arwatchanakarn.
CSA’s task was to open the 2.5m x 2.5m and 380mm thick vault wall. The resulting heavy concrete blocks were to be moved out on the nearby terrace for transportation. The old safe door also had to be cut out stored for reuse.
The project started for CSA with meetings with the KED, KEES and the owners of the building before bidding and presenting their working methods. The concrete wall was originally estimated to be approximately 250mm to 300mm thick. “We agreed with the clients to take on the job because we have good experience with this kind of work. During the last year we have finished two projects of similar openings of vaults for a provincial government’s treasury,” said Arwatchanakarn.
The project started with drilling 152mm diameter holes at the ends of the cutting lines to prevent over-cut. After drilling the first hole CSA found the thickness of the wall to be 380mm. “We had to recalculate the weight of the concrete and add more cuts in our estimation to reduce the weight of each block. Each piece could not exceed 700kg in order to keep the lifting and moving the concrete blocks safe,” said Arwatchanakarn.
CSA also used stitch drilling for the middle and lower cuts in the narrow areas. They first cut a small opening in the top of the surface to be removed. This simplified and improved safety when lowering the large concrete blocks. CSA used two chain blocks to lift and pull a piece of concrete out of its place and put it down to the pallet trolley and move it out.
CSA used a Tyrolit WZ Wall Saw with Tyrolit PPH25S hydraulic power unit. The diamond blades were an Arix 800mm blade, one 825mm and a Tyrolit blade with TGD Technology and another 1025mm blade from Tyrolit with TGD Technology. The core drill system was a Tyrolit DME33 drill motor and a Tyrolit DRA400 drill rig with 152mm diameter Tyrolit core bits.
CSA had five people on the project, which was completed in three days to the client’s full satisfaction.
www.csa.co.th
