Goodbye to Totley Hall College Tower Block

Demolition of Totley Hall College Tower on 12 August 1999. Thanks to Paul Bennett of Sheffield Business School. Video requires Adoble Flash Player.

On Thursday the 12th of August 1999 at 10.30 a.m. we saw the last of the Totley Hall College Tower Block. 

The Totley tower block will mark the 200th block to be demolished by leading experts Controlled Demolition Group Ltd from West Yorkshire.

The 11-storey block was first visited by the company's structural engineers to discover how it had been constructed and what materials used. Load bearing walls were also idenitified. The procedure continued: 

A 'soft strip' was completed whereby all loose items left in the building were removed. This included all sanitary equipment and even doors and frames. 

Pre-weakening carried out. This involved breaking out parts of the main load bearing walls to pre-weaken them. 

Hundreds of holes were drilled and fitted with explosives cemented into place. 

The explosives were connected up through an intricate pattern of detonating cord which all lead back to one single line joining an external point away from the building. The explosives were positioned in such a way as to cause the building to fall in a pre-set direction. 

A five-minute countdown began with acne-minute continuouswarning siren. A minute before blow down a flare was set off to warn

        The tower on the day before its demolition.

Once the explosion took place engineers revisited the site and checked it was safe. Once safe an all-clear siren was sounded and the exclusion zone lifted.

The explosion is termed a 'blow down' as the method used actually caused the building to crumble and fall in on itself causing minimal impact on the local vicinity. 

There was a large volume of dust and the developers organised for window cleaning and car cleaning for residents closest to the site and most likely to be affected. 

450 non-electric detonating charge was used and the building took 23kg of explosives to bring it down. 

Site clearance and demolition is the responsibility of TKL Earthworks Ltd with the project overseen by geotechnical consultants, Ground Risk Management (GRM).