Every winter as the calendar turns from December to January, people across the country start to reexamine the past year and look ahead at what’s to come.

Whether it’s personal goals like heading to the gym more or business goals tied to improving the bottom line, there is no time like a new year for taking stock and making resolutions.

However, data shows that the vast majority of New Year’s resolutions don’t last. According to U.S. News and World Report, 80 percent of resolutions fail by the time Valentine’s Day rolls around.

The reason behind this overwhelming failure rate can be tied, in part, to our desire to see instant results even in the face of complex challenges.

In promoting his book “Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t,” author Simon Sinek gave a talk in which he describes how the desire for immediate results often prompts people to give up on their objectives before realistic changes can manifest.

“If you go to the gym and workout, and you come back and look in the mirror, you’ll see nothing. And if you go to the gym the next day and come back and look in the mirror, you’ll see nothing. So clearly there are no results. Success can’t be measured, [exercise] must not be effective, so we quit,” Sinek says. “But if you believe you’re on the right course of action and you stick with it, you commit yourself to the regime, I’m not sure the exact day, but I know you’ll start getting into shape. … It’s the daily practice of all the monotonous little boring things that matters the most.”

This issue marks the start of Construction & Demolition Recycling (C&DR) magazine’s 20th anniversary. In looking back on our time serving the C&D recycling sector, we’re reaching out to industry leaders as part of our ongoing “Evolution of an Industry” feature (page 57) to talk about their time on the job. According to Dan Costello, owner of Costello Dismantling in West Wareham, Massachusetts, Sinek’s fitness analogy on making gradual progress also applies to what it takes to succeed in the construction, demolition and recycling industries.

Asked how he’s been able to grow and adapt after 40 years on the job, Costello says, “You need to just keep plodding on. I think you have to have a will and a desire to continue and succeed, and it’s never easy. Things change constantly. You just have to be ready to address whatever issues may come up.”

Regardless of whether you’re picking up C&DR for the first time or you’ve been a subscriber since our first issue rolled off the presses in 1999, we’re committed to doing our part to keep you abreast of industry changes so you can make more informed business decisions in 2019 and beyond.

That’s what C&DR set out to do 20 years ago, and it’s a resolution we’re proud to maintain today.

When working on a demolition job in warmer temperatures, a stream of water is usually the basic building block of dust control. But in freezing temperatures, that method can get dicey—and icy. Spraying with water in the colder months can create slick conditions that are hazardous for workers to walk and work on. That doesn’t mean water has to be taken out of the equation, though. It simply needs a little modifying on the molecular level.

Enter water’s chiller cousin, snow, which can be equally as effective at mitigating dust in colder temperatures while assuring safer working conditions. Natick, Massachusetts-based HKD Blue manufactures, rents and sells snow guns that double as water atomizers to provide efficient and environmentally sound dust control (among other unconventional functions, like smoke emission suppression and ice bridge construction). Gordon Santry oversees the U.S. division of HKD Blue, while his parents, Charles and Anni, oversee the product line’s parent company, HKD Snowmakers.

While some may see snow as a nuisance, Santry and his family have always seen it as a solution. Before founding HKD Snowmakers, Santry’s grandfather, Herman Dupré, set out to find a more efficient way to churn out snow thick enough to coat the slopes at the ski resort he operated in Pennsylvania. After 20 years of experimenting and honing, Dupré developed the technology for a snow gun that became the base of the business he founded with his daughter and son-in-law, Snow Economics, now known as HKD Snowmakers, also based in Natick.

About four years ago, Santry said engineers at the company discovered that the flurries, along with atomized water, could address a problem not normally handled by snow machines: controlling dust safely during winter demo jobs. Since then, HKD Blue has manufactured atomized water-producing machines both with and without snowmaking capabilities.

“With HKD Blue entering new industries and developing new technologies, I’m thrilled by the opportunity to expand our business and product line,” Santry says.

Let it snow

Santry says the snow produced from the snow machines, much like the real stuff, is a natural air cleanser. The crisp, pure feeling in the air after a fresh flurry isn’t just in your imagination. Snow really does make the air cleaner by capturing pollutant particles in the air as it wafts to the ground.

“As you’re forming a snowflake, the dust particle becomes the nucleus of the snowflake,” Santry says. “As the particulate is forming, dust latches onto the forming crystal and falls down to the ground. You’re ultimately left with a pile of dusty snow.”

That’s the concept snow guns can put to use, blasting a flurry into cascading buildings as they kick up dust. The snow creates a sort of suspended wall that prevents the dust particles from drifting beyond the work site, dragging them to the ground instead. The concept is similar to using a water stream, but snow provides a safer solution in the colder months. When a water stream is used for dust suppression in the winter, it can freeze on the ground and create slippery, hazardous conditions for workers, whereas snow simply creates more fluff for them to plow through.

Along with cleaning the air and creating a safer work site, Santry says snow can also be used as an alternative to plastic tarps to cover remaining brick, concrete, steel and dust on the ground in the winter months as site operators work to clean it up. While snow provides a more natural alternative to plastic tarps, it is also more cost-effective, as tarps can be pricey and sometimes need to be replaced multiple times during a project.

Two in one

Snow, of course, can only be produced in freezing temperatures, so it’s a viable dust control solution solely for contractors working during the winter or in colder areas. However, some snow gun manufacturers, like HKD Blue, offer dual capabilities in their product line so the equipment can be used year round. HKD Blue’s V-575 series of machines, for example, produce both snow and atomized mist—water that has been converted into fine droplets. The machine can generate atomized mist by using 25-horsepower pumps to pressurize water between 250 and 500 psi. Then, the water is pushed through the company’s GEYSER nozzle, which Santry says produces appropriately sized droplets to capture dust.

To make snow, the V-575 has three nucleator nozzles that introduce those tiny water droplets to expanding and cooling compressed air in a 7.5-horsepower air compressor, which begins the formation of ice crystals. The crystals are then projected into the bulk water flow of the central nozzle, facilitating snowflake production. Santry says that when dust particles meet forming snow crystals in the air, it facilitates further crystallization. Santry said nearly every part of the machine can be controlled remotely, preventing operator exposure to potentially harmful dust and debris.

“Every function of it, whether it’s dust emissions or emergency stopping, is completely remote-controlled,” Santry says.

Winter is coming

The combination of dust suppression offerings provided by HKD Blue’s equipment is something Thomas Frongillo, the owner and operator of F&D Truck Co., Inc. in Millbury, Massachusetts, recently took advantage of as he embarked on a large demolition project that began in the summer and stretched into winter.

Frongillo contacted HKD Blue in the fall of 2017 in search of dust suppression equipment that could fit in the bed of his pickup truck during demolition of the Notre Dame des Canadiens Church in Worcester, Massachusetts. HKD Blue worked with Frongillo for about two weeks to design a custom solution, which was then manufactured at HKD’s factory and sent to F&D Truck just in time to be in compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) silica law implemented in the fall of 2017.

“Because we do our own manufacturing, we can do any sort of customization,” Santry says.

When Frongillo started the job in July, he used atomized mist from his custom V-575 SS, along with two asbestos sensors from subcontractors, to control and monitor concrete, asbestos, brick and silica dust as two Cat ultra-high reach excavators picked away at the 17,000-square-foot church. Rather than aim the spray at the top of the building, which would obstruct the operator’s view, Frongillo’s team aimed it at the ground to prevent the bulk dust emissions that come from falling debris.

While concrete and silica dusts tend to clog up sensors, Santry says the atomized mist prevented blockage and maximized uptime for the project, which wrapped up in November. And although demolition of the 89-year-old church stirred up some controversy among the community over its preservation, Santry says the project “didn’t get a single dust complaint, which was great.”

Now, winter is here, and so is the time to use snow during demolition jobs. Frongillo recently used his V-575 SS to coat leftover materials from the church demolition with snow as his crew works to clean up the site. Santry says Frongillo will be busy with wrecking and demolition jobs all winter—so much so that Frongillo recently ordered another V-575 SS to continue utilizing the power of snow on future job sites.

The author is the assistant editor for Construction & Demolition Recycling magazine and can be contacted at tcottom@gie.net.

Sometimes, making the right choice is the differentiator between average and extraordinary. This can be said of many things: hiring an employee, buying a new car, ordering dinner at a restaurant—the list goes on. The same sentiment can also be said of choosing the right equipment for a demolition job. Many demolition attachments may work OK for a particular application, but selecting the perfect attachment for the task at hand has the potential to help contractors finish a project more efficiently and effectively than they otherwise could.

With hundreds of sizes and styles of demolition attachments on the market ranging from small grapples to massive pulverizers, contractors can’t expect to blindly pick an option, attach it to an excavator and get top production. Rather, today’s demolition professionals should refine their demolition attachment selection process in order to knock out jobs faster and easier. Considering the application, the carrier, the return on investment and other variables can help contractors better find the right tool for the job in question.

Attachment selection

Before selecting a tool, it is important to first consider the type of work the attachment will perform. From primary to secondary demolition and from rebar-enforced concrete to wood and brick, the application should be the first factor to guide an attachment choice.

When starting to demolish a structure, multi-quick processors, shears, crushers, pulverizers and demolition grapples tend to be the top picks for primary demolition. The choice between them depends on the type of material being targeted and how it needs to be broken up.

Crusher and pulverizer attachments, for example, best tackle jobs made up of mostly concrete. Choose a crusher if the structure is composed of concrete with little or no rebar and if it’s necessary to break the concrete into chunks large enough for easy sorting and recycling. A pulverizer attachment better handles concrete that’s heavily reinforced with rebar. Unlike the crusher attachment, the pulverizer will break the concrete into small pieces and cut through the embedded rebar, allowing the concrete to fall to the ground rather than hang onto the metal reinforcements.

Pulverizers also can be used to break concrete into manageable sizes during secondary demolition. If the demolition involves both crushing concrete and cutting steel, contractors should consider combi-crushers that incorporate both cutting edges and teeth.

If concrete isn’t part of the demolition picture but steel is, a demolition processor with shear jaws or a mobile shear attachment will work best since they’re able to cut through steel better than a tool meant for multiple types of material.

When working jobs with light materials (such as wood and brick, which are commonly found in residential demolition applications), use a demolition grapple. Besides breaking apart materials, rotating grapples work well for sorting during secondary demolition and increase versatility and productivity by allowing a wide range of movement.

For versatility across different demolition jobs, a multi-quick processor often fits best. The attachment’s interchangeable jaws can handle a multitude of materials. The jaw types found on multi-quick processors include crushers, pulverizers, a combination of both and steel-cutters. Some manufacturers offer additional specialty options, such as jaws for cutting through timber for forest industry applications; jaws for cutting steel tanks, pipes and vessels; and highly powerful jaws for heavily reinforced concrete.

While multi-quick processors may cost more than other attachments (approximately 15 to 20 percent more than crushers, for example), they more than make up for that difference in price with their versatility afforded by their interchangeable jaw sets.

Power source

After determining the best type of attachment for the job, contractors should consider the technology powering the tool. Cylinders power demolition attachments, and typically, the larger the cylinder, the more powerful the tool. Because of this, contractors seeking more demolition power in the past had to buy or rent a larger excavator to handle the larger attachment. That’s no longer the case.

As manufacturers incorporate more technology into the attachments they build, some are able to achieve as much as 25 percent more power without increasing the cylinder size. To pull this off, manufacturers build additional chambers into the cylinder to allow for as much as 20 percent more surface area. Often, this results in an attachment with the same power as a tool two sizes larger. This means that a section of concrete that may take a competitive crusher attachment five or six “bites” to break through only takes the tool with the enhanced cylinder technology one or two.

This advancement in technology gives contractors access to amplified crushing and cutting forces they previously couldn’t have achieved without the expense of investing in a larger tool, as well as a bigger carrier to operate that tool. In addition to the cost of the tool itself, larger carriers also come with higher operating costs. The high power-to-weight ratio made possible by more efficient tools—higher on attachments with this technology than any other tool in its size class—also opens the door to more efficient high-reach demolition. This is both because contractors can use smaller carriers and because the attachment’s lightweight and superior cylinder technology improves tool performance and fuel efficiency.

Some attachments with innovative cylinder technology reduce carrier fuel consumption by up to 20 percent compared to other models. In some cases, the attachment’s efficient design allows it to function normally when the carrier is set in economy mode, achieving the same performance as competitive attachments on an excavator running at full throttle.

In addition, this advanced cylinder technology allows manufacturers to better design high-performing attachments. When combined with double-acting speed valves, the advanced attachment designs not only offer improved power and efficiency, but also improved productivity. Together, the enhanced cylinder design and double-acting speed valves deliver faster cycle times—from 3.8 seconds to 5 seconds on bigger tools—and as much as 20 percent more power than conventional cylinders.

Ensuring the proper fit

Of course, the best attachment in the world still needs a suitable carrier to perform well. Contractors should be sure to match the attachment to the appropriate carrier size and weight. Heavier attachments, naturally, require larger, heavier carriers that cost more to operate. Using too heavy of an attachment can cause excessive wear to the excavator and will affect performance. In addition, tools that are too heavy for a machine present a safety risk for other workers near the carrier. Conversely, an attachment that is too small reduces productivity.

Professionals should also ensure the carrier has enough hydraulic capacity to feed the attachment when considering the right tool for the job. Inadequate flow or hydraulic pressure will slow the tool’s cycle times, reducing productivity. Too little pressure also results in less closing force or torque, depending on the attachment.

Another item to check is the attachment’s hydraulic circuit requirements. Is the excavator equipped with enough auxiliary hydraulic circuits for the attachment? For example, rotation shears and multi-quick processors require two double-acting hydraulic circuits—one circuit for opening and closing the jaw and one for 360-degree rotation. Attachments that don’t rotate, such as static pulverizers or shears, only require one double-acting circuit.

Maintenance needs

When determining the attachment best suited for the application and power rating, look for a product that is durable and easy to service. Some attachments may seem like a great investment at first but end up resulting in a nightmare of downtime and repair costs when put into operation.

One method for choosing a low-maintenance attachment is to find a tool with no (or very few) protruding parts, such as hydraulic hoses. These can be easily damaged during operation, particularly in harsh demolition environments. Instead, contractors should look for attachments that have components that are enclosed within the tool, yet are still easy to access through service openings.

Contractors will also be wise to keep wear part service life in mind when choosing a tool. For example, shear and crushing attachments’ cutting edges and teeth need to be replaced when worn. While exchangeable cutting edges are an industry standard, it’s still smart to ensure they are available.

When considering multi-quick processors, operators should pay attention to how quickly jaws can be switched out. Some manufacturers build multi-quick processors with jaws that operators can change within minutes on-site, compared to the hours needed to bring many other attachments back to the shop to exchange. Workers may only need to manually remove one pin from quick-exchange models during change-outs, compared to the three pins that need to be removed from many other manufacturers’ processors. The rest of the jaw exchange process is done hydraulically from the safety of the cab. This system not only removes the hassle of pounding out two or three pins, but also virtually eliminates the danger of the jaw falling and injuring a worker after the last pin is removed.

Choose carefully for success

With most jobs, the best tool depends on the situation. Seasoned buyers and industry newbies alike can benefit from taking a careful look at their options and requirements while searching for a new attachment. Additionally, it’s always a good idea to get advice from the dealer and manufacturer.

Picking the best pairing of tool and carrier goes beyond the application and the power that can be achieved. Contractors should examine every aspect of the attachment and the subsequent carrier to form a pair that will boost productivity and ROI and, potentially, open up opportunities to work in new applications. While making a wise equipment choice might take a little foresight, selecting the right tools for the job can help demolition professionals take their job site performance to new heights.

Francois Martin is the general manager of Kinshofer North America. He can be contacted at f.martin@kinshofer.com.