designed to pre-process stumps, commingled C&D waste,
railroad ties and other forms of mixed or contaminated waste.
Photos courtesy of Rotochopper
Earlier this year, Rotochopper utilized a TS-2 slow-speed shredder to help out a local family that had recently suffered the loss of their house in a fire.
Last Thanksgiving, Joe and Katie Hemmesch stood in their driveway and gazed at the smoldering shell of the 115-year-old house on their fifth-generation dairy farm. A fire the day before left their house standing but at a complete loss. Anything that survived the flames was ruined by smoke and water, leaving the young couple with the safety of their family but almost nothing else.
“They built the first house here in 1889, and this one was built in 1901,” Joe says. “It’s devastating to lose the house this way, but things could have been so much worse. We can rebuild the house and replace the things we lost, but my family is safe. That’s what really matters.”
Nick Lieser, a Rotochopper employee, lives down the road from Joe and Katie. Lieser thought volunteering a TS-2 shredder could help speed up the demolition process on the Hemmesch property.
Lieser connected with B&S Excavating, an excavating and demolition company, to set up the demolition so a high-torque Rotochopper machine could shred the debris from the house, reducing the total volume and clearing the area so the rebuilding process could begin.
into six dumpsters.
“We were happy to help them out in a very small, simple way,” Lieser says. “By shredding the debris, we were able to speed up the demolition process and make sure it didn’t disrupt their farm work.”
B&S Excavating required about 30 minutes to tear down the house, leaving a large pile of rubble that included the steel siding, chimney, garage, roof and fieldstone foundation. An excavator batch-fed the debris into the hopper of the TS-2, where the hook-style dual shafts shredded the material into pieces that fill dumpsters more evenly.
This reduction in particle size allowed the whole house to be hauled away in six dumpsters, far less than the number that would have been required to remove the rough debris. According to Rotochopper, utilizing the TS-2 lowered the disposal costs by decreasing the number of dumpsters needed.
“Watching this old house get demolished and shredded served as a nice reminder of what’s important,” says Steve Pearson, a Rotochopper employee who helped coordinate the shredding process. “It could have been a lot worse, but thankfully, they only lost a house.”
This article was originally written by Rotochopper.