Demolition slow - but the recyling paying off

WPBH foreman Dean Rankin wades along a basement corridor. Photo / BEVAN CONLEY

As Wanganui's former Jubilee Hospital is demolished a procession of people are moving through it - either to look or to take pieces away.

Demolition of the former geriatric hospital began in mid-September and could take a further two months. Waikato company WPBH Earthmoving won the tender.

The property is landbanked for future Treaty of Waitangi settlement. Whanganui Maori have said they do not want the buildings, which have been empty since 2003 and had been smashed and looted by vandals.

Nearly 100 visitors have been through the buildings since demolition began. Some were former staff members and some were people who just wanted to have a look.

WPBH director Grant Reid said the company had its own demolition style.

"We actually take a little bit longer to do the job, but we recycle what we can. It costs more, but the rewards are more."

Foreman Dean Rankin has had as many as 22 people on the job, including about five unemployed Wanganui men.

Dean Rankin in one of the wards. Photo / BEVAN CONLEY

"Our guys have got to use crowbars to get the doors out. He just rips them out by hand," Mr Rankin said.

Doors, windows, cupboards, timber and even insulation and unbroken plasterboard are for sale. A door with complete sash goes for about $80.

Wanganui Mayor Annette Main was expected there yesterday afternoon, to buy equipment from the former kitchen.

Gordon Wilson has bought roof and wall timber for his recycled timber business. He said the Jubilee timber was mostly heart rimu with no borer, from trees hundreds of years old.

He'll store it in Marton and sell it on, mainly to people from out of the area who are doing high-value renovations.

There's still stacks of useful material left, and Mr Rankin can be contacted on 027 877 5945.

A lot has also been given away - carpets, sink benches for marae, windows and doors for a YMCA project and waste timber for free firewood.

The asbestos roof was easily removed. The crumbly asbestos on underfloor pipe lagging was more difficult.

Plastic was put down on the floor of the underground corridors and workers wore masks as they stripped out the lagging. Then everything was bundled up in the plastic and trucked to a licensed landfill in the Waikato.

The interior of the building and the underground corridors have been tested and found to be free of asbestos dust.

Roofs are now being removed and rooms stripped. Metal, including the hospital's former boiler, is likely to go to metal recyclers.

A digger arrived yesterday, and would be stripping the stucco off concrete block walls. The blocks will be crushed into rubble and used to fill the underground passages, Mr Rankin said.

Extra earth will probably be needed to fill passages to ground level. When work is finished the Somme Parade site will be an open green space with trees.