Ocean Beach Hotel, Shellharbour

Stage one demolition and bored piers at a hotel that never closed. The ground floor was stripped and piers were drilled tight against the building while the pub kept trading.

The Job

The Ocean Beach Hotel sits on the corner at Shellharbour with the water on one side and the street on the other. The refurbishment meant taking the ground floor back to its bones — public bar, lounge bar, gaming lounge, TAB area, bottle shop, kitchen, cool rooms, keg room, amenities, and the timber decks facing the beach — then putting new piers in the ground to carry what comes next.

DemoEx was engaged by Evolve Constructions for both stages: the demolition first, then the piering.

The Pub Never Shut

This is the part that shaped everything else. The hotel kept trading right through — patrons in the bar, staff in the kitchen, deliveries arriving — while we stripped a ground floor and drilled piers alongside it.

That sets hard terms on how you work. Dust had to be controlled at the source, not swept up afterwards. Noise and vibration had to stay inside the levels the codes allow, next to rooms with people in them. Trucks washed down before they touched the street. And where the program could not be made to fit around trade, the work was done outside hours instead.

None of it is complicated. It is just the difference between a demolition contractor who has done it beside an operating business and one who has not.

Asbestos First, As Always

Two suspect materials were sampled before work started — fibrous cement eave sheeting and a covering off one of the beams. Both went to an accredited laboratory (ISO/IEC 17025) and were analysed to AS 4964 by polarised light microscopy.

No asbestos detected in either. That is the result you hope for, but you only know it by testing. The alternative is finding out with a crew already pulling the building apart.

Stripping The Ground Floor

The strip-out followed the architect’s demolition plan room by room. Linings, services, joinery and the suspended awning came off, and openings were hoarded in ply as the work went.

The external decks were a job of their own. Rather than tear them out, the decking, bearers and stair treads were taken apart in sequence, on a site fronting a public street and the beach.

Then The Piers

Bored piers on this site came with a specific problem: there was almost nowhere to put the rig. The pier positions ran along the building line, between the hotel wall and the street, with established Norfolk pines, the footpath and live services all close by.

Piling by machine within a metre of an underground service was off the table without approval, so existing footings and services were located, exposed and marked up before the auger went anywhere near them.

DemoEx carried the engineered design for the piers and issued shop drawings for approval before any were drilled. Each pier was augered, cleaned out with a blow-out hole for the dowel bar, reinforced and poured.

Why It Suited Us

Demolition and piering are usually two subcontractors, two mobilisations and two sets of arguments about who left what in the ground. Here it was one contractor for both, which meant whoever exposed the footings was the same outfit that had to drill beside them.

Send Us The Job

Licensed demolition, asbestos removal and excavation across the Illawarra and beyond. Send the drawings or the scope and we will come back with a price.

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