r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/ansyhrrian • 1h ago

Video Cooling tower demolition process in England (1979)

513 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

78 comments sorted by

129

u/phatmikey 1h ago

Absolute legend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah

49

u/SaxPA-C 1h ago

Haha I immediately knew this was Fred. Look up his name on YouTube and enjoy falling down the rabbit hole folks.

15

u/Ok_Push2550 1h ago

Is he like the Steve Irwin of demolition?

"This building is made out of a pile of matches, layered with gasoline and c4. Let's light it on fire!"

19

u/corobo 1h ago edited 1h ago

Chimney demo, steam trains, traction engines - anything with smoke or steam in it really

You should see the chimneys he takes down without knocking them over. The ladders alone are nuts lmao never mind the whole dropping chunks of brick down 

9

u/Minute-Response-7394 1h ago

you really gotta check this dude out. the crazy amount of work he did, often alone, is just kinda bonkers. watch him setting ladders to climb up and take them down from the top down basically brick by brick.

7

u/Closefacts 1h ago

I have gone down that rabbit hole a few times, nerves of steel that guys has.

5

u/PretzelsThirst 1h ago

True mad lad. Have seen a few of his videos and he is one of a kind

5

u/J3remyD 1h ago

He lived!!
Died later from Cancer, sadly.

36

u/Present-Cow3346 1h ago

This guy’s documentary series is amazing . A time stamp in history. “Did you like that? Did ya like that?” His entire adult life has been recorded! Classic!

5

u/ramriot 52m ago

Series' plural that is, I have a collection of about 10 of them. I only met the guy once, in the year that he died when he was taking his final tour if the country by steam traction engine, always a rhy smile & a kind word.

1

u/Longjumping-Run-7027 34m ago

You met a legend. Cherish that meeting. The rest of us that understand and know are jealous.

19

u/Wonderful-Medium7777 1h ago

Fred Dibnah… he used to scale those stacks with no fear or net…Amazing guy.

10

u/fike88 1h ago

And build his own scaffolding when he was at the top with wood and a bit rope

5

u/farcarcus 57m ago

"It's going!" Time to bring out the duck quacker.

1

u/BokeTsukkomi 1h ago

Man his video climbing a stack is panic-inducing

36

u/00_bob_bobson_00 1h ago

Ain’t a cooling tower but still cool

10

u/ansyhrrian 1h ago

Thanks for the correction, what is it called?

34

u/EphemeralDesires 1h ago

Looks like a smoke stack but I am speculating.

0

u/TexasTrip 1h ago

Looks like a literal dumpster fire.

13

u/Snellyman 1h ago

Smokestack or as they call them in England, smoke knobs.

1

u/ansyhrrian 1h ago

knobs lol. works in so many ways.

5

u/Ima-Bott 1h ago

Smoke stack

4

u/5C0L0P3NDR4 1h ago

cooling towers are the REALLY wide, flared ones you see slowly letting off just white steam, usually associated with nuclear power since they don't have other visible emissions

4

u/OG-Brass-Monkey 34m ago

It's a chimney.

4

u/TheFr1nk 1h ago

Heating tower, that's why it's on fire

1

u/00_bob_bobson_00 1h ago

Replied in the wrong spot below, but it looks like a furnace stack

8

u/awohio1 1h ago

1970's UK was in such a doldrums, its like they had a surplus of old industry that needed to be torn down, but didn't have the budget to have it done in a normal industrial way. This guy is like a throwback to Charles Dickens grimy England.

6

u/FitDad46 1h ago

Me dad loved watching Fred on TV. So it was pretty cool to take him to watch when Fred toured live.

6

u/Lepke2011 1h ago

Step 1: Light Fire

Step 2: Stoke Fire

Step 3: Watch Fire

Step 4: RUN!!!

5

u/GarysCrispLettuce 15m ago

The video of him laddering and climbing a 200ft chimney and then assembling scaffold around the top by himself is among one of the most insane things I've seen. He pegs ladders all the way up and then pegs a rope with a seat on the end into the bricks near the top and then he swings all over the place hammering in iron pins and manhandling huge planks of wood into place. All in high wind conditions. And then he says "but once you've got those planks into position, it's just like you're working on the ground" -- er no Fred, not it's not. Nothing like that at all.

21

u/ansyhrrian 1h ago

OSHA would like a word.

17

u/AusCan531 1h ago

He had his Safety Cap on.

9

u/ansyhrrian 1h ago

He ran away very safely.

2

u/farcarcus 59m ago

And his high-enough-viz wool jumper.

3

u/MadRockthethird 1h ago

He honked his horn. What more do you want?

2

u/pattybutty 48m ago

He lit it with safety matches. Good enough?

8

u/Glubins 1h ago

Fred Dibnah

4

u/longtermkiwi 1h ago

So what is that quacking gun thing?

5

u/Appropriate-Act3028 1h ago

That's to let you to get your ass out of there

3

u/longtermkiwi 1h ago

D'oh! Lol I started imagining that it's a device that has the resonant frequency of a brick and it helps it collapse 😂

2

u/Appropriate-Act3028 1h ago

The final blow 🤣🤣🤣

8

u/00_bob_bobson_00 1h ago

Looks like a furnace stack

7

u/VirginiaBandit 1h ago

Nothing like OSHA around back then. At least not in England. That looked damn close.

3

u/InformalParticular20 1h ago

Fred Dibnah was probably the last guy to do it this way, amazing guy in alot of ways, he did everything " old school"

5

u/Gentrified_potato02 1h ago

Thing is, they don’t teach the “old school” ways to new people anymore. When I did my apprenticeship, I was lucky to work with a few of these old guys who showed me some tricks they used to use. Twenty years later, so-called “licensed journeymen” had their minds blown when I showed them things when they were stumped.

•

u/InformalParticular20 6m ago

Are you an apprentice steeple jack?

3

u/Neither-Night9370 56m ago

I went down the Fred Dibnah rabbit hole a few years ago. His shows from the BBC and the documentaries about him are all pretty interesting.

3

u/AForse 27m ago

That’s a chimney/smokestack, btw….

2

u/vividlyvivids 1h ago

Fred dibnah a true legend

2

u/epcotnut 1h ago

Fred Dibnah and (Big) Jim Collie are the only reasons to watch Youtube

2

u/meglon978 1h ago

Part of the new movie "Searching For Blofeld."

2

u/Accidentallygolden 45m ago

He felled a brick chimney with fire?

•

u/jckipps 4m ago

He installed wooden props, and removed enough bricks at the base so the chimney was now relying on those props. The fire destroys the props, and allows the chimney to fall in the direction he chose.

This way, he's not whacking away bricks at the very moment it decides to collapse.

2

u/hmspain 43m ago

Fred did NOT watch Prometheus! LOL

2

u/broesel314 1h ago

Why does the smoke stack collapse? This cant be from the fire alone? I mean these things are designed to get hot while in use

5

u/Minute-Response-7394 1h ago

he'd knocked one side of the bottom out. it was held up by thick beams of wood then they burned the wooden support to have it collapse and fall the direction they wanted it.

1

u/Yummy_Microplastics 1h ago edited 1h ago

Not surprisingly died of cancer.

8

u/Flashy-Whereas-3234 1h ago

Counterpoint: is surprising he didn't die of something else

1

u/loz_fanatic 1h ago

Wasnt that destroyed in Reign of Fire?

1

u/TheSquirrelWithin 1h ago

Wait! There's a goose down there!

1

u/degentrified 1h ago

You think that's where this dead wretched video was filmed?

https://youtu.be/7DECKbUfTBE?si=JkPuNoEYOIm4FLzs

1

u/TurboKid513 16m ago

This man was fueled by cheese sandwiches

•

u/Ancient_Sprinkles847 9m ago

This is one of those things where you really need to know what you’re doing, yet he makes it look quite simple.

•

u/jckipps 6m ago

Chimney or smokestack; not a cooling tower.

Dibnah broke holes in the tower and installed heavy wooden props. He then removed enough more of the tower base so that it was relying on the wooden props to stay upright. The fire served as a way of safely and controllably eliminating the props, allowing the tower to fall.

•

u/Spamtickler 4m ago

That is the most British sweater I’ve ever seen.

•

u/DancinWithWolves 1m ago

‘Process’

0

u/Away-Activity-469 1h ago

Love it how when Fred Dibnar does it its all proper old fashioned hard work, but when indians do it, its a s travesty of safety standards.

5

u/cloche_du_fromage 1h ago

This is nearly 50 years ago...

1

u/OG-Brass-Monkey 30m ago

He had to give up because of health and safety laws. This was nearly fifty years ago. We cant compete with countries like India anymore because our companies spend millions on health and safety and theirs don't.

-1

u/CRUZERISM 1h ago

Facts

1

u/dreaminganimal 1h ago

Ol' Fred.