At Surface Blasting Services, we concentrate on three types of blasting:
• close proximity blasting;
• mass blasting; and
• specialised blasting.

Because of our expertise with explosives, we are authorised to use them within 500m of any structure, be it a built-up area, overhead power cable or underground pipeline. As a result, we regularly blast swimming pools little more than a metre from existing homes, open trenches alongside oil pipelines, and demolish factory floors without loss of factory production.
Mass blasting is the service that has proved so useful to road builders carving through hillsides, to engineers who need to displace mud under sand fills, and for shattering rock under roadwork’s for no-fines drains.
Specialised blasting embraces the jobs which call for demolition of industrial chimneys, for cutting the steel of sunken ships in low water, and for deepening of harbours and river mouths.

Quick safe and efficient
Using techniques refined over years of experience in South Africa and abroad, and some of the most modern equipment available, Surface Blasting Services are available throughout South Africa and neighboring territories, 24 hours a day. We hold a company aircraft on stand-by for site inspections countrywide and speedy contact with clients, wherever they may be. Our storage magazines in each of South Africa’s provinces ensure a ready supply of explosives, and because we use only our own equipment we avoid any unnessary delays.
All our work is done in strict accordance with regulations laid down by the CSIR and AECI, who supply the explosives.

PROJECTS OF NOTE

Blasting for the freeway which links Durban’s North Coast Road with Mandini, had to be done below overhead powerlines and alongside the oil pipeline between Durban and Empangeni. With officials in attendance, use of controlled mass-weight of explosives to limit flyrock, and close monitoring of the blast on a vibrorecorder, Surface Blasting Services facilitated the project’s road cutting, trenches, treatment and place and pre splitting, all without even a minor mishap.

At Corobrik’s Calsibrik facility in Natal, we blasted a hole 5 m by 4 m through the concrete floor of the factory into the dolomite below, no more than three metres away from working brick presses. Rubber mats restricted flyrock, Cordtex lines were covered to quieten the noise, and the rest of the factory continued working as normal through the explosion.

So that Ilco Homes could enlarge their factory yard at Queensborough, we blasted no more than nine metres from the main Johannesburg-Durban railway line and about 12 metres from the existing factory.The job was completed without hold ups to either factory work or the rail services.

When the construction men of JM Newcombe-Bond called for explosives to widen a highway- cutting north of the Umgeni River bridge, we blasted only three metres above a culvert carrying both the sewerage pipeline from central Durban and the water mains to areas north of the Umgeni, just a road’s width away from a hotel and numerous factories.

For a Durban cement factory, we blasted beneath the base of an existing silo, undercutting for foundations for an additional, similar silo.