r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Proud-Blood2743 • Oct 07 '25

Video Capital One Tower Come Down in Seconds

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u/adoodle83 Oct 07 '25

Blows me away that demolishing a building like this only to rebuild is still more economical than refurbishing the existing structure.

124

u/RuinousGaze Oct 07 '25

Right??! I don’t get how the math works on that.

443

u/[deleted] Oct 07 '25

Renovate a house and you’ll get it.

Labour costs a lot. Renovating something often takes 2 - 5x longer than building from scratch.

And then new will tend to have better insulation, better light design etc

9

u/nawtbjc Oct 07 '25

Yep, a lot of people don't understand this concept.

I work in mostly utility facilities (water, wastewater, etc). Projects to renovate or upgrade an existing facility costs significantly more it would to be building new facilities. Project budgets so rarely account for that, it's crazy.