Instead, the Capitol Preservation Board chose a high-tech solution to refurbish the 90-year-old surfaces of the historic governmental monument: Randell Heath and his Coldsweep Inc. crews were hired to blast away the years with pressurized dry ice.
Architect Dave Hart said Coldsweep was awarded a contract after Heath demonstrated the powerful yet delicate touch of dry ice blasting on a variety of wood, marble and metal samples.
"We liked what we saw. There's no leftover residue, no dust was created and it leaves little to clean up other than the paint," he says. "Best of all, it didn't damage any of the great decorative surfaces, and was able to get into cracks and crevasses even sandblasting couldn't reach."
The alternatives to dry ice included painstakingly dismantling railings, stairs and other Capitol fixtures and sending them to a stripping company. There, the items would have undergone the time-consuming process of being dipped in chemical vats to remove paint, then shipped back to the Capitol for reassembling and replacement.
"It's all in the size of the dry ice particles," Heath says. "For this job, we have machines that shave blocks of dry ice into sugar-sized granules. One hour of our dry ice blasting is equivalent to about eight hours of manual cleaning with solvents and brushes."
All told, Coldsweep's contract for the Capitol job came to $128,000, which figures out to about $150 per hour. But the payoff is more than money.
"It's been fun to see all all that gorgeous, decorative stuff come back to life," Heath says. "It was [originally] a beautiful building, and will be again."
Unlike sandblasting, pressurized dry-ice poses no air-quality concerns and leaves only a fraction of the cleanup afterward. And, unlike solvents, dry-ice blasting leaves no potentially toxic residues to remove.
"We were up there several months and ended up with just two barrels' full of paint chips to show for it," Heath says. "There's no secondary waste at all with this process; you just sweep up and vacuum whatever's left and you're done."
Dry-ice blasting depends on basic principles of physics and chemistry to work its wonders. When dry-ice particles strike the target surface, it goes through a process called "sublimation" - transforming from a solid into a gas. Together, the kinetic energy and the 109 degrees (Fahrenheit) below zero thermal effect quickly cleans surfaces.
When the dry ice goes from solid to gas, it expands up to 800 times its volume; it gets under imperfections, "lifting them off like a spatula," Heath says.
Heath and his wife, Tina, launched Coldsweep five years ago in Mountain Green. A 20-year veteran engineer formerly with Hercules/ATK, he was looking for a change - and a chance to be his own boss.
He had been exposed to the dry-ice cleaning process during a 1995 demonstration. His former employers were considering acquiring the technology to clean out rocket fuel propellant mixing bowls at the Bacchus plant near Magna.
A few years later, when the aerospace company announced a voluntary layoff, Heath took it, investing in what he believes is the state's only full-bore, commercial dry ice-based cleaning company. Today, with seven employees, he does cleaning projects throughout the Intermountain region.
Coldsweep buys multiple tons of dry ice annually from Airgas Inc., then uses its dishwasher-sized ice-shaving machine to process particles ranging from the size of sugar granules to grains of rice.
While the smallest particles are used for delicate projects, such as the Capitol, the heavier pellets can cut through grease, rust and grime on heavy machinery like power plant turbines, petroleum refineries, commercial printers and food processing equipment.
"We can do some very delicate cleaning. We can take tar off of stucco without damaging it - or we can blast old ink and dirt off a printing press," Heath says.
Last year, the company handled more than $600,000 in contracts, taking on such clients as breakfast cereal makers, Nevada power plants, PacifiCorp and General Electric facilities and even recently blasting away grit and gunk from 100-year-old electric pump motors at Bear Lake.
He expects to double revenues in the coming year, and is adding equipment to handle a growing workload.
A lot of that work is coming from Scott Barben, an estimator with Utah Disaster Kleenup. His company calls in Coldsweep when it needs quick, thorough and cost-effective removal of soot and charring from fires.
"Traditionally, fire cleanups can be a time-consuming, filthy, gritty job," he says. "You'd send in a bunch of guys with putty knives and scrapers. But we can send Randell in and he blasts the soot off, and there's virtually no cleanup to speak of."
In Park City, painting contractor Fred Marshall has Coldsweep helping him restore graying exterior logs on 16 condominiums to their original blond luster. Not only is the dry ice process faster and cleanup easier, but in the long run it is cheaper, he says.
"The convenience of doing this may be the biggest advantage," Marshall says. "Sandblasting leaves sand everywhere, permeating everything. But this leaves nothing, not even any wetness. It's the wildest thing you ever saw."
bmims@sltrib.com
