In early December, construction company S. Rushton successfully moved an ancient building weighing up to 220 tons in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, a distance of 9 meters with the "help" of about 700 bars of soap.
S. Rushton shared the success in a Facebook post, along with a time-lapse video of the move.
The Elmwood House was built in 1826 as a residence and converted to a hotel 70 years later. Today, it is an apartment building.
In 2018, Elmwood was scheduled to be demolished. That same year, real estate company Galaxy Properties bought the building and wanted to relocate it to make it closer to a nine-story apartment project nearby.
Sheldon Rushton, owner of S. Rushton, said there were many challenges in moving the nearly 200-year-old building. To accomplish this difficult task, he decided to use Ivory soap bars. His wife, Leanne Rushton, had to visit 15 supermarkets to collect enough 700 bars of soap.
They placed the bars of soap on more than a dozen steel beams at the base of the building instead of using traditional rollers, Rushton said. The soap was crushed by the weight of the building and helped make the beams more slippery. The building was moved to its new location with the help of two excavators and a tow truck. The Elmwood building will be moved again to complete the project.
Soap has been used to move structures before. The most recent use was in April this year, when 60 liters of Dawn liquid soap was used to move a 2,400-ton bridge 33.5 meters away.
In 2016, dishwashing liquid was also used by construction workers in the US state of Missouri to move a bridge into place.
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