House Destruction

[txdon]

Kiohio, I bought a house and took it down mostly by myself. It was 1 and 1/2 story about 40X24. I used no tractor or power tools it took about eight weekends of HARD work. I used a couple of big crowbars and various sledge hammers. I salvaged a lot of vintage wood and threw the rest in a hole. Like it has been said, reverse order be careful take it slow.
No, I would not do it again. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[keeney]

I SOLD a 24 x 26 small upper story of a house that was on top of a two-car garage to some guys who move these small houses to lake lots as vacation cabins. It was really easy for them to lift the upper story off, push the garage walls out, lower the thing down onto their big wheeled frame, and drive right out the driveway with it.

I was left with a big mess of debris scattered everywhere just from the four garage walls.

My excavating contractor was able to use some larger skid-steers with grapple buckets to load the bigger pieces of the walls into a dump truck and haul them away. I was left with a lot of little debris that had to be painstakingly cleaned up by hand. A couple of utility trailers worth of scraps, insulation, tar paper, smashed windows, ripped out wiring, broken blocks from the first course of the foundation. It was a pain in the butt.

The "heavy equipment" helped a little with the big solid wall pieces, but those walls could have been cut into smaller pieces pretty quickly and loaded by hand.

My advice is the "neater" you can disassemble it in reasonable sized chunkcs, the easier the final cleanup will be. The more smashing you do with sledge hammers and heavy equipment, the more of a mess you will have to cleanup. You can often saw through things faster than you can pull the nails apart (not sawing through the nails).

Also, when disposing of the debris, you will want to seperate any large pieces of treated lumber (an exterior deck for example). Some landfills charge a much higher rate for any load that had any significant amounts of green treated lumber. I was better off paying the peronal pickups and utility trailers flat fee for the treated than if a whole ten-ton load would have been up-charged just because part of it was treated.

- Rick

 

[TOMLESCOEQUIP]

Jeff........around here most use a medium sized excavator..(trac-hoe)......knocks it down & cleans it up.......loads the debris into trucks ....then levels the site too. You must have a friend or 2 that has a hoe & a dump truck ??

 

[Kiohio]

Yes I do have someone with a dumptruck. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

KO

 

[pennwalk]

<font color="blue"> big trackhoe </font>

Thats the way they did it when they tore down the house next door. They had a trackhoe with a claw like grapple. They knocked it down and crushed the pieces and loaded it into dumpsters. The dumpster company was shutteling dumpsters steadily for 3 days. They seperated out the metal. The super got the aluminum. That job made a lot of dust. I have heard that on the Jersy shore where they are doing an amazing amount of teardowns they make them control the dust.

Chris

 

[HappyCPE]

The previous posters have good ideas. Here are mine:
[1] There will be a lot of dust. Have someone, even a kid, stand around with a water hose to wet down everything as you are doing the demo. I have paid neighbor's water bills for the quarter to use theirs if there's no more water service on the site you're working on. Cleanliness on a jobsite is more professional, safer and will be cheaper in the long run.
[2] Use the sawzall to cut the roof and walls into +/- 8x8' pieces that can be stacked on a truck. Pick them up with your forklift. Making a thousand little pieces may be fun but it isn't productive.
[3] Have you examined the house for hazardous materials? Asbestos siding, asbestos pipe insulation, old leaky oil tanks, half-filled bottles of old pesticide, etc? You don't want surprises!
[4] Get the valuable stuff out before or as you are doing the demo. Aluminum siding, copper wire and pipe, etc. can bring a good price.
Have fun and good luck!

 

[Taylortractornut]

I tear down about 7 to 10 houses and trailers a year with my back hoe and mini excavator. Both have thumbs I built. I usually take about 15 to 20 hours to tear down a large house my self. with dad on the excavator an me on the hoe alot less time. We borrow a 20 or 30 dard dumpster from work and a rolloff truck and have at it. my excavator is a 12000 pound rig. and the backhoe is an old Ford 3550. I reach in and tear off all the sheeting and break as many alls as I can inside pushing them to the centherthen push one corner in and get the top. lots to be salvaged from an older house or even a trailer. I get alot of 1/2 inch plate from laminated beams and others items. In fact scrap is alot of the reason I tear houses down. Most of the time we haul the houses and all the burnables here to a hole and light them and bury the ashes and pick out the scrap, but you have to be free of shingles and insulation and sideing. I also salvage alot of wood from these to. I try to limit time sinde a sructure to unless absolutely neccassary.

 

[53gravely]

I watched the 3,000 square foot house across the street demoed in a day by a professional crew. Have you looked into having a pro with a large excavator w/ bucket thumb give you an estimate?

Two thoughts:
1) getting it done and starting on the new structure quicker has some value
2) dropping the whole house too hard may damage the foundation rendering it useless for re-use as part of the new structure

These guys have the right equipment, insurance and will have it in dumpsters in a half day

 

[JimMorrissey]

Funny you should say that Eddie......first thing that came to my mind. D10 pushed the house right off it's foundation in about 2 seconds. I'm figuring he doesn't have access to one of those little guys /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[PILOON]

In my opinion there is only one way to go.

Been there, done that!

You hire an excavator, mid sized ie JD 590 would do.

He reaches chomps down the roof and progressively collapses the whole thing downwards.
Loads the crumpled debris into containers or dump trucks and away she goes.

We did one about that size last summer and it took all of about 6 hours to have a 'ready to build site'.

An excavator in a good operators hands is the only way to go.

He collapses, crumbles into manageable loadable scoops and compacts it into containers.
With the teeth he rakes the site clean and with side swings levels the site all while burying rocks and other non compostable materials.

If you calculate manhours there is not a single piece of timber worth salvaging.
A saved 2x4 would cost you probably $10.00 each!
Even the windows (unless new and top quality) might cost more in manhour labor than you generally could sell them for.
Naturally a lot depends on the labor rates but in MHO the excercise is doubtful unless 'presold' as also enters the storage and marketing questions.

Guestimate: 6 hrs of excavator=$5-600. 5-6 loads/containers=$1000-1200, it's probably a $2000 range job
give or take. AND done fast and clean! (ready for topsoil and sod)

Good luck!