Dale's Garbage Can House. A demolition and salvage project. Basement becomes the garbage can.

This house is being demolished with an excavator. Because it is very close to a neighboring house and it steps down the slope, it is too tall to be safely taken down completely by the excavator.

 I have been employed to remove the top storey,  and to remove the main floor to a height of five feet above the floor.  Many valuable items are being salvaged in the process.
.......
 This is a very windy location. There are plenty of loose materials which could be blown around the neighborhood or into the ocean,  if piled outside. Hauling materials to a bin,  would quadruple my work load.

 I have decided to turn the large basement into a giant garbage can. I have cut two large holes; one through the main floor and one through the upstairs floor. This allows me to drop materials right from the attic to the basement.

 There is a large quantity of fiberglass insulation on both the upper storey and the main floor which will be dropped into the basement. Scrap wood and other stuff goes down the holes. Very efficient.
.....
 The roof is made of interlocking metal tiles which look like clay tile.  1000 square feet of it was screwed down,  and came off perfectly. 

About 800 square feet was nailed and came with some damage. Mostly little bends that can be fixed with pliers. I'm trying to sell it all for $600, which is less than the value of the labor required to salvage it.

 I finished cutting the holes last night. This is Sunday morning.  I will have all insulating materials in the basement by 1 pm.
.....
 SAFETY
I wore fall arrest gear while removing the roofing and I will wear it during some of the frame removal.

 I will not have any employees on this job and I won't allow any customers to enter the house. I could live with a hole this size in my living room floor,  and never fall down,  but I know that most employees would blunder into the hole on the first day.

 The floor holes will be covered much of the time,  and only uncovered when I'm ready to throw material down.

 I wear a full face asbestos mask.  It protects lungs, eyes and face.

The insulation was held up by hundreds of battens. They go to the basement first. It took about 10 minutes to pile it neatly. Never toss a mix of wood and insulation down a chute together. The resultant mess is extremely difficult to clear from the drop zone. Done separately, both products are easy to get out of the way.

This giant chimney,  has to come down to a level about two feet above the metal railing.

 After the lower roof behind it is removed, I will cut a hole approximately 10' by 15' in the floor below. Bricks will be thrown from the top of the chimney,  directly into the basement.

 I will stand on top of the chimney,  while wearing my fall arrest gear,  and slowly pick away at the material beneath my feet, with a light sledgehammer. It's an exacting process.

 This is one of the largest chimneys that I've ever dealt with.
.....
 Check out the last photo taken from the roof. That's my shadow on the neighboring house,  far below.

The entire upstairs has been cleared of insulating materials. I used the cordless blower to bring down all of the residual insulation, spider webs, fir needles etc.

 This house is balloon framed. I'm able to simply blow debris against the wall and it falls to the lower storey.

Working elsewhere today.

Some of the roofing is going to be used on a tiny house of about 120 square feet.

That's a pretty good score on the metal roofing tiles.
If you were in the southeast I'd sure enough buy them from you.

Going to salvage the rock from fireplace too?

I get pretty excited on demo jobs myself. Free materials galore.

I will take it down,  but usually no one buys the rock.

 I often have 2x4s to giveaway which go unclaimed.

 Dimensional lumber 2x6 and over has a market. The old stuff can bring over a dollar per board foot.

 Plywood has a market. Flake board does not.

 Good clean insulation is easy to give away.

This house came to me cleaner than almost any other. There was asbestos in the drywall, so all of it was removed before I ever saw this house.

 Every little nail on the 2x4s was removed and everything was washed down and vaccumed.

 Even in the portions of the house that I don't have to demolish, I will still knock out many of the studs, if customers want them.

This roof is built with hand made trusses which aren't marketable.

 I cut through the sheeting boards with my electric chainsaw and then undercut each truss. I leave a few boards uncut, so that the truss is held suspended in the air. Then the truss is cut into pieces anywhere between three and six feet long.  The scraps drop to the floor below.

I've been away on another project for two days.

 Today, I continued chunking down the roof and trusses.  Then the walls were cut at about 4 1/2 ft high.  This portion of the house is finished.

 All of the roofing has been sold. The rock in the fireplace has also been sold. The mason will tear them down tomorrow. I'll work elsewhere.

I'm banging out several small jobs while doing this house. This one has to be finished by next Monday since the machine is coming to demolish the remainder.
......
 After the facing stone came off of the fireplace, a big hole was cut in the floor. First I cut some small slots and then I went to the basement to see where the cuts lined up with any metal obstacle. With the hole done, it was time to start banging down the chimney.
.......
 They used lots of Portland cement in the mix. There was an interior layer of solid concrete brick. It was very hard going. I spent five hours during one stretch on the chimney where I didn't even come down to pee. Used the flues. I think that's the longest I've ever gone without taking off my asbestos mask and my earmuffs. It was a cool day,  with a breeze from the water. Now, it's raining hard.

I have about 10 hours into the chimney with still possibly three more to go. It has been a very hard slog.

 About half of the work is done using a sledgehammer and the rest using this bar. The bar slid down one of the flues into a deep section in the basement which I don't have to demolish. Luckily, I have two identical bars. I will retrieve it when the excavator demolishes the lower chimney.

 Now that the roof is no longer needed as a platform, I will tear it down. This will be a good change from hammering bick.

 Buy 5 pm tonight, I expect to have most of the upstairs torn apart and piled.

It rained for a few hours yesterday. I thought of sissying out, but instead, kept going. Rain makes surfaces slippery and the pry bar slips in the cracks between framing members. On the positive side, rain makes nails loosen. It also reduces that awful noise that big spikes make when withdrawn. Dust was eliminated, so for the first time in three weeks without a break, I didn't need to wear my full face asbestos mask. Rain keeps you cool. Although soaked for a while, I really moved my ass and didn't get too cold. Here's the results 7.5 hours later.

The next day was short, but productive. The first photo shows the house at noon and the next one 90 minutes later.

The rain made it easy to hammer and pry off the heavy wall boards. Some are very dense fir. Many are short, but a few are long enough to sell.

The tongue and groove flooring popped up in record time. 450 square feet salvaged in 2 hours. It's already sold and picked up by the customer. The balloon frame made a handy railing.

The next step is to remove the one remaining overhang that is attached to the wall at floor level. Then the sub floor and the joists come out.
.....
This job will continue on Monday. The machine date will be either Tuesday or Wednesday.
.....
Yesterday, I began working on two chimneys on the house in the last photo. It took lots of preparation, just to access the roof safely. My tallest ladder reached the base of the round roof. From there, a path was built, using 2x4s from this house.

Got a little more done yesterday. Other work and a further delay with the machine, has limited my availability.

The job is done.  I managed to sell some good stuff and give away a lot of the stuff of marginal value. Several loads of 2x4s were gathered by eager scroungers.

 The most valuable thing that I gave away, was 400 square feet of one foot wide fir boards. They went to my brother, who is doing a really nice floor out of them. I've done a floor in the past using old-growth fir.  It's super durable. One side of these boards was used in forming concrete,  but the other side is nearly perfect. Ugly side down.

 Last year he hosted my daughter for a few months, while she was doing her practicum for becoming a school teacher. Rather than give him money, I waited until a valuable product came up. I also gave him this is very heavy set of stairs. The stringers are made of glue lams.

During the last two days, I worked with the excavator in cleaning up the site. Even with 1 1/2 storeys removed, this was a very difficult project for the excavator. A ramp had to be built from debris,  to allow him to access the lower portion,  close to the ocean.

 The waste packed really well into the bins, because most of the framing material was removed. We filled four demolition bins which contain 40 yards of material. This is the smallest number of bins that the machine operator has ever used for a house this size.

 After all of the wooden portion of the house was loaded in the bins, another ramp was built from concrete and bricks,  to allow access for removing the concrete pad and walls.

Dale,
Awesome job explaining the steps as you went. I am one of those trivia types that wonder about the why's of the house. Why did it need torn down? You mentioned asbestos. The roof looked great, the construction pretty solid.
You probably have been doing this stuff for years?
I imagine you bid for the job and quote a price that takes into account whether you get any salvageable material?
.
As a kid I tore down a corn crib, totally ass-backwards, removing the bottom wood integrity. Then I lucked out and the wind came up and blew it down at night. There was a super old barn on the place, we had stacked up a big pile of 1x12 that were really long inside the barn. One day my dad was burning weeds and the barn caught on fire, instead of putting it out he sprayed diesel to get it really going. Darn near got fined over it when the fire department showed up.

I appreciate your stories Dale.

P.S. Did you remember to get your bar?

Yes. The bar survived unscathed. New fluorescent orange paint will be applied to many tools soon. This helps prevent loss and theft.

This was a modest home on a million dollar lot. Many modest homes along the ocean, are being replaced by monstrosities. The asbestos is only a problem, when the homes are demolished or renovated.

This house is being removed for the same reason. It is of much higher quality, and will travel by barge, to a new location in the the San Juan islands. https://permies.com/t/51281/natural-building/Dale-chimney-removal

The final step was to deliver the 2x8s to the mill. They are used in timber frame and other high end houses. At $1.25 per board foot, this small load fetched $462.50