Construction & Contractors Blog
Are you planning to tear down your old home without involving demolition experts? Read on and discover the order of work that you should follow when you start the demolition.
Cut Utilities and Services
The very first step that you should implement is to identify and cut off all the utilities and services to your home. These include the water supply, electricity, the telephone connection and the gas supply. Cap those utility lines so that you prevent any leak from taking place as you demolish the home.
Fence the Site
A fence is an important aspect of any demolition project for many reasons. First, it keeps people from accessing the site in order to take demolition materials, such as windows and doors, which you may need to reuse when you build a new house at the same site. Secondly, the fence can help to contain some of the undesirable effects, such as excessive dust, which results from demolition works. Refer to the regulations of your area for guidance about the type of fence that you should set up.
Remove Hazardous Materials
Your home should have been inspected to identify any hazardous materials, such as asbestos and lead-based paint, which may be present in the home. Those materials are removed during this stage. You may need to hire licensed professionals to remove some of those toxic materials in case the laws of your area forbid you from taking care of this aspect on your own as a layperson.
Soft Stripping
This stage involves the removal of the different loose items in the house. These may include electrical cabling, plumbing fixtures, AC components, kitchen and sanitary ware. These can be kept for recycling or reuse in the new house that you build.
Structured Removal of Heavy Components
It is advisable to start from the roof during this phase of the work. For example, strip the roof flashing before you start tearing down the walls. Similarly, you should remove the doors before you consider salvaging floor tiles.
Debris Removal
The final stage of the demolition entails ferrying away all the demolition debris to a disposal site. Some of the waste, such as concrete, may be accepted at a recycling facility. Use the earnings that you get from selling some of the debris to offset the cost of taking the rest to the landfill.
As you can see from the discussion above, DIY house demolition is a very taxing exercise that should only be undertaken when one is fully knowledgeable and equipped to do it successfully. It may be better to hire demolition contractors so that you avoid the hassles that each stage of the process involves.
Share8 May 2017
Welcome to my blog, my name is Blake and from now on, I will be writing a series of blogs which will deal with the process of finding and working with contractors when constructing a new building. I am not a construction specialist but last summer I gained a lot of experience in this area when I hired a team of 32 contractors to build a holiday home. When hiring contractors, it is important that you understand how to communicate with them and their ways of working. Below are a series of blogs which will help you to find the best contractors.