You own a house that has reached the end. Maybe it is a storm beaten cottage in Gulf Breeze, an old block house in Fort Walton Beach on a lot worth more than the building, or a farmhouse up toward Jay that nobody has lived in for years. You know it needs to come down and you have no idea what that actually looks like. Here is the whole thing in order.
Before we show up
Most of a demolition happens before the excavator arrives, and the first piece is on you. The owner handles the disconnects with the power, water and gas companies before we get there, and we do not touch any of that.
Then there is the county. Taking a house down comes with paperwork, and what yours needs depends on the parcel, the county it sits in, and the age and type of the house. Older houses in particular can have materials in them that somebody who tests for a living should look at before a machine touches the structure. Whether yours does is not a question for us. The county is the one who tells you, so call them, or call us and we will help you figure out who to ask. What we need from you before we mobilize is a signed contract and a house we are allowed to touch.
The walk through and what comes out first
Before anything gets pushed, we walk the house with you. Anything you want to keep comes out now, not after it is in a pile. Doors, cabinets, a mantel, the old heart pine flooring, light fixtures, a claw foot tub. Once the machine starts, everything inside is debris.
Then we pull the things that should not ride to the landfill mixed in with the structure. Appliances, the air conditioning units and the water heater come out and get set aside for scrap. Paint cans, old chemicals under the sink and anything else you would not want in a dumpster come out and go their own way. Metal roofing comes off if it is worth the time, because a roll off full of metal goes to a different place than a roll off full of drywall.
The house comes down
This is the part people picture, and it is the shortest part. The excavator starts at one end and works the structure down in pieces, roof first, then the walls, then whatever is left standing. A frame house folds up fast. A concrete block house comes apart in chunks and produces a lot more weight. Either way, the operator is sorting as he goes, because the way the debris leaves the lot is the way the bill gets built.
Concrete and block go in one pile. Metal goes in another. Wood, drywall, shingles and the rest of the structure go in a third. Sorting on site is more work than pushing it all into one heap, but every material goes to a place that accepts it, and mixed loads cost more to get rid of than clean ones. So we sort.
Hauling, and what drives the cost
The trucks are the biggest part of a demolition bill, same as clearing. A house is a set number of loads, and that number depends on the size of the house, what it is made of, and how far the trucks run. Block and concrete fill a truck by weight before they fill it by volume, so a small block house can be more loads than a bigger frame house. A lot with room to stage a roll off next to the pile loads faster than a tight lot in an old neighborhood where the truck has to back down a driveway between two live oaks.
If you want the longer rundown on how we approach demolition jobs, it is on the site. The short version is that the sorting and the trucking are where the job is won or lost, and the excavator is the easy part.
The slab
Most houses around here sit on a slab, and the slab is its own decision. Some owners want it left, because they plan to build on the same footprint or use it as a base for a shop or a carport. Most want it gone. Breaking up a slab and hauling it is a separate chunk of the work, because concrete is heavy, the footings underneath go deeper than people expect, and it all has to come out if you want clean ground.
An older house on piers instead of a slab is simpler in one way and messier in another. No slab to break, but a crawlspace full of whatever fell through the floor over the decades, and pier stubs scattered across the footprint that all have to be pulled.
The lot after
When the structure and the slab are gone there is a hole where the house was, and what happens to it depends on what you are doing next. If a new house is going on the lot, the hole gets cleaned of every bit of debris, filled in lifts with clean fill from our pit at 3125 River Rd in Navarre, and compacted so your builder is starting on ground that will hold a pad. If the lot is going to sit, it gets filled, graded so water runs off it instead of pooling in the old footprint, and dressed so grass will take. Either way you get a lot, not a scar.
What you should not get is a lot with chunks of block buried in it, old footings left under the sand, or a low spot where the house used to be. Those are the shortcuts that show up years later as a settling driveway or a slab crack on the new house, and they are the reason the cleanup is worth paying attention to when you compare bids.
NOBL Sitework is a licensed general contractor (CGC1537340) handling demolition and site work across Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Escambia, and Bay counties. If you have a house that needs to come down, call us at 850-238-3307 and we will walk the lot with you and lay out what it takes.
