Here is the house we demolished about 3 months ago. House was only 4 yrs old when the owner burnt it down with a charcoal grill on the back deck. Fire destroyed the entire inside of the house. we removed everything including the foundation, driveway and septic tanks I want this deck!! Man we looked like the three stodges trying to remove that deck. It was 14 feet of the ground. Took the chainsaw and cut the posts out from under it and picked it up with the excavator. Easy way to get rid of a old barn
looks like fun. did you burn what you could? or haul most of it to a landfill?
Burned every bit of it. What did not burn got buried on a hole with all the ashes and nails.
He burnt down the house, but it didn't burn the deck? :beatsme Did you salvage it? From the picture, it looks unscathed. Musta' had the grill right up against the house... ointhead Hope everybody was all right. Joe
The story was they were grilling out on the back deck and the ashes fell thru the deck and set the pine straw on fire that night while they were asleep. Everyone got out ok but everything in the house was destroyed. The top deck managed to survive the fire. Note that half of the house as already be knocked down in the pictures so their was house beside of the top deck. House mostly bruned form the inside so everything outside looked fine
Only in North Carolina.....
I don't know what the laws are down in NC but in Wisconsin legally, the only thing you can burn by the DNR is clean wood(paper and cardboard as well) anything else is not to be burned, however most all do. Just don't get caught with any shingles or insulation or plastic etc. Looks like your fire isn't burning black, so should be ok lol. Nice pics. Trbo
Man I have seen some good fires. I will never forget the day the owner of a job we were doing brought a fuel truck out to put desiel fuel on the brush piles. We had cleared about 6 acres of land and had about a dozen piles of brush about the size of a small house. Before it was all said and done I believe he put about a 1000 gallons of fuel on those piles in less than a hour. Bad thing is none of the piles continued to burn after the fuel burnt off. We were told by locals that we smoked out the town. Several people drove down to the farm to see what the hell was going on
Wow, you guys need some help when building fires. I've burned 140 acres of green apple wood, just pulled the trees right out of the ground and throw them on the burn pile without problems. The trees are about 20" in diamater at the largest, they're not terribly small. Key is getting the bottom end of that fire white hot. Once you have the fire to that point, you can throw anything you want on the pile and it will burn without the aid of diesel.
We used to use fuel to get fires started, that was until we found an old LP torch. Now, even with fresh trees, just get your pile pushed up right(nice and neat) and set the torch into it and give it a bit and it will take off just fine. Have had a few guys laugh when they see you start getting it going, "You can't get green wood to burn". Few days later(depending on the size of the pile), all thats left are a few pieces here and there and the leftover stumps. Nice safe way to burn too(and cheaper when you figure what desiel cost nowadays). Trbo
Cool pics dirtman. There is nothing like demo'ing a house or clearing acreage and piling it up and setting it on fire! In the old days we burnt everything - and I mean everything. When I worked as a grunt for my dad in the '80's, we burnt all the waste generated from building a house and buried the rest on site. (You can get the paper to burn off the drywall - but it takes a good fire :thumbsup ) But times have changed and our burn season usually starts in Oct., but this year it has been extended indefinetly until we get some rain, and lasts until the end of April. The only crappy thing about it now is we have to have a trench burner, a burn permit and an inspection of the pit/burner. Of course we can only burn clean green waste generated onsite from land clearing operations. With an air curtain and a pit, you can pretty much burn anything (don't tell the inspectors). When you construct your pit and position the burner correctly, there is very little smoke and a white/blue hot fire. Green wood, stumps, trunks - whatever, will burn very fastly. Now if you have a nice dry pile of brush, it will work your butt off in the excavator keeping it full. The first time I used the burner and pit, I had a nice huge pile of brush that was cleared during the summer and set aside to be burnt when legal. The fire in the pit was so efficient that by the time you got the end, loading the whole trench, you had to go back and start over again. Definetely makes you feel like you are getting something done. On a side note - the burning ban has helped our roll-off business!
Thing was we had already left the job with the equipment. He said he would take care of the burning. so we said ok. I would never be stupid enough to put 1000 gallons of fuel on a fire. The best way we have found is to take a couple of bails of stray/ hay and pour about 2 gallons of disiel on it and let it soak. Dig out a hole in the bottom of the brush pile and stick them in there and lite the straw. Its amazing how long the 2 bails of straw will burn for, getting a hot spot where you keep adding more until the pile gets going. A leaf blower works great also.
If you're trying burn without equipment, I can see why you need so much diesel. Little different story then. Forgot to mention like TRBO said that we used an LP torch and a backpack blower to get fires started. If the material is dry, it doesn't take long, but if you're working on green wood it's nice to have a fan setup blowing air. I've never used a fan, but I can see how it would make getting the fire going faster. Once it's hot, you're off to the races, you can't throw enough material on the fire fast enough.
Sometimes if I need to get the fire going a little better I'll back the loader cat up to the pile, put the bucket down to aim the air at the fire and run her full throttle till the fire's going good. Puts out a lot more air than a leafblower. And it's another advantage of a loader over a dozer or an excavator on a grubbing job.:thumbsup