I am pretty good with stick building demolition. I want to give a quote for this block building with metal roof. I also need to break up and remove the slab it's on and the one beside it. Planning to rent a 6-9 ton excavator with a bucket, thumb and hammer. Size will depend on what's available. Building dimensions are 10ft 9 inches tall, 13 ft 3" wide and 11ft 2" deep. The building slab appears to be 6" thick. The extension next to it needs to be removed and it's 11ft 2" by 4ft. Machine is $800 per day or $1800 for a week. Hammer is $300 a day I forgot to ask the weekly rate on that. The block walls I'm not too concerned about but I have no idea how long it will take the hammer to break the slab into loadable pieces? I know I need to calculate the weight of building and slab to figure out how much container company will charge me in dump fee. For those if you who do this type of demo often how long do you think it will take and what would you charge for the job? Here are some pictures if the building. Thanks for the help.
Can you keep the block clean?
I think so, what is the advantage in doing that?
Pretty easy day. I rough guess there would be 5-6 12 yard trucks of block and concrete. I would take the steel to a recycler. The footing stem wall may be block filled with concrete or formed stem wall, it is not visible. Either way not a big deal. The pad, unless it is crazy thick will come out quick with a 1000 pound hammer. I would break up the inside of the floor once the walls are down, and then I usually dig down to the side of a stem wall to the bottom of the footing in the middle of the wall, then take the hammer and shatter the stem wall and the footing. Then take the excavator and lift up on the stem wall at the break you just make. Typically the stem wall and footings come up easy, sometimes you may need to remove the dirt from the stem wall so you can pull it up. Depends on how much excavator you have. May need to take a cut off saw and cut rebar at times. It would be a one day operation.
Usually you can get rid of clean concrete and block for nothing or a small dump fee. Obviously you will have to haul, but around here I can get rid of block for nothing or maybe a 60 or 70 dollar a load dump fee, rather than paying $72/ton to the landfill. As Ksss said, the steel goes for scrap ... should pay for the cost of trucking it at least.
All good advice so far. Where is the building located? Reason asking is a building in Wisconsin is built differently than one in Alabama due to frost lines. That building could have anything from a simple turn down slab or 4' wide footings with a 4' tall stem wall underground. It's what you can't see that gets into profit with demolition. I am not as optimistic on the timeline as the others. 2 days including mob and not running into any snags underground. 4-5 tri axle loads (14 CY estimated) of block and concrete to an inert dump and 1 load of metal to the recycler. It's futile to price it using my costs as I have no idea what part of the country this building is located. Costs vary greatly across the country. For instance Acoals is paying $72 per ton for C&D debris and I can dump for $27 a ton.
Maybe I should start trucking demo to Alabama . . .
$27 a ton is for the private landfills closer to downtown. $22 a ton in our county's landfill a little farther south. https://www.shelbyal.com/253/Landfill Ironically this country landfill is the nicest landfill in the area with paved roads to the dumping face.
^^^^ This ^^^^ We could probably start a pretty long thread with all the stories of what got dug up on demo jobs. Everybody thinks its funny except the guy paying for the trucks ...
Hard bid or T&M determines who is laughing and who is crying...
Wow . . . does that keep prices for demo work down? I average maybe 5 - 6 dollars a square foot for residential house demos.
No, not really. I use a formula of 1,000 SF = 100 CY of demo for a typical residential demo with no personal contents inside. A 30 CY roll-off will average 9-10 tons over the demo with the first few being in the 5-6 range due to light debris and the last ones ranging from 11-14 tons due to drywall and other fines that are left. I charge a fair amount more than $5-6 a SF. An average 2,000 SF house on a slab will average $15-20K including slab and footing removal if we are doing it. I'm sure there are contractors doing it cheaper and to be honest I don't want to do it for that. By the time we hire out mob and hauling there isn't much meat left on the bone. Single house demo is just not in our business profile if it's not included as part of a larger project.
If they would let you dig down outside the building to see the footing and stem wall depth and size it would allow for a tighter bid. Here our frost line to current code is 32" - 36" depending on where your at in the area. Because you can't see any stem wall, just block, I don't think it is very deep or the block goes down to top of footing. CMU breaks easy, even when filled so if that is the case it would break up easier than would a solid poured stem wall. Pulling the footing up at a 45 degree angle to the outside of the building or so typically breaks the wall and footing relatively easy.
Do you get to keep the fan??
South Eastern VA. We don't get any real frost heave here. I'm guessing it's 12"x12" footer with rest of slab 4". Thanks for bringing this point up I'll probably put it a stipulation that if it's anything thicker than that the price will have to change accordingly.
The important question! they will have the inside cleaned out. I'm trying to decide if the roof and steel beams supports are worth taking apart cleanly and using them as a shelter for something at my house. My wife hates it when I bring home "stuff" planning to use it later though.
One exclusion you need to make sure you cover yourself with is excluding any asbestos removal with any demo, I know here some block walls are filled with it. I also price based on assumed things like pad thicknesses to cover myself. If it's assumed 5" and it's 6" that's no big deal but if it turns out to be 12" you'll lose if you don't cover yourself. Depending on customer some won't accept things like that, and in those cases just got to bid higher to cover yourself. The size of hoe would dictate how quick it would go. With a 200 it would be done in 4 hours or less. A hammer is slow, it's much quicker just to tear the concrete apart with a bigger hoe
Dang that's good money, most expensive house demo i've had is about $13k and it's around that size and has a full basement, and it's $85/ton landfill fees. Most of my work lately is smaller house demos and mostly pays pretty good, but the smaller one's are move in demo and out same day 1 trip jobs. Guys who have to pay driver to drop machine, or hire out moves just can't compete, or if they try there just isn't the money in it. But on many little 800 sq/ft houses with basement and small garage around the $8k mark make around $3-4k in one day so it's good money for me.
They had an inspection done and showed me a certificate saying no asbestos present.
Saludas brought up a great point regardless. Always have a stipulation that excludes asbestos and hazardous materials of all kinds. Here is one I use in my bids -
I make good money on those in and out, one day demo jobs in my area. We have a lot of 40's era vacation cottages that are all junk now. I drive the hoe to the job, crunch it up, load it out and take the rig home. It's a gravy job for me, but often I run as a solo operation, it isn't as neat and efficient when I have employees doing it.
Because most employees don't give two actual sh|ts except getting that paycheck every other week.
Sounds about what a company is all about also. Making money to pay the bills and pay for the chosen lifestyle. Quit bitching and get over it.
Yep. I sub a lot of stuff from demo company and getting even more, employees are a nightmare and they are finding it's better to just sub me the work and not have any worries. There was 2 mobile homes to demo, they tried bidding them what they figured they needed to make money and were told price is way to high and asked me if I could do them at $6k a pop, I happily agreed, I made over $6k on them for 2 days work. Now if it had been an employee doing them wouldn't make near the profit.
Yep. I see it all the time with my brother, depending on time of year he has around 20 guys. Baffling part is looking at a piece of equipment of his compared to mine after a years and how badly his get beat up. I'm a patient person but I can't deal with it. Much less stress on my own. Sure there are times I wish I had someone to send to do something I don't want to do, but not having to deal with an employee has far more benefits then drawbacks.
Of course running a company is primarily about money but too many people forget the equipment they use earns them their wage, so not looking after it is very dumb. While not all, many owners if employees are good and making them good money will reward the employee to keep them around. While they will never have the same commitment as an owner, generally speaking the better an employee does will benefit them financially. But when an employee starts out with the attitude of doing the bare minimum to keep their job, they are going to earn the bare minimum pay, and so will have the mentality of why bother? When it's really their performance that's the issue. Being loyal to a company 5, 10 years or whatever means nothing if someone is just doing enough to stay employed, there's a million of those people around. Probably the most frustrating part is the attitude because someone owns a company money grows on trees and it's endless, or they make SO much money. Meanwhile most employees work 40 hours a week no evenings or weekends, while most owners are working evenings and weekends many many extra hours. For anyone who thinks it's easy i'd say go out and do it yourself and see how easy it is.
What is "mob?"
Short for mobilization.
Cool, thanks, I figured it was something like that but thought it may be m-o-b.
If you have zero problems that can be done in a day, hard to say what your going to get for an excavator can be the determining factor on this one. Always bring a hammer even if you don’t use it for the love of god bring a hammer. Have a chop saw ready even a grinder is better then nothing. Depending on what’s near by water is a good idea too for dust fire and who knows what else. It’s a fine line between making money and losing money, have stuff ready or at least lined up in case you need it. we did a building demo where the building was already gone all that was left was a side walk foundation and a few pipes stubbed out of ground. Four year after building was burnt down… water was still live! And building had 3! 3! 3!? Foundations overlapping each other… turns out the put the building in the wrong spot twice and rather then rip it out the built off what was already there should have been done in one or two days depending how they priced it ended up taking 2 weeks
We've demo'd more than one building that had multiple foundations and slab layers. Demo'd a lawyers office to find a quarry tile floor under the concrete slab then a terrazzo floor then finally what appeared to be an asphalt parking lot. The building was remodeled through the years from a parking lot to a retail store, kitchen and then lawyers office all built on top of each other. Never know what you will find when you take a structure down.
I had one of those last summer, supposedly just a slab on grade, found about 3 feet of concrete under it, looked like 2 or 3 layered foundations. All the house was was a dumpy summer cottage too . . . went from like 3 loads of concrete going out to 8 or something . . . lol
We did an old gas station. It was block walls. The owner also had a a sandstone pit behind the station. Go in with the 350 excavator and a couple tandem trucks. The operator tore the building down on a Friday evening, the trucks went down Saturday. Hauled the blocks to the pit. The old floor broke up quite easy, hauled it to the pit as well. Brought sandstone out to backfill the hole, and bury the blocks in the pit, clean everything up, and back to the shop by 3. Easy right. Someone called the environment on the old fella, and we had to go back down and haul the blocks to a proper landfill because of the paint used on the walls when the place was built in the 50s. Cost the old fella 600 bucks a trailer load, plus the cost for us to load it and truck it the hour and a half round trip. A demo the boys did this past fall. One of those do not touch the other building jobs.
Very seldom do I give a firm price on demo's, especially old corn cribs. They didn't have a dump truck to bring fill so used concrete, often old machinery pieces for rebar. The county sent me a letter from a job I did 4 years ago saying I didn't get a demo permit for removing concrete. I had done the job right about the time they required a permit, unless it is in a town. Just another way to get more money, it seems. I work by myself, usually loading the building during the week. Then breaking concrete and hauling it on the weekends. When I worked for another fellow, I ran the dragline on weekends and many nights. After coming off the farm, if I would work 60-80 hours a week. Thought nothing of it!
Dang cuttin edge you guys got it good there! If a demo was done like that here you’d have 10 city guys on site in minutes to fine and shut you down.
That job is for the city. They wanted the space for parking City hall is the 5th building down the street in the second picture, and they have very little space for employee parking. They just wanted it done. I think that's a Sunday morning.
It's a lot easier when you are working FOR the city . . .
Here's one of one of the old schools being torn down. Either the machine in the other pictures or it's sister with the long boom on it.
That's crazy how lax they are. I've had demos shut down as no 6' fence on site, even when it was coming that afternoon, not allowed to even start without site fenced, that's on a regular site, on a city site you'd be fired if you delivered a machine without fencing up. City inspectors would have an aneurism if they saw that kind of debris on a city sidewalk. Never mind all the permits required to close one. I did a bottle depot and wanted to close sidewalk and 1 lane of traffic for 30 mins as face was right up to sidewalk, that took weeks of back and forth from city to approve and drawings to ensure it was up to their standards.
We just meet the minimum for a city, around 20,000 people or so. Not many around on a Sunday morning. There are probably a couple flaggers directing people. Never been an issue. That street comes of the old town square. Not this coming summer, but the next, there is supposed to be a complete overhaul of water and sewer around the square, now that will be a nightmare. That school demo, people were coming in at lunch to try and grab bricks because they went to school there.
The last demo we did was a dining hall at an old private school. The kids, teachers and alumni all wanted bricks. We would stack them outside the fence and they would be gone the next day. They were just common concrete brick but it meant something to them. I kept some of the fire brick from the two masonry fireplaces. We crushed all the concrete, brick and block for re-use on site.
Yeah whatever floats yer boat I guess. Another company took down an old smoke stack. It had been there since the early 1900s. People came from all over wanting bricks. They put 2 men in a man lift, and took it down with electric jack hammers. Once they got it low enough, they finished with an excavator. The back side of it sits on a cliff and at the bottom is a box pipe where the water flows from the cove on the right, to the main river on the left. Other companies had big bids based on extending the box pipe with temporary pipe, and filling the area to catch the bricks, and then digging it back out again. These guys took it for around 80 grand, I think we were over 200, they were in and out in 2 weeks, and never dropped a brick in the water.
There is good money in used bricks. My former neighbor is in the demolition business and used to hire guys to clean bricks. Then he put them on pallets and sold them to a place that sells brick. People liked the used brick better than new brick. Old "clinker" bricks were the most desirable and commanded a premium price. I was asked if I wanted to clean bricks but declined. I think the experienced brick cleaners were paid by the pallet and had brick cleaning down to a science. I did quite a bit of welding for him and helped with salvaging items, including copper wire on a big gov't. job. That job turned into a HUGE mess and it took me a long time to get paid. Basically the neighbor needed someone else to help get the bonding and they bid the job way too low. The gov't. even asked them if they wanted to modify their bid but they insisted they could do the job for their original bid. There was a big lawsuit and it got really ugly. This was the job where the neighbors wife was handling the salvage (very bad idea) and giving me **** for getting lowered into the basement in an excavator bucket. The alternative was crawling down large piles of broken concrete with lots of rebar sticking out. It was MUCH safer getting lowered in the excavator bucket.
Old bricks are cool but I don't think I'd be interested in attempting to clean it. The story as I understand it is someone in town was removing a bunch of old brick and the previous owner (and builder) of my house bought a pallet or two of it. A fair amount of it continues to sit in the woods on the property line. Another one of those random things that's hiding around that we didn't know we were getting when we bought the house. I haven't really inspected the brick to try to figure out how old it is.
Used bricks are big business in my area for the right type. Bessemer Gray's can bring several thousand dollars per 500. They are tearing down a rather large old housing project and the demo contractor is cleaning and stacking most the exterior bricks. These are 70+ year old red bricks but somebody will want them.
So I estimated this building and slab to weigh about 33,000lbs. Going to submit estimate tomorrow, what do yall think of this? Total estimate $7248.00 My costs $2500 machine and hammer rental for a week(only planning 2 days but figured in a week incase something goes wrong) 17 tons taken to the dump 4.5miles from site $1292 will take me 5 trips with my dump trailer but it's worth it to make me the money vs paying $2248 for two rolloffs and dump fees. $2500 labor.
You don't have a sand and gravel pit somewhere nearby that will take the concrete and block to crush into recycle? I wouldn't be too comfortable bidding a job like that on tonnage, on top of the fact you have to rent equipment too. Just me, I guess. Either you are going to be way high and not get the job, or are running a lot of risk getting burnt hauling that concrete out for tonnage ....
I am putting in a stipulation that the price is includes 17tons of disposal and any above that will be additional cost. Also including the advice that any hazardous material fees are not included in my quote.
Well, I would be interested to hear how it comes out. It's not like I haven't made some risky bids trying break into the demo world. I just don't have so much appetite for risk now ....
Just found a place 12miles from site that will take the block and slab for free as long as there is no rebar. Do I lower my bid or keep it the same and make more $?
Well, that's up to you, but all your competitors are going to be bidding the job that way. Also, separating the rebar can be a pain if there is a lot of it. Most residential stuff around here doesn't have much rebar, or just wire. Usually the pits don't mind wire. If you aren't desperate for the job, leave the bid where you are safe, but hope to take as much of the concrete to the pit rather than the landfill.
If you feel good with your numbers keep it the same and consider the lack of dump fees a contingency. Only you know how fast your work and what you are capable of. I've never lost money on a job I didn't get..
Keeping it the same, I have plenty of work to do and want to be sure to come out on top. They've had two other people bid on the job but they never showed up to do it. I wish it didn't have the slab to break up so I could just do it with my mini excavator.
Cleaning bricks, they don't have to be perfectly clean. Just the mortar cleaned off enough so they are basically the same size. People prefer the used weathered look to the new shiny look. They make special hammers for cleaning bricks.
You never know, we redid a side walk last fall. While waiting for the other hoe with the hammer, I tried with the mini to move it, and the concrete was so old that it broke up really easy with little effort. Didn't use the hammer at all.
I tear out a ton of concrete with my 6 ton mini, pads up to 6" depending on condition and if there's rebar in them. A lot of it depends on the size of pad a 5x20 wide pad is a lot easier then say a 20x20 because you can lift one edge up and drop it. Only really encountered one driveway it wouldn't tear out, it was only a few years old and rebar was placed quite well not the usual in the dirt, it would have but it gets to the point it's hard on it and so very slow. Once you get into much bigger hoe it takes a massive pad to not be able to tear it apart. If you can get some pieces free to drop on it, or some cracks so it starts to move it will break it. Even the 6 ton can break 10mm rebar one piece at a time. Judging by the pics and the small size of it, if it was my job I would gamble a 6 ton would tear that pad apart without a hammer.