Hi guys, I am quoting a demo for a 1600SF double wide. It has a couple awnings, so total under roof would be approx. 1900SF. I did a demo for a very old house last December that was 1400SF. I used 40 yd roll offs on the last one and I ended up with about 4 1/2 of them and they ended up at scaling out to 10 tons each about. I am thinking to figure on 6 roll offs at least. I am going to quote this as labor plus the actual cost for permit and debris disposal. Also, to get a permit here they don't require asbestos testing. Is that a good idea to cover yourself? Also what are some good alternatives to 40 yd roll off cans? High side dump trailers are non existent in this small town. The difficulty I had on the last demo was how long it took to get the cans picked up and the inefficiency because of that. Other question is how do you deal with the mobile home frame / axles? Cut up with fire man saw and scrap? Also, no garbage inside. Thanks.
I just did a single wide that had rooms added down one side so basically a double wide. It took two 40 yd. dumpsters and they were full. I beat the material in layers with my 18,000 excavator to get the most from them. Sorted the frame and any metal I could out to keep the weight down. Usually a day minimum is what I charge. I think total dumpster fee was 1300 for that job. The frame mashed up enough to load it and the axles on my gooseneck to haul to the salvage yard along with water heater and other metal. It usually takes a hour or so to load a dumpster, less if I use the 40,000 lb. excavator.
There is alot of steel and aluminum there if you have time.
KM I think you are on track as far as the estimate goes. Over time you'll be able to dial it down to the CY/TN of debris. Demo is just as much an art as a science IMO. Here's my rule of thumb for estimating wood frame residential structures including house trailers and modular - 1,000 SF = 100 CY - This only works if there is no personal contents in the home. 1 - 30 CY can will average 9 tons over the project. The first cans will be lighter and the last cans will be heavier due to the fines. Also the above does not take into account concrete - footings, slab, etc. or brick/block. Those materials are not classified as waste so here they can go to an inert fill dump. We haul that type debris in dump trucks. Typical dump fee here for that type of mixed material is $50-100 per load. The crushing yards accept clean concrete for free. I also have a factor built into my demo spreadsheet if there is something out of the normal with the structure like a lot of architectural elements, steep roofs, personal contents or if the house has been burned. The factor ranges from .2 to .5 depending on existing conditions and it just increases the demo debris volume 20-50%. Burnt houses usually have personal content in them and create the heaviest cans in my experience. For house trailers, like Doug said have a fair amount of metal in them. An excavator with a thumb can peal the siding off, pick through the internal metal and fold the frame up. We always have a 30 or 40 yard can for metal only. With a decent 30K lb + excavator you can fold a trailer frame up so it fits in a 30/40 yard can. I've done it with our 953C loader. Same here on the demos we do. High sided trailer dumps are here but hard to get and roll-off service takes forever to pull the cans. If we did more demo I would consider buying a 60-70 CY dump trailer.a KM what type of machine will you be using?
CM thanks for the response. I plan to use a 6 ton mini with a thumb, definitely undersized but I own it. I have no problem loading 40 yd cans with it. Last house I did it was down in a couple hours and it took me 30-45 min to load a can. But the problem like you said is how long they take to pull them. And yes with all of that metal my thinking was pull it off and start making a scrap pile at my yard or just taking it straight to the recyclers. What would your preferred size machine be for this job? Komatsu 160?
Well my preferred size machine would be what we own which would either be a 321DL or 325FL. 55K lb machine. If I did have to pick the perfect size machine for residential and light commercial demo it would be a 315 (35K lb) compact radius or the equivalent in other brands. That size machine is small enough to fit on a heavy tag trailer but big enough to handle that type of demo. Your 6 tonner is more than capable for this type work it'll just take a little longer and since you own it, run it. Probably want to have a demo saw on hand with one of those nice diamond metal cutting blades on it to either cut the frame or at least score it where you can either fold it or break it with you 12T. A smaller ex with a thumb is better at sorting metal IMO.
A rotating grapple speeds things up a bit
I've used a 12,000 lb. with thumb on houses before. They actually work fairly good. The 40,000 lb. excavator with hydraulic thumb I'm using now worked great on the two story house I just took down. It took 8 40 yd cans and total cost to the dumpster company was around 6800. Landfills in this farming community are 50 to 75 miles and they charge around 280 a load to haul off and bring empty. They will pickup and bring a empty every night. I'm usually working several jobs real close and only live a couple miles from town so loading every morning before I go elsewhere is not a problem. Cm is right on the tons per container. The first ones were around 7 to 9 tons with the last one having to be off loaded into two containers. I got 21 ton on it and the truck couldn't load. I try to be real careful with anything that doesn't have to go to a landfill. 60 a ton means 3 cents a lb. so any bricks concrete or steel adds up fast.
Dont let the scrap hit the ground until your at the scrap yard every time you handle it its costing you money.
I have torn down numerous single and double wides with a 6 ton mini ex. Sometimes its the only thing that really fits. The mini will pull apart the steel cross members between the steel beams. We sometimes we demo saw the beams, sometimes you can twist them in two with the mini, but there is certainly enough steel to make it worth a trip to the recycler.
That's very insightful I miss bids more often than not. I think I'm way over calculating how much debris there actually would be. Example (photos In reply) had a two houses one already collapsed demo bid. 3780 total sq footage. I calculated about 640 cy or 180 tons.. which made everything crazy expensive.. I'm pretty accurate on mobile home by suck at normal house quotes
Couple of things to consider - "I've never lost money on a job I didn't get". "If you are constantly getting beat on bids you are pricing too high" "If you are getting everything you bid then you are not pricing high enough" Quality estimates just take time and experience to develop.
Good advice, I have thought about just taking a hit on the first couple just to get a better feel and idea on weights and cy. I was all was trying to go 94lbs per sqft I'm going use this formula and go from there. Thanks for the help CM1995
See if you can talk someone into doing one by the hour. We used a formula off the internet for the last two story and came up around 4000 dollars less than what it showed to use as lbs. per square foot. I charge a minumum of 150 dollars a dumpster to load them after I have the house down. In this small town I can only get one dumpster per day. Usually leave an extra machine on site and go every morning and load on my way to another job. Town is only a couple miles and most of my work is around that area. Our 40 yd dumpsters are 62 dollars a ton and 280 a haul plus 4.50 a day plus a delivery fee on the first emty. All the land fills are 50 to 75 miles away so a dump truck won't work.
I understand the dumpster pain. The last job it took them 10 days to swap out 4 dumpsters. Killed me with the excavator rental
Same here the PITA is always getting boxes swapped. In order to make any real money doing demo you have to own your own equipment and have at least one roll off truck with several cans or a high volume dump trailer. It's the only way to control the time it takes which time dictates profitability. We pretty much only do demo if it is ancillary to the overall site project. Like the private school dining hall we are finishing up. The project involved tearing the old one down but the site work and utilities were a larger dollar volume of the contract than just the demo. C2040 don't take it in the shorts on one just to learn. Like GW said maybe you can get an owner to do a demo by the hour and then per the can to the landfill. If you can't find an owner willing to do that then you might offer to price the equipment side and then the disposal per can/haul/ton. That way you could get a handle on the volume side of it.
Sorry about that. CM1995 obviously feel free to clean that up. Good thing dial up is gone.
I couldn't agree more cm1995. Owning your equipment is a must. Even the rental equipment is getting thin rn especially s excavator with a thumb around here an over priced used machine is about all that is available working on a cat 317 or Volvo 160 at the moment we'll see how that goes and how long it will take to get it
Latest demo very happy customer
After photos
This was the first demo I did, again same problems as others have said, I had it down in a couple hours but had was only able to get the bins picked up 2 times in one day and that was with a friend who ran the roll offs... ended up taking about 3 days when I had to wait for them to be picked up. Just make sure you have other stuff to do at the time.
I don't even know how you did that..lol - I'm not messing with it.
Gee thanks, a reminder of my lack of IT skills!
cadre2040, Nice work any chance I could hire you next time neighbor is out of town for a couple days?
Reading this threw agin makes me thing about how easy it is to loss money on a bid job. There was alot of house demoed were i live the towns got grants that was a good deal because there is no way 90% of them would have ever got demoed. Alot of them were abandon or owned buy the city. After the lots were cleaned up they were put up for bids most didnt bring over $100.00 . They were small lots and no one wants to build in the older parts of town.
I knocked down an old barn. No paint, it's legal here to burn wooden debris after stripping the roofing off. Moved it 100 feet from other buildings & burned it. It left quite a pile of coals by day's end. I left them to burn down to ash. The caretaker called at 8:00 AM next morning alarmed there was a wisp of smoke. He'd been hosing it down since 5:00 AM. Added several tons to it & it did not further reduce. It took 2 trips to the transfer station with 7 ton truck with the load dripping. The tipping fee came to $1400! By the ton & it was mostly water.
We can burn in the country, same thing I tell everyone to get one dumpster so they have a receipt for roof. I still have a school minus gym I already took down this spring waiting on asbesto abatement right now. It's a couple two story brick and concrete buildings and a wooden one sided in tin. Lots of concrete so these two will take a while by myself.
Reading about the burn pile remains reminds me of an experience I had this February... I was clearing a lot I had purchased and had several stumps that I had set on a burn pile in the morning. So I burned everything real well and let it reduce overnight, next morning it was hotter than a two dollar pistol and needed to be trucked away, so I hosed them down with a garden hose for darn near 30 minutes, loaded them into the dump truck and off I went. About 20 minutes later I'm sitting at a stoplight in the dump truck and I see a bit of smoke coming out of the bed!! Had about a couple of larger wood pieces and stumps sitting in there that had reignited from the wind I guess... Got a lot of looks rolling through town. Made it back to the house and hosed it down, had no problems. Rolling firepit?
That reminds me about the garbage trucks dumping there load in the street or trying to make it to the dump before the fire got to bad.
Is there an average cost to wreck a single or double wide trailer off a property? There is a bunch of abandoned mobile sites in a trailer park I grew up in as a kid. I bet the properties can be bought for taxes owed.......dirt cheap. Cleaned up those properties would be sellable for a profit maybe.
Not really. It's akin to saying - "My D6's transmission is broke how much will it cost to fix?". There are several factors to consider besides size/SF such as personal contents, foundations (if any) and other site improvements. Like KSS's multiple pics up thread that one had a block foundation and masonry fireplace. Personal contents are a big one. I got burned pun intended on a house that was partially burnt in the front. The doors and windows were boarded up but I could see through to the living and dining room was charred pretty bad so I though no biggy and priced it normally. Well that one ate my lunch. The 2 bedrooms in the back were packed floor to ceiling with wet molded clothing and other personal ****. Doubled the disposal bill.
Recently I have been adding an oh crap factor to everything I quote, especially with the rising costs and unexpected things that seem to happen more often. I have lost quite a few jobs because of it but I don't understand how people quote jobs with such thin margins and that the only way they will make money is if everything goes right.
Those types don't stay in business long and just run the pricing down. I call them Bubba and a Backhoe.
Yep and then another comes along.
That's why I prefer commercial work as tends to keep those out with the insurance and licensing requirements. 40% of what we do is push paper but it pays the bills.
I had a good friend and mentor who would do huge commercial tile laying jobs for places such as prisons and hospitals. He always told me he landed lots of commercial jobs that other people weren't interested in just because they were willing to do the paper work and obtain the licenses. A lot more to the business than just being a good operator or tile layer.
One single wide I did almost fit in one 40 yard dumpster. The last single wide was smaller but had rooms added all the way down one side. Took two 40's beat in real tight to get gone. That's why the owner pays the dumpster fees. If they want me to bid the dumpsters I walk away. To much good work to risk getting involved. I'm not the salvation army working for free.
Without a doubt. My father was a home builder and he always said - "anyone can build a house but it's hard to build a house and make a profit when you sell it."
Wish me luck bidding on site work/foundation on a cobblestone motel.