The other day I had to demolish this old stone home and cart it away, so that a base could be built for a new re-locatable home, to be put there on the same spot. The roof and floors had been removed for recycling, so it was relatively easy. I shifted a little over 400 tonnes all up. The tele-handler belongs to the owner of the property and he decided perhaps that was a better way to bring the chimneys down, which it was. A few pics.
A few more pics of the progress and removing the stove. I also had to fill in an in ground tank.
The end of another piece of history, the stockpile which we will crush later on and the base for the new home. Rn'R.
Man, i have a thing for stone houses. Why did they want the house knocked down? It looks like it was in really good condition, but hopefully i'm missing something.
Demo Oz Style Nice job, man. How old was that house--looks pretty old from the interior shots? It must have been fun to push over those two brick chimneys. Bet they crashed down in a pretty good shower of bricks. Was that your first time to demo a house? Nice equipment you got there. :drinkup Hvy 1 ton--I guess this is progress. Says they are putting a re-locatable home on the foundation. I guess that is some sort of manufactured home or trailer. Must be progress. :beatsme
The house had some cracks in it, but I have seen worse houses renovated. In this instance the house had not been lived in for years, the pidgeons had moved in and the estimates they had to fix it up, came to way more than buying a re-locatable and putting there. This is a rural property and the electricity, water and telephone connections are all still there, plus the site is slightly elevated and quite a nice spot for a house. Re-locatable or transportable houses here, are timber frame houses that are usually built in the city and transported by truck to the site. Most of them are mounted off the ground on small stumps. One of these houses became available on another property about 25 kilometres away, so we had to prepare the site, because the contractors were ready to move it. Thanks Wolf. The chimneys certainly did crash down and just left a pile of bricks. We would have demolished and in a lot of cases, crushed around fifty of these old stone homes over the years. As you have possibly seen in my other posts, our business is crushing limestone and this area has plenty of it. Nearly all of the original homes were built out of limestone. I am not sure of the age of this house, but I would guess it would have been built in the 1920's or 30's. Rn'R.
Does anyone out there ever preserve or renovate these limestone houses? They seem pretty unusual, but it seems like people just want to get rid of them out there--old fashioned and obsolete. So you have crushed up 50 of them. Pretty soon they will be a rarity and then a thing of the past. Can't stop progress, especially if nobody values that kind of limestone house.
Wolf, through southern and western Australia limestone is prevalent and the the early settlers used it everywhere. Many building where built by convicts. There are literally thousands of limestone buildings still in existence and many of the them classified by our national trust. However, if you look at RnR's pics you will see the stone has almost been covered by mortar. This is a result of repeated re-pointing and repairs. Unfortunatley the modern practice has been to use high strength modern cement mortars. This sounds the death knell for the stonework. Limestone, and the old fashioned lime based mortars where soft, friable and allowed moisture to come and go from the surface exposed to the weather. Cement mortars hold the moisture in and when the hot sun comes of the day the mortar will fracture away or break the stone. Eventually a type of cancer will set in breaking down the stone and causing fractures. The dunderclunkems them come along and add more mortar to try and repair when this is what is causing the problem. Also, because the mortar joints are not raked out properly the mortar ends up flush with the surface of the stone spoiling the appearance and also the mortar is more exposed to the rain and the heat....its a downward spiral from there. I am often asked to repair these building and unfortunatley, because of bad practices of the last 30 odd years it is often not economical nor safe. Because the walls of these buildings are not designed for resistance to the weather, once the old roof has gone deterioration is more rapid. here's a pic of a lime built wall from Ireland (Derry) built in the 1600's...no modern cements or concrete footings here.
Great and intelligent explanation, Squizzy. You really know your stuff. Thank you for educating me in such a good way. That Irish limestone wall is mighty impressive.
Wolf, yes people do renovate these limstone houses, but while we have crushed or demolished 50 or more of them, nearly all of them were past the point of repairing. Here is a link to a similar discussion I had last year about demolishing and renovating old stone buildings. Post #17 As Squizzy said, there are still thousands of stone houses all built around the same time, being lived in and maintained and will be for many years to come. In our area they certainly are not a rarity, because of the abundant supply of limestone, the same as timber houses are common in areas where there are forrests. Perhaps what is more of a rarity, are people like Squizzy, who have stone mason skills to repair these buildings. Rn'R.
Rocks: It's up to you whether you tear them down or not, but Aussie Nick makes some interesting points about fretting. The same thing goes on here in California---"earthquake damage," whether real or not is the most convenient excuse to destroy some old building. It usually works as an excuse to bring in the demo crew and make way for some new condos.
Wolf, I think you might be missing the point of my posts. These old buildings are on remote rural properties and farms, owned in most cases by the people whose ancestors built them in the first place, or the smaller properties have been sold and bought up by larger holdings. Over the years, these buildings have fallen in to a state of disrepair, to the point that they become an eyesore, they harbor vermin, they maybe blocking access for today's larger farm machinery and the old walls become unstable, making them dangerous if there are young children playing around them. As much as Aussie Nick might accuse me of using "fretting" as an excuse to demolish these old buildings, rising salt damp is the biggest single problem in maintaining them and is very expensive to fix, in fact, there is no complete fix for rising salt damp. Nearly all of these old houses have no foundations, they were built on top of the ground and because of our dry climate and the clays contracting, some of them also suffered major cracking problems. There comes a point where the cost of renovating them becomes prohibitive and it is a case of throwing good money after bad. We have the equipment to demolish them, clean up the site and crush them in to a usable material for spreading on drives, around yards and sheds or whatever. As I explained to Aussie Nick, if a client asks us to demolish an old stone building and we take the moral high ground and refuse because it may have some historical value, we might as well sell all of our equipment and go on Government benefits, because we would not have a business for very long. Here are just a few examples of limestone fretting through rising salt damp and if you or Aussie Nick have any ideas on how to stop it, I am sure that a lot of people in this area would like to hear about them. In the first picture, the original wall was concreted for the first five feet to try and stop the fretting, but it kept on going above the concrete. The second picture shows how the small wall is virtually reduced to sand by the rising salt damp and the other two are just more examples of the destruction rising salt damp can cause. Rn'R.
The efflourescence (as its called) is no more foriegn to Calciferous Limestone than the processes which made the limestone somewhere between 300,000 and 3 Billion years ago. What has changed is two things. First we cleared the land, the water table rose and brought with it the salt. Well...its a factor...but if you wander over to the nearest naturally occuring limestone outcrop you will see some of the same but no where near the devestation (in a relatively short period) that you see in RnR's pics. So the other factor is cement/concrete. Limestone will survive the salt attack, more or less, provided there is not continuous moisture with which to make the acids. The beauty of limestone is that it breathes. Moisture goes nearly as fast as it comes. But if you build limestone on damp concrete slabs (with a rising water table), or coat all over the face with hard concrete you retain the moisture and accelerate the effect of the efflourescence. Effectively you stop the limestone breathing and then you are screwed. The solution....:Banghead...is to remove all the well meaningly applied cement render and pointing (is meaningly a word), gouge out the joints by hand (no power tools allowed:nono) and use lime based mortar (with various secret stonemasons aggregates). Point the joints up to but not more than 1" of the face of the stone so the stone can breathe and moisture will travel through the mortar as well as it will the stone. If you look to recommendations for Portland Cement you will see that they increase the quantity of cement for proximity to the sea...in other words, to make the cement stronger. I say, go to the land of the Leprechaun, Guinness and the Bearlager na Saor (the old language of the masons) and see 12th century castles built from Carboniferous Limestone and Lime mortar...standing on the edge of the North Sea....and then make you decisions about how to repair natural stone buildings. Sorry for the side track, but you can imagine in a world where concrete, steel, strength etc is the engineering norm...I cop a bit of a beating on the subject. Sometimes, you need to look backwards in order to go forwards. The simple solution to most efflourescence is to remove the moisture depending on the chemical constitutents. RnR, if somebody wants to pay me a hundred grand a year to fix your old building I'd gladly do it for the rest of my life......and not have to worry about skid steers and trucks and excavators and...and...and
Perhaps what is more of a rarity, are people like Squizzy,
Re-locatable-- hehehe, translated, modular, trailer house, or mobile home in the states, lol
That perhaps was a poor choice of wording on my part, Sled Puller, modular holiday cabins here are also called re-locatables. A better description for the house they are putting there is 'transportable', you may have another name for them in the US. Rn'R.
How wide are you allowed to haul on the roads down there?
Great pictures and story as usual Rn'R, keep 'em coming. Looks like you are still getting enough work to keep you busy, hope it continues.
I had to look that one up, Sled Puller, transportable homes are allowed 8 metres (26 feet) to the eaves. Thanks, Tom. We are busy and are pretty well set for the rest of the year now, so we certainly are not complaining. Rn'R.
Definetly not a trailer home Sled Puller. He means an actual house, usually steel framed that can be carried on trucks in one or two (or three pieces). A trailer home would mean a "caravan" in the Down Under ie. it has wheels.
So would this be a modular home or a caravan....it doesn't seem to have wheels? In the south we would say "You can't hide money" about a spread such as this.:bouncegri rofessorFrom redneckwiki - The term "You can't hide money" is a loose expression of when something is very tacky, IE: a purple truck with orange flames or a trailer park high rise. The term is meant to be sarcastic, referencing that the resources used to produce such an abomination could have been put to a much better use.
Those "resources" could take on a whole new dimension next time a hurricane arrives....literally. The rednecks have a Wiki!!! (How come everytime someone mentions trailer home the discussion takes a downward spiral):cool2
Sorry Sorry, I did not mean to annoy you very nice and smart m8s. I would probably knock those old dumps down too happily, if someone were paying me to do it. Bet they are fun to take down and grind up. I hope you will accept my apology.
Looks like a Smurf village . Someones signature , What colour does a Smurf turn when you choke him ?
Apology accepted, Wolf. We are very nice, but smart, I'm not so sure, speaking for myself that is. I understand what you are saying about 'convenient demolition' in the cities, but that certainly is not the case in our situation. It is interesting demolishing those old buildings, because every one is different, some of the really old ones were built using mud to hold the stones together, instead of lime mortar. Nearly all of the old houses produce 2-300 tonnes of material and this last one, I took out a little over 400 tonnes, a little over a day's work with a wheel loader. What I marvel at, is that all of this stone was loaded by hand on to a horse & dray and carted in, the stone was all faced by hand and then the house built by hand, 400 tonnes of it. Those are some of the things I think about, when knocking them down. Rn'R.
Squizzy your knowledge of stone and masonry amazes me. I'll never give you a hard time for knowing any of that kind of thing. There are many of the old arts that are constantly being lost I'm glad to see you are keeping one of them alive. Personally i'm trying to learn some blacksmithing and metaalurgy in between my other interests. RnR good job as usual Was the water tank for drinking and general home use? 400 tonnes of material is a heck of alot no matter what era it was hauled in I think, and in those days bleeding amazing.
Thanks, Bear. The water tank would have been for everything, because in those days, there was no other water supply. Most of the old houses had in ground tanks to collect all the water from the roof. These days we have a reticulated water supply from the River Murray. It is rather ironical that water supplies are being cut, because the River Murray is running dry and everyone is blaming Governments and irrigators, yet our pioneers survived quite well by using some rather ingenious methods to collect and save their own water. What's more, the in groud tanks were dug by hand as well and some of them were huge. Rn'R.
If our pioneers had to work with the rules and regulations of today, this country would not have been settled. Every house should have an in-ground tank. Even on the hottest summer day you can still get a drink of cool water from the hand pump on our in-ground tank in the backyard.
Great thread and very informative. I thought the same thing as some of the others in that it was a shame to destroy that old building, but after reading the replies and what it takes to fix them, realized it was the smart thing to do. I know that if it was on my land, I'd remove it too. As a home remodeler, I struggle all the time to explain to clients that it will be cheaper, faster and in the end, stronger to tear down their homes, barns or additions and build brand new. Most don't get it and insist that what they want is to save what is there, but fix to problems with it and then update the space. Most of the time, that's just what I do. Every now and then, we tear it down and build all brand new. It really is a huge difference in what you end up with compared to what you spend. With enough time and money, anything can be fixed and made nice. It's just a question of how much is the client willing to spend? Eddie
thanks for the info RnR, I didn't know if wells were dug or what exactly went on. Something else I was wondering, with all the limestone how rare or abundant are springs and caves in the area? Here we have cave systems and springs everywhere seems like. I don't know if conditions there are favorable for that kind of thing or not. Eddie Walker glad to see your kickin around, how's that pretty spot you have coming along? the yunguns growin good? don't work too hard...
Not that far from where we live is a small area where a few wells were dug and there is good drinkable water at about 15'. My grandfather and his neighbours used to draw water from there in the early days. We have an unused bore on our property, but it has a salt content of 8,000 parts per million and is just suitable for livestock. Because of our relatively low rainfall (16") there is not a lot of recharge for underground water. We have no springs, but in some areas they do have quite a few bores and the water is quite good for livestock. There are some caves on top of a hill and they run a kilometre or more underground, but a lot of the openings are fairly small and you have to crawl through them, although professional caving groups quite often go down there exploring. Rn'R.
effn love them VOLVOS
They have been good reliable trucks for us, B1G DIG. Rn'R.
Any more demo going on down under these days, m8s?
Not at the moment, Wolf. I have just finished a base for a new shed to house a large seed cleaning plant, at the moment I am doing a base for a new set of sheep yards and next week I have to re-shape an area around a small winery for car parking and water drainage. Still keeping busy, which is the main thing. Rn'R.
I demolished the hell out of a 2lb steak on the weekend.
How's the Cholesterol? Rn'R.
Terrible ...but thanks for reminding me
Squizzy you need more lipitor and smaller portions!
I ate the salad too
Mmmm, steak...cooked on the grill. :notworthy
I have read your post and found it interesting. I also believe that transportable homes are better than any other option. The best thing about that is that you can relocate it and also can move anywhere very easily. Anyway thanks for sharing that above pic also.
Thanks for that, Linkon007, welcome to the Forum and I'm pleased you found this thread interesting. I can't believe that was five years ago now, we have demolished and crushed a few more of the those old houses since then, but they really were in a very bad state and had collapsed. RnR.
So, RnR, about how many of these do you think you have knocked down and crushed up? It's so awesome that you are doing this. Wish you had some pictures of them coming down to post. Do you? Would love to see it. What kind of machine are you using to do the work, and what do you do with all the rubble once the structure is crushed? Thanks, mate.
I've lost count Wolf, but it could be around fifty, over a period of thirty years. Some were still standing, like the one in this thread, some were falling down and some had already been demolished by their owners. Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures, a lot of them were demolished before digital cameras and I haven't got around to scanning all of my old photos. We crush them with our crushing plant which comprises a jaw crusher and two impact crushers. All of these old houses are on farming properties and the farmers pay us so much a tonne to have them demolished and crushed. The farmer uses the rubble for his yards and access roads. An old house like the one in this thread can run into 300 - 400 tonnes. The farmer gets a ruin cleaned up and he also finishes up with a usable product. RnR.
Beautiful. I love the picture of you pushing over the smoke stack. That is so cool. Good work, mate.
You have done a great job. I have seen these pics and found it really nice. I would like to say thanks to you that you share this post here with us. I think you have to post some pics of steel fabrication or such other metal work. Anyway thanks.
Any Comment...!!!
Thanks for the comments, Helas. I'm not quite sure what you mean about posting pics of steel fabrication or how it fits in with demolishing old stone houses. You might have to give me a bit more information. RnR.
RnR that's because he/she is a spammer that's not being truthful of their location. Took care of that.
I found a few more photos for you Wolf, this house was burnt out and we didn't crush it. RnR.
Thanks, CM, I did wonder about that, it seemed a bit strange, I should have woken up. RnR.
No worries. It was slick how they quoted themselves and then added a spam link in the quote that wasn't in their original message. I've been spam hunting long enough to smell 'em.
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Here in sunny South Carolina we call them " roller homes" don't ferget to put your tires on the roof.