How to Demolish your House

There’s more to demolishing than meets the eye…

Before you demolish

Have a good think about what is really going to happen to your house.

It will probably be totally destroyed with nothing to show for x years of contented (?) hassle-free(?) living. Is there anything you can do to lessen the blow to yourselves and the environment and help people who may need a house just like yours? (Helping people is good for your health too - I’m sure I read that those who give to charity live longer)?? So, advertise your house in the Quokka to see if anyone can take it away and use it. This will not let you off some kind of demolition / clean-up work but it’s a pretty good start. If this isn’t possible think about anything you may like to keep from your old house…door frames that you have used to measure your kids growing from 0-7…floorboards, leadlight windows, you name it…

When we were last home we found our eldest daughter’s handprint in some cement near the shed. We’d completely forgotten about it. It’s hard to reproduce that kind of history.

Bear in mind that the demolishers will check your house for items that they can salvage and sell. Their estimate of these will reduce your quote accordingly.

Lastly you must arrange to have the gas and the electricity disconnected. An alinta gas disconnection cost us $297 inc. GST.

What do demolishers do?

Sounds obvious. They demolish…but they do a lot more besides. Most demolisher’s contracts cover similar things, mostly in response to the requirements of the council. We are under City of Stirling whose demolition information sheet can be found here.

These could be (but may not be so be sure to read the fine print):

• rat baiting
• cutting and sealing sewer
• water and power disconnection
• dry leach and septic tank removal
• licensed asbestos removal
• cartage and tip fees for removal of rubble and trees
• full insurance public liability worker’s compensation

The demolishers demolish everything up to 300mm of the boundary fence. Anything that isn’t marked to be kept will be knocked down so you must carefully mark trees / shrubs that you want to keep on your property.

In Perth there is a fair backlog of work for most demolishers. We have contracted a company who will most likely get on to our block in January 08.

There are many difficulties associated with building your house over the internet but watching your house go down is not one of them. Another reason why it would be so great to have someone else take your house. (Read here to find out why giving our house away fell through for us).

The cost of demolishing

We had a number of quotes to clear a 900 sq m block of land. They ranged from about $13,000 - $15,000. In the time it took us to action our quotes one company’s price leapt from $11.055 to $15,455 due to “demolition contractors unable to take timber waste to landfill”. Most quotes are valid from 1-3 months, so keep an eye on time passing…

It’s important to remember that quotes vary a lot depending on the size of the land, land accessibility, the presence of asbestos sheeting, the amount of trees to be cut down and the amount of salvageable items in the house.

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