Knocking a house down

[peds]

Anyone ever knocked down a house? Any advice to offer?

 

 

I'm turning this wee one into empty space over the next few months. I'm keeping the windows and putting them in a future shed, the roof tiles and internal timbers on the left extension are in good nick and will be kept for something. The roof metal on the main bit of it looks a bit flaky, but I'll probably keep the best bits of it to roof a chicken coop.

Excitingly, there's a whole old turf roof under the metal. They just built the new roof on top of the old one without getting rid of it. I'm going to see if I can get away with scattering the old turf around the garden if I can, to save space in the skip.

 

The mortar is just falling apart, it's completely sodden. I'm surprised the house is still upright, to be honest. We are going to lift out the biggest stones as we go and use them to build walls around the garden, hopefully the bulk of it we are going to bury under the new drive, we've got another 100m or so to go, after doing the first 150m this time last year.

 

I've something special to show you later, too. Makes me wonder what else we might find as we take the house down...

[Peasgood]

Personally I would do everything I could to keep it.

[peds]

Agreed, and the original plan was to knock a hole in the back wall and build a glorified (and well insulated) cow shed behind it. Second plan was to build the new house elsewhere on the site and keep these as my shed and greenhouse.  But the practicalities, the cost of bringing the building up to spec, and the local planning restrictions put a stop to that. Big shame, but we'd rather have a home than be looking at an old cottage crumble into dust over the next few decades.

 

Also, to be honest, this 3 room cottage isn't even a very good version of the form, of which there are literally billions out here in Ireland. There are better examples to save.

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

That looks like a genuinely awesome project to be getting into. 
 

Sounds like you’ve fully evaluated, and dismissed, the retention / renovation options. What a shame that “rules & regs” end up being a disincentive to renovation but at least there is some recycling / up cycling to be had. 
 

Looking at your pic, and not knowing what sort of machinery you might have, my very first thought was, what a super task for a 6/7/8 series MultiOne with a range of suitable attachments (other, less capable brands exist) 

 

That looks like a great task and looking forward to seeing progress....
 

 

[Joe Newton]

I heard that (in the UK at least) they're are significantly tax incentives for knocking down/rebuilding compared to renovation. How true it is I don't know

[AHPP]

Cool project. Keep us updated.

[peds]

5 minutes ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

 

Sounds like you’ve fully evaluated, and dismissed, the retention / renovation options. What a shame that “rules & regs” end up being a disincentive to renovation but at least there is some recycling / up cycling to be had. 

 

The rules and regs are infuriating, we have to keep the new building footprint as much as possible on the old one, we asked to move it just a few meters to the north to protect a beautiful big bay tree and less beautiful but quite nice eucalyptus, but no, the footprint can't be moved and the trees have to go. 

Still, I'll be keeping the wood from the bay tree specifically for the pizza oven. Every cloud.

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

1 minute ago, Joe Newton said:

I heard that (in the UK at least) they're are significantly tax incentives for knocking down/rebuilding compared to renovation. How true it is I don't know

You can reclaim VAT on a commercial (possibly domestic too but not sure) new build project under most circumstances. 
 

Thats 20% straight away! 👍🏻

[sime42]

I heard that (in the UK at least) they're are significantly tax incentives for knocking down/rebuilding compared to renovation. How true it is I don't know

I heard that too, though it was in the context of big buildings, old factories and warehouses etc. Shame; it leads to far too many examples of beautiful Victorian industrial architecture getting demolished. Must be a higher environmental cost to rebuilding versus renovation as well.

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

2 minutes ago, peds said:

 

The rules and regs are infuriating, we have to keep the new building footprint as much as possible on the old one, we asked to move it just a few meters to the north to protect a beautiful big bay tree and less beautiful but quite nice eucalyptus, but no, the footprint can't be moved and the trees have to go. 

Still, I'll be keeping the wood from the bay tree specifically for the pizza oven. Every cloud.

Bloody madness but doubtless a consequence of previous examples of (perhaps) unscrupulous exploitation of loopholes in order to achieve ‘new’ developments in the open countryside. 
 

We’ve been down a similar path with a former traditional stone built cow shed. Regs often appeared shortsighted, awkward and pathetic but them was the rules. If you were interested I could link some video footage of MultiOne doing a range of tasks in that project (only likely to be of marginal interest to those with a direct interest in such things 😂)