Knocking a house down

[manco]

lift the roof off, dig a big hole and build a half-sunk bigger house inside the walls of the cottage using the new to support the old, re-lay the existing roof supported by the new one under it.

modern house, old cottage exterior

bish bash bosh

[skc101fc]

lift the roof off, dig a big hole and build a half-sunk bigger house inside the walls of the cottage using the new to support the old, re-lay the existing roof supported by the new one under it.
modern house, old cottage exterior
bish bash bosh

How ya going to get a bigger house inside the walls of an existing one?

[skc101fc]

Living out hereSW Ireland, We've got 2 of these old wrecks on our land. Soil infill and rubble between the stones, only the render (plaster) on the outer and inner walls holds them together. No or poor jointing of corners. As we found out when we hacked off the mortar on the gable end , the wall "sprang" out leaving a 70 mm gap where the ceiling should have been touching the wall inside.
No foundations to be of any trustworthy purpose, so start digging against the walls and the rest of the cottage will be joining you in the hole !

[gary112]

On 01/03/2022 at 01:57, peds said:

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...

Dynamite 🧨 that,d take it down peds 🤣

[sime42]

Take the roof off and rain will rapidly do the rest by the sound of it...

[Doug Tait]

Is the big, bad wolf available to help? Tell him it belongs to a little piggy, he's pretty effective with the huff and puff technique of blowing a house down... 

[manco]

3 hours ago, skc101fc said:

How ya going to get a bigger house inside the walls of an existing one?

what we have here is a lack of imagination. never seen grand designs?

i did say dig a big hole and have a half sunken house, new walls built right up to the old ones to support the old cottage and retain the look from the outside

[Stere]

Sounds like an expensive and difficult way to make a bunker.

 

Thoose walls will all have with zero foundations will all need underpinning.

 

 

 

 

[peds]

Just now, Stere said:

 

Thoose walls will all have with zero foundations will all need underpinning.

 

They bloody won't. In a month's time they'll be under a roll of terram and a few hundred tons of limestone. 

[NJA]

Sounds like its past renovation but you should be able to reduce to 5% vat on refurb which isn't a lot, if you can prove it hasn't been lived in for 2 years.  (To encourage empty houses to be utilised).

Or as others have said zero vat on new build

Ref demolition;

Large machine+ large skip =fast but expensive 

Dismantle by hand and separate materials = slow but v cheap (my preferred option if it was me)