Knocking a house down

[Macpherson]

2 minutes ago, peds said:

All of the cills are a good block of stone, 6 of them, plus a doorstep. The lime plaster I've scraped off the walls so far shows a range of sizes underneath, there's some beautiful big bits. Our digger driver says we'll need to look out for any good bits around the hearth and chimney, too. 

It's all our local limestone, probably taken from the now defunct quarry just down the road, same geology as the cliffs up behind the house.

 

The new extension (left of photo) is of concrete block construction, I'll even be tapping the mortar off of them and stacking them away for future use.

 

 

I thought as much, Limestone's easy to work with and stonework very satisfying and rewarding and if I were you I'd think twice about burying anything but the total dross.

 

Our predecessors laboured long and hard to shelter themselves from the weather with a few primitive tools and knew a bit about craftmanship, if the whole original house is Limestone then any stone even if rough can be reworked relatively easily and rebuilt into something else, I wonder how much you'd pay today to buy a house load of quarried local building stone.

 

The fact that it will fall down easily gives you potentially  the main part of another building or a resource to build whatever the stone says to you.. but beware, . working with stone is more addictive than milling😁 and Limestone is one of the easiest to use[ imo ]

 

Probably a pressure washer will clean the old lime mortar off the stone and as you demolish it separate / sort the stone into separate piles depending on potential reuse, big flatties/right angles/graded by size/1 off shapes etc.so it's not all in a jumbled pile, double handling and the back pain.

 

As for your road, I don't think it would be to expensive just to get other loads of ballast delivered.

 

All the best with your plans👍

[LGP Eddie]

Done loads of knock downs, full houses and parts of them for larger extensions to go back onto.

 

Quite simply you don’t just knock them down you deconstruct them and an excavator with selector grab and a decent operator is in reality the cheapest thing on the job.

 

Put your efforts into the sorting of materials, salvaging scrap, copper, wiring etc, and when it comes to timber if it isn’t rotten and you can de nail it ok, then save it.

It’s absolutely incredible how valuable bits of timber are on builds, from just making some profiles to dig the footings, to propping, shuttering, fencing etc etc.

 

I don’t know the regs over there, but here you at least need one skip through the system as some waste is always expected and that’s often a lot of insulation and plasterboard that’s a complete nightmare.

 

It all depends on what’s going back as to the prep before, but getting any services back to the boundary, establishing site supplies for electric and water, and ensuring any manhole or remaining foul or storm water drain connections are well marked and protected.

This is vital if the original footings and original manholes have to be grubbed out too, as you can get amongst it unhindered.

 

You have a readily available tip for the hardcore, it used to be a balance as to send the material away and buy back in or crush on site.

Always make certain the hardcore pile is absolutely spotless, if it’s going off site and the companies can see it’ll go straight through the crusher, then good terms can be negotiated, with return loads of their crushed if space available and the material of good enough quality.

 

I’ve done it every which way from literally loading the hardcore of full houses straight into 8 wheelers, to putting full houses through a crusher bucket on a 6 tonner because access was horrendous.

Had a play with many different options over the years, and all have their place.

 

 

Eddie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Will C]

On 02/03/2022 at 22:33, peds said: most of the wiring and pipes can definitely go into the (medium sized) skip.

That is your most valuable bit of scrap, the copper pipes, cable and lead flashing around chimneys etc

[peds]

On 02/03/2022 at 23:06, Macpherson said:

 

 

I thought as much, Limestone's easy to work with and stonework very satisfying and rewarding and if I were you I'd think twice about burying anything but the total dross.

 

Our predecessors laboured long and hard to shelter themselves from the weather with a few primitive tools and knew a bit about craftmanship, if the whole original house is Limestone then any stone even if rough can be reworked relatively easily and rebuilt into something else, I wonder how much you'd pay today to buy a house load of quarried local building stone.

Dammit, why did you have to go and say something sensible like this. I guess most of my free time will now be spent stacking chunks of limestone at the end of the garden.

This is part of the old, old bit of the house, it was more house-shaped at the start of the day. I'm stacking up all the blocks out of the way, next to where they'll be used. Their future is as the bottom course in a geodesic dome.

 

The shitty bits have a future too, I'm having two 20ft containers dropped on site at some point, with a nice gap between them. Any little bits we can be bothered to scoop up, and a load of the crumbling lime plaster from the main cottage, will be spread over the space between the containers before a layer of bought in sand, then repurposed paving slabs. I had a bit of a poke around in the roof today as well, hopefully a lot of the timbers can be put to work straight away as the shipping container shed roof.

[peds]

On 05/03/2022 at 19:04, LGP Eddie said:

Done loads of knock downs, full houses and parts of them for larger extensions to go back onto.

 

Quite simply you don’t just knock them down you deconstruct them and an excavator with selector grab and a decent operator is in reality the cheapest thing on the job.

 

Put your efforts into the sorting of materials, salvaging scrap, copper, wiring etc, and when it comes to timber if it isn’t rotten and you can de nail it ok, then save it.

It’s absolutely incredible how valuable bits of timber are on builds, from just making some profiles to dig the footings, to propping, shuttering, fencing etc etc.

 

I don’t know the regs over there, but here you at least need one skip through the system as some waste is always expected and that’s often a lot of insulation and plasterboard that’s a complete nightmare.

 

It all depends on what’s going back as to the prep before, but getting any services back to the boundary, establishing site supplies for electric and water, and ensuring any manhole or remaining foul or storm water drain connections are well marked and protected.

This is vital if the original footings and original manholes have to be grubbed out too, as you can get amongst it unhindered.

 

You have a readily available tip for the hardcore, it used to be a balance as to send the material away and buy back in or crush on site.

Always make certain the hardcore pile is absolutely spotless, if it’s going off site and the companies can see it’ll go straight through the crusher, then good terms can be negotiated, with return loads of their crushed if space available and the material of good enough quality.

 

I’ve done it every which way from literally loading the hardcore of full houses straight into 8 wheelers, to putting full houses through a crusher bucket on a 6 tonner because access was horrendous.

Had a play with many different options over the years, and all have their place.

 

 

Eddie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very useful information, thanks very much for your insight. You've given me a load of questions for the guy we're getting in for the first groundworks. Cheers.

[Macpherson]

14 minutes ago, peds said:

Dammit, why did you have to go and say something sensible like this. I guess most of my free time will now be spent stacking chunks of limestone at the end of the garden.

This is part of the old, old bit of the house, it was more house-shaped at the start of the day. I'm stacking up all the blocks out of the way, next to where they'll be used. Their future is as the bottom course in a geodesic dome.

 

The shitty bits have a future too, I'm having two 20ft containers dropped on site at some point, with a nice gap between them. Any little bits we can be bothered to scoop up, and a load of the crumbling lime plaster from the main cottage, will be spread over the space between the containers before a layer of bought in sand, then repurposed paving slabs. I had a bit of a poke around in the roof today as well, hopefully a lot of the timbers can be put to work straight away as the shipping container shed roof.

You can see the quality of the workmanship there and I can image the pleasure of rebuilding with it, after all the difficult bit has already been done.. collecting it.

You should get something to sit on, light a fire on a nice night and sit in there with friends and a few beers and enjoy the stonework before you knock it down, the flames flickering on the wall will give you inspiration.

 

In case you're not aware there are many products for bridging containers to make a dry working / storage area, cheers.

 

container+roofing+systems+scaffolding - Recherche Google

WWW.GOOGLE.COM

 

[peds]

I've chatted to our digger driver, he's got a riddle attachment, so I'm going to stop using elbow grease and let him pile them up in a corner when we come to pull down the walls. Not sure what I'll do with all that free time now!

 

I know... I'll peel the bitumen off of this 120m2 of reclaimed teak floor my wife has brought me and hidden on a few pallets at the back of my shed.

 

 

I'm off to invest in a few new tools later, a few chisels, shave hook, might fork out for a belt sander if one jumps out at me.

 

I've got some space in the woodshed to stack up the clean pieces before switching back to firewood mode, as long as I can get them moved by the summer we'll be grand.

 

 

I can see I'm going to get bored of scraping out the crap from deep within the tongue and groove of each piece. Ah well.

 

Any advice?

 

Please, God... any advice? 

[skc101fc]

I've chatted to our digger driver, he's got a riddle attachment, so I'm going to stop using elbow grease and let him pile them up in a corner when we come to pull down the walls. Not sure what I'll do with all that free time now!
 
I know... I'll peel the bitumen off of this 120m2 of reclaimed teak floor my wife has brought me and hidden on a few pallets at the back of my shed.
 

 
I'm off to invest in a few new tools later, a few chisels, shave hook, might fork out for a belt sander if one jumps out at me.
 
I've got some space in the woodshed to stack up the clean pieces before switching back to firewood mode, as long as I can get them moved by the summer we'll be grand.
 

 
I can see I'm going to get bored of scraping out the crap from deep within the tongue and groove of each piece. Ah well.
 
Any advice?
 
Please, God... any advice? 

Let the wife do it, as her penance ?

[peds]

She's playing a good game of it at the moment, asking " How should I do it," "How long do you think it will it take me to do my floor," and she will inevitably knock off a few hundred pieces, but we both know that I'll be the one scraping away out in the shed until the small hours. It's fine, she excels in other areas.

[carlos]

5 hours ago, peds said:

I've chatted to our digger driver, he's got a riddle attachment, so I'm going to stop using elbow grease and let him pile them up in a corner when we come to pull down the walls. Not sure what I'll do with all that free time now!

 

I know... I'll peel the bitumen off of this 120m2 of reclaimed teak floor my wife has brought me and hidden on a few pallets at the back of my shed.

 

 

I'm off to invest in a few new tools later, a few chisels, shave hook, might fork out for a belt sander if one jumps out at me.

 

I've got some space in the woodshed to stack up the clean pieces before switching back to firewood mode, as long as I can get them moved by the summer we'll be grand.

 

 

I can see I'm going to get bored of scraping out the crap from deep within the tongue and groove of each piece. Ah well.

 

Any advice?

 

Please, God... any advice? 

stick it on done deal and hope to god someone else is mad enough to buy it off you!!!