I want to demolish a house so I can build a new house

When you are thinking about demolishing an existing home to make way for a new one, make sure that you hire a professional to do the demolition.

Hiring a professional to demolish an existing home might sound like a logical choice but you should know a couple of things before you open the yellow pages and phone the first one that you see.

Here are a couple of things that you should look for when looking to demolish a house;

• Get quotes. A true professional will have no problem coming out to the existing home and giving you a proper quote. This will save you being handed a large bill at the end of the demolition because there was twice the amount of debris created from the house.

• Do your research. It doesn’t take a lot to goggle search companies, ask around or even ask them for references.

• You want experience. Demolition if done wrong can be a very dangerous thing. You are removing a structure that weighs more than any machine that is brought in to tear it down. The last thing in the world you want is to have someone hurt or killed on your land during demolition.

• Insurance. You want to make sure that the demolition company has the proper insurance. You should also contact your own insurance company and make sure that you are covered encase something goes wrong.

If you are planning to build a new house on the property it can be a good idea to have your general contractor (the one you hired to build the new house) handle hiring of the demolition company. A general contractor can also assist you in all the paperwork that the township will require before you are allowed to demolish.

There are a number of services that your general contractor can help you have disconnected before you will be granted a demolition permit. Electrical, gas, telephone, cable and water/sewer all have to be professionally severed from the existing building. If you are planning to build a new house on the property then the connections should be severed back far enough not to impede the digging of a new foundation.
A general contractor a lot of the times will be bringing in a heavy equipment sub-contractor to dig the hole for the foundation. If this is the case you can save yourself some money and have this sub-contractor do the demolition as well. This could save you money because the equipment after it is done knocking down the house can immediately start digging the hole for the new foundation. There is almost no difference in a heavy equipment operator tearing down a house and a demolition company. The only real difference is that a heavy equipment operator will use a large excavator to knock the building down and then load it into dump trucks. As the excavator tears the building down it will separate the different materials and load them in separate bins or dump trucks. This is important because this will save you money when they get to the dump.  Demolition companies will use smaller machines to do the tear down that are easier to transport and will fit into smaller places.

In a dump you will pay per pound. The price per pound will vary depending on what material is contained in the load. Loads that are mixed are the most expensive, mixed loads are when you have wood or metal mixed in with garbage. The cheapest loads are all one material loads such as all wood or all metal. If you end up with an all metal load you can have it taken to a metal recyclers that will pay for the load instead of you paying for the load.

If you go through the general contractor you will pay a management fee on top of the demolition bill but it will save you money in the long run. Because the services have to be disconnected then with the general contractor in charge of the job they will know exactly where those underground services are terminated and capped. If you do not involve your contractor then you could end up paying later when the contractor starts digging around the site trying to find all the connections that are underground. It doesn’t take much for the marking stakes to be lost on a construction site when you are building a house especially if it’s a small sight.
So remember if you are thinking about demolishing an existing house don’t just pick the first company you find, do your research and ask your general contractor it could save you a lot of time, money and aggravation.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.

Bring in Habitat for Humanity before you do the demolition of your home

Allow habitat for humanity at your house before you tear it down.

If you decide to Demolish a home so that you can build another one you should really give habitat for humanity a call. It only takes a phone call to set up a time for them to come out and look at your existing home.

Some townships have it written in there building bylaws that you have to give habitat for humanity an opportunity to salvage anything usable from your house before you tear it down.

If you don’t know what habitat for humanity does, it is a non profit organization that builds houses for people that cannot afford to buy a house for themselves. It’s a truly wonderful organization and can help a lot of people in your community.

Habitat for humanity takes the things that they salvage from people’s homes and sells them in their store. They take the money from the sales of these items and put it toward the cost of building homes for people who need them. The homes are built with donations of materials, sometimes the donation of land and a lot of volunteer help. I have personally helped in some of these builds and have found it a very rewarding experience.

It’s not just a good deed that you are doing, a lot times habitat will take the windows, the kitchens, some furniture, flooring, wood ceilings, siding and everything else they think they can sell. One of the largest costs associated with demolishing a house is the removal to the dump. Trucking is expensive with the rising cost of fuel and at the dump you pay per pound. So the more material that is removed from your house before it is demolished then the less trucking you have and the less weight you’ll have to pay.

The other factor is that you lessen the impact on your local dump; houses take a lot of room up in a dump and space is becoming harder to find for dumps these days.

I have removed personal items like trim boards from doors for people who marked the height of their children as they were growing up. We then re-installed them in the new house once it was built so that they could always remember those times even through that building that it happened in is gone.

Sometimes gas fireplaces can be reused as well in a new home, as long as they are able to meet current safety standards.

So if you’re worried about all the waste that will come out of tearing down an old house to build a new one, think about picking up the phone and calling Habitat for Humanity. It will be good for your wallet and also good for your karma.

Rob Abbott

Operations Manager

Village Builders Inc. 

Renovating an older home VS Demolishing and Building New (Part 1)

Building new vs. Renovation/addition Part 1

Here is a question that is posed to me at least once a month. Do I renovate my existing home or do I demolish it and start from scratch with a new build.

Part 1 will focus on the benefit of renovating/additions aspect of it.

Part 2 will focus on the benefit of demolition/new building aspect of it.

Most people always think that it’s cheaper to renovate an older home then to knock it down and rebuild it. This is true to a point.

There is a fine line when you are renovating were you need to know if you’re going to start wasting money fixing a house that is not worth fixing.

If your home is structurally sound, the outer shell of the home has been properly maintained (the roof, the siding/brick and the foundation) and it was properly done at the time of the construction then there is probably no need to demolish it.

If most of the changes that you want to do are inside the house and are more cosmetic/ updating then you should renovate. Tearing down interior walls and moving plumbing and heating lines is not that big of a job and can be down in a moderate budget. With new dust stopping protection and floor protection a lot of the work can be down without causing damage to the rest of the house that isn’t being altered. Plus this allows you to leave your furniture and other possessions in the house while it is being worked on.

Depending on your financial situation this option allows you to do the work on the house over many years instead of all at once. One thing that some home owners do when they are doing multiple renovations over many years is that they do some of the work themselves to save some money. These tasks should be limited to small demolition, cleaning up and painting. If you deviate away from these three things you start to open yourself up to problems that you will have to pay a professional to fix later. Also there is safety issue; if you start playing electrician you could hurt yourself or someone else.

If you want to add square footage adding an addition or several additions can easily be done, as long as you have adequate space on your property. Additions are an easy way to make your house more enjoyable and add value. It allows you to do something completely different than the rest of the house which would allow you to leave more of the original features in the existing house. This would allow you to bring a modern touch at a lesser cost then trying to reshape the whole existing interior.

If you have heritage laws where you live you might not be allowed to demolish the house and renovating might be the only option you have. Additions can allow you to do what you want, where a heritage society might not let you change much on the outside.

Permits for a new house are more expensive usually then the permits for renovations because of ever increasing development fees for all new buildings.

There are government grant in Ontario for raising the energy efficiency of the house from insulating to new furnaces. These grants can add up to a lot of money and are usually exactly what your house requires. They are not hard to attain, you simple need a pre renovation inspection by an energy auditor and a final inspection when your renovation project is complete.

By renovating an older house it allows you to keep the character of the house and the history of it. There are unique features in older houses, like stained glass and wood that you just can’t find any more. Sometimes taking a large older house and renovating it can add superior value to the resale of the house that you just wouldn’t get out of building a new house.

If you have to build a new house, you will be required to replace the septic system (if you have one) and sometimes you will have to drill a new well (if you have one). Renovating a house does not require you to do any of these things.

There can be a strong emotional attachment to an older house; it might be very difficult for the neighbourhood that the house is in to deal with the loss of this house. You could experience delays when applying for your building permit because it would first have to go through several committees and be open to public comment. Simply renovating the house can easily speed up the process; it will also put you in good standing with your neighbours and the community at large.

If you have an older house that is already a century old and has been properly looked after then there is no reason that the house should not last another century with proper maintenance and upkeep.

Look for part 2 of renovating vs. Demolition/new build

Part 2 will deal with the benefits of a new build.

If you would like to discuss this or any other topics in the construction industry, please feel free to email me at robabbott@villagebuilders.ca.

Or visit our website villagebuilders.ca

Rob Abbott

Operations Manager

Village Builders Inc.