Tore down the old shed (N. Illinois)

Tore down an old shed at my place the other day, figured I'd share some info and pictures.

Some background: The shed was about 20'x35', give or take. The roof was shingles, covered with aluminum. Dirt floor. As you can see, it's seen better days. This past year, it has really started to lean badly and has started falling apart.



Worst part of it was that it was leaning towards a utility pole and guide wire. This made me nervous. The line feeds power to my neighbor and me. I had thought about trying to puch over the shed myself with a front-end-loader, but the close proximity to that pole caused me to bring in the experts.



Called around to a couple of excavators I knew of. Friend of a friend finally got back to me, took a look at it, and said he could knock it down, dig a hole, push it all in, burn it, and cover it all up. I couldn't seem to find anyone else willing to take a look at it, so I went ahead and signed him up.

Came out the next week, and went to work:







I gotta admit, the guy was skilled. I had my doubts if he could bring it down without the whole mess falling against that utility pole, or any of the nearby buildings. But, he brought it down with no damage to either.

Next, he dug a deep hole, pushed it all in, and lit a match to it. While it was burning, we dug out the concrete footings and got ready to push them in. Supposedly, the hole is deep enough that the concrete won't work its way back to the surface over time.



The result, an empty lot, smooth dirt and ready for grass seed.



The trackhoe and operator were there for about 4 hours, and a skidsteer and operator were there for about 2-3 hours moving dirt around. Final bill=$1000. Sounded kind of high when he first quoted it to me, but after thinking about the per-hour cost of the equipment, I guess its about right.

Anyway, glad to have that done and over with, and not have to worry about the shed coming down every time the wind picked up.

Did you remove the aluminum sheets for recycle?

I hate to see the old buildings come down, but realize their comes a time when they must but disposed of. Neat looking old corn crib next to it, take care of it. Chris

Cheap if it had hit the pole what would that price have sounded like. About 10 years ago I charged a lady $125.00 to a lockset on here front door, everyone thought I was robbing her. If I had messed up then I would have to bought a new door blank at my expense. oh by the way she had paid over $2500 for her new solid Mahogany front door set up

That's a pretty reasonable charge. I pay $150 transportation charge everytime I have my excavator come in. $90/hour for the hoe, and $40/hr for the skid steer. I try to have at least a few days work for him when he shows up.

$90 and $40/hr. is really cheap! A good excavator operator can do amazing things and makes it look easy. It takes a lot of experience. Dave

That's a good price, I'd be happy with it, especially with a skilled operator. Finished product looks good, hole and a fire certainly saves you from removal costs and no harm to the ground nearby.

I like to look at old buildings to see what if anything can be done to what is existing to make some use out of it again, sometimes the work required is prohibitive, so demolition is the only answer.

With that in mind, an old wood building like that one has the potential to supply some materials for a new shed or similar, salvaged roof materials, siding and framing lumber can help reduce costs for a simplistic, but still useful building to keep something out of the weather. Still takes ones time to do this, but it's kind of a good feeling if one can actually re-use materials, still need to have the time and an extra hand to do it though. I think it's always worth consideration, even for limited salvage, materials are so darned expensive today.

I think those rates--$90 and 40 are DIRT CHEAP. I am in this business, and I NEVER work by the hour, someone is always willing to work cheaper. I only work by bid (people want to know the FINAL cost always anyway). I think $1000 for the above job is still a fairly good deal, I wouldn"t do it for that unless it was right next door to where my equip already was. I would quote it at $1250.

Working by the hour is a good way to go out of business--work by the job and ALWAYS do a GREAT job--people will pay what you ask (within reason) if they know it will be done RIGHT.

A friend of mine bought a used 100 ton road crane for putting up modular homes. Asked him what his rate was and he said $3000.00 a day, up to nine hours! They pulled up to a site one day, started picking up nails before getting the unit in position and the man that hired him asked what they were doing. David says " I"m saving myself from flat tires (and these tires are huge!)and costing you time and money". The fellow immediately put all his help out there cleaning up! I might be hiring him myself to take down an old oak tree or two at my house. I"ve got one that"s over five and a half foot in diameter and losing dead limbs constantly. This is the same tree they cut a limb off of that was 24" in diameter on the final cut! Sometimes ya just gotta bite the bullet and get somebody to do your work for you. Keep all our folks in Texas/Louis. in our thoughts and prayers cause they got a long way to go in recovery!

Nope. I've recycled all the ones that have blown off over the years, but it was going to be too much of a PITA too pull them off while the excavator was working. Figured it wouldn't be worth the hassle.

(quoted from post at 09:02:21 09/14/08) I think $1000 for the above job is still a fairly good deal, I wouldn"t do it for that unless it was right next door to where my equip already was. I would quote it at $1250.

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Ha. Funny you should say that--the excavator we used has his home/office only about 3 miles from us, so I'm sure that didn't hurt.

(quoted from post at 08:09:49 09/14/08)
I think it's always worth consideration, even for limited salvage, materials are so darned expensive today.

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Yup. I have one other shed that is the same size, but it doesn't have shingles, and its not quite as rotten out. Most importantly, it's not near any other buildings or poles. I'm going to do what I can to make sure the lumber from that one gets reused, if at all possibble.

The shed in my post--I just needed that down and gone ASAP.