Demolished
Like a circus trainer guiding an elephant, a truck pulled up in front of our house yesterday with a massive excavator in tow. A crowd formed across the street with passerby’s stopping to watch as the excavator was backed off the trailer, guided up our driveway and set loose on the house.
The excavator stood almost as tall as the house itself, but its scale remained in stark contrast to its delicate operation. I thought for sure it would function in a completely unsophisticated manner… like a child smashing through a sandcastle. However, it was far more elegant and the operator had far more control over it than I ever expected. He tore through the roof in a matter of seconds, but then delicately dismantled a wall brick by brick. He was also slow and methodical, ensuring no damage was done to the neighboring houses.
The demolition was accomplished by only 2 guys—one in the excavator, and the other on foot. The gentleman on the ground sorted the debris into various piles (wood, stone/brick, and metal) while the excavator knocked down walls and compressed the wood into the basement. At first I didn’t understand why he was compressing everything into the basement, but it’s actually quite obvious in retrospect. He piled all of the wood into the void, and eventually built himself a platform to drive on. I thought for sure the mammoth machine would collapse into the hole, but he drove into the living room without hesitation. The bricks and stone were be separated out and eventually hauled away, after which the wood was removed and dropped in the bin. So simple, yet so effective.
Most of the house went down yesterday, the rest came down today, and we’ll start excavating for the new foundation tomorrow. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be forming the footings on Thursday and pouring concrete on Friday.
Of course, I’ve been capturing photos via the webcam and have cut together a quick video of yesterdays events.
Post Tags: demolition, excavation, excavator
That’s certainly not something you see every day in the city of Toronto. It really is amazing how much control these guys have when tearing down a building.
— posted on August 27, 2008What a great project and one I hope to attempt in the future. I will be reading with keen interest.
Jeremy, did much of the demolished house get recycled?
— posted on September 15, 2008Thanks Annabel – we tried to recycle as much of the house as we could… for instance, all of the windows (except the older bay window in the front) were removed and given away, the hardwood floors were taken up and given away, as were the carpets in the basement. We had contacted Habitat For Humanity, but they didn’t want our kitchen! I thought for sure they’d take it, but they didn’t.
As for the rest of the house, the various materials were also separated out during demolition—great care was taken to ensure the bricks and stone were free of all debris (they’d actually remove any nails and screws that they found), all of the metals were recycled and the rest of more or less thrown away.
We had looked into a full recycling program (where they’ll literally take the house apart brick by brick), but it was incredibly expensive
— posted on September 15, 2008Neat project, your blog passed on by a friend that’s also renovating.
Kind of an unrelated question – what’s the song on the video?
Good luck with the “reno”
— posted on September 17, 2008-jk
Thanks Jarek – the track is called “E-Pro (Feat. Beastie Boys)”, which is a mashup of Beck and Beastie Boys, created by DJ Erb.
— posted on September 19, 2008