The Demolition

My demolition has commenced...

Here's our old house. Was rented our for just under two years so not quite emotionally attached to it as if it was a place I've lived in. 

It was a good house. 3 bedrooms, 2 living areas, deck, underground cellar / storage. Could quite easily have renovated it to live in but we decided a knock down rebuild was the best course for us. Can't wait to live in a brand spanking new house!

The kids were excited to see the excavator roll in. Sadly, the kids only got to see it roll in and park there. They were supposed to start demolishing 2:30pm on a Thursday. My wife took the kids there to watch but they must have been busy at another site because there was no action that day.

By the time we went to have a look again the next day, it had already been knocked down. They must have started very early in the morning! Poor neighbours.

The demolition is expected to finish this week. Everything is to be removed. All in all, it will have taken four weeks from start to finish. Six, if you count the time waiting for council permits. And before that, we had to get the gas & electricity abolished, tree removal permits, and new crossover permits, so for anyone starting new... get on to this ASAP!

Our demolition company is Online Demolition. The service has been impeccable to date. Lovely to deal with and always responds to my emails within a day (if not straight away!). Cost was around $15k inclusive of asbestos and large tree removals.

Other companies I tried contacting were Hughes Demolition, Vic Wide Demolitions, Demolition Depot, Whelan the Wrecker... none of which called / emailed me back! The only other quotes I managed to get was Gravity Demolition and CDE Developments. Both were slightly cheaper (not by much!) but I am more than happy to pay the premium for fabulous service (Thanks Sally!)

Here's a run down of the Demolition process:

1. Abolish Services: Sign up with Dial before you Dig and fill out the form for your house address. It will then contact all the service providers with services on your block.. water, electricity, gas, and telephony. The service providers will then email you a detailed plan of what they have in your block and phone numbers to contact for abolishment. Water needs to stay connected for the build. Gas and Electricity needs to be abolished. This means they cut away and take your meters. Allow 3 weeks to get this done. 
2. Tree Removal Permits: We had two large native trees in our backyard. One that was in the build area and the other had huge roots protruding out so we applied to get them removed. I've read some people just get them cut down without permits but I think it's the right thing to do to get the permits. Our application was approved subject to replanting 4 trees, at 1.5m high when planted, and 10m high when fully mature. We need to maintain the trees for at least 2 years. Not that bad considering we would obviously need to plant trees of some sort anyway. 
3. Crossover Permit: I assumed that Porter Davis was going to apply for the new crossover but I was wrong. This could have proven to be the deal breaker for me as I didn't realise that the front of the house did not have sufficient clearance for a crossover. Because we are on a corner block, the crossover needs to be at least 10m from the corner, effectively meaning our crossover can only be one side of the house, bordering with the neighbour. However, there is a large tree on the nature strip there and the 'bend' of the crossover breaches the trees root space. The council guy had to get special approval from parks and gardens. Long story short, we got it approved in the end (took 2 weeks) but this could have been bad. 
4. Demolition Permits: Some people apply for this themselves to speed up the process but I am sure all demolition companies will apply on your behalf. 
5. Asbestos:  Asbestos gets removed first. This is normally in the eaves and roofing. If they find more asbestos, you will need to pay more to get it removed. I've read one person had asbestos buried under their house so the whole demolition had to stop for the asbestos to be removed and relevant air quality clearance certificates granted. 
6. House stripping: This is where the house gets stripped bare of any valuables. They take anything that can salvage and resell later for a profit. Some people hold 'demolition sales' over a weekend where people can just come and dismantle & pay for whatever they want (eg. doors, oven, cooktop, tiles, etc). I'm not sure how this would affect the price for the actual demolition though. 
7. Demolition: The actual demolition only takes around 2 hours. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see it because they didn't do it when they said they were going to be there. The rest of the process is removing all the remains, clearing all the vegetation and any excavations that need to be done. Word of warning: The demolition starts really early! 7am is the legal time to start works and they like to start 7am sharp. I gave my bordering neighbours advanced notice but I think another neighbour down the street wasn't too happy with the early starts and complained to the council. I can fully understand as I'd be pretty annoyed too. Luckily the were in and out with the excavator within a week so it's not too long to bear. 
8. Sewage Capping:  The sewage needs to be capped so muck doesn't run off into the sewers during construction. There's one story of concrete running down into the sewers and costing the owner north of $50k to clear it. Online Demolitions arranged it on my behalf so it was pretty straight forward. Cost: $715.00
9. Certificates: That's it. Once everything is done, you get the plumbing certificate for the sewage capping, air clearance certificate for the asbestos, and a Compliance Certificate for the demolition. You need to give the compliance certificate to Porter Davis so they can arrange for the second soil test. Apparently they also need to allow for the soil to settle so they must at least wait only 3 or 4 weeks after demolition before any construction can begin. 

I didn't have to mark my water meter myself. Online Demolitions took care of it

The water meter after demolition. All good and still working! :)

Somewhere in there is my capped sewer pipe...

This was the only problem during my demolition. This is the remnants of what used to be a large satelite dish in my backyard. Apparently it is too close to the easement so they were worried their 20 tonne excavator might cause quite a bit of damage if they tried. Will have to get the landscaper to dig this out. 

The finished product! A nice big clean canvas for Porter Davis to work with. My lovely neighbours are okay with the fence falling over. Will replace after construction since Porter Davis need to remove sections to put in the garage anyway.