House Demolition

Thanks to our neighbour, we now have some pictures of the demolition.

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Soil troubles

With the old house removed, the site engineer had a chance to inspect the soil on which the new house will be built.

According to Mike Holmes, builders like to take advantage of millions of years of natural compaction by digging down to earth that has not been previously dug up and tamped down. If they don't do this there may be problems with shifting. The foundation has to take the weight of the house, but it also has to stand up against the pressure of the earth around it; if a foundation is going to shift, that pressure is what will cause it.

However, once our old house was removed it became apparent that it was in fact built on loose soil with lots of organic matter in it. No wonder the old house sank in one corner. In fact, I watched them dig up the soil in the corner where the old house had sank, and it was black, stank like sewage and contained logs.

In other words, when they built the original house in the 50s, they did not bother dig down to undisturbed soil and furthermore, it looks like they just piled in old trees and other junk to fill up the space. As this organic matter decomposed, it created a void and the house sank. While further sinking is not usually likely in an older home, given the amount of organic material I saw in the soil, it would not have surprised me, especially after we added extra weight to the house with an addition. All in all, I feel a lot better digging the whole place up.

Here today, gone tomorrow

Demolition of the house began on Thursday, and they wasted no time. The entire house was gone by the end of the day. Unfortunately, we do not have any pictures of the demolition because we were both stuck in meetings all day and could not find time to get down to the house while it was being demolished.

These pictures show the house with all of the wood and mechanical material gone, but the foundation is still partly there. At least the concrete slab and some of the foundation walls are present. Today, they removed the remaining material.

Services capped, permits in hand

Yesterday, the gas company finally came and shut off the gas, the city came and took their water meter out of the house, and Uniform dug up the sewer line and capped it. All of these are prerequisites to getting the building and demolition permits. With those out of the way, Uniform was able to get the permits today.

Uniform is now trying to organize the contractor to demolish the house, and they hope to begin demolition on Monday or Tuesday.

Below are two pictures of the beginning of construction. The first taken earlier this week and the second taken Thursday.

services located

Over the last few days, Uniform has been by to fence the rear yard and locate the water, sewer, gas, and phone lines underground. No word yet on when the permits will come, but today the rental hot water tank was removed, which was the last thing holding us back from demolishing it. Demolition should now take place any time within the next two weeks.