Demolition Time - The Destruction of my old Garage

I finally got around to getting a demolition crew in to remove my old garage. The old girl has done me well over the years and after half a century, needs to go to make more room in the yard since the new shed arrived a year or so back. Once the old girl is gone, then I can get my council approval signed off and start using my new shed. Then I can' get really stuck into my own model railway!

Here is the old girl waiting for the crew:

So here we are at day one of the removal (Wednesday), where the demolition crew salvage what they can and use man power only to demolish things. They arrived prior to the allotted time, which was good. So at 07:00 sharp they got straight into the job. This was of course the removal of the asbestos sheeting that lined the ceiling and fascias of the old garage. They had lined the back of their tipper with heavy black plastic and donned their protective garb of disposable paper outfits - nice blue it was too. Dust masks were also in use.

After the asbestos was removed and taken away to the safe disposal area, they stripped down any salvageable parts like, timber, copper pipes, steel pipes, window frames, glass and such. They then took it all away to their salvage yard.

They then started the demolition proper – tiles on the roof were stripped off and thrown into the old garage as no one wants 50 year old concrete roof tiles.

Once these tiles were gone, they got into the roof beams and cut them up and took them away for salvage - good hardwood there, no doubt.

Once the roof came down, it was sledge hammers and brute force to take the walls down.

It would have been about 1:00 pm that they had her broken up as much as the fellas could with their brawn and sledge hammers.

On the Thursday, they again were there on time at 7:00 am. This time a big truck pulled up with a huge skip on the back. In the skip was the big Yanmar ViO55 excavator. It was amazing watching the driver of the excavator maneuver the excavator out of the skip and take all his scoops out with the boom. He definitely had a deft touch.

In a separate truck cam the Bobcat S130. Then they got into it and finished the job. The excavator would knock down and break up the material, with the Bobcat taking it out to the big skip. The excavator boom was lke an extra arm of the operator, as he could skim the lawn picking up rubble without damaging it at all - very good operator indeed.

By the time I got home after work, all that was left was memories.

So on the Friday I placed a call to the certifiers and they came around on the following Wednesday and gave me the all clear - yippee!!

So I now have the council certification for my shed, and I can start on my train shed – well actually, I can start a few projects. The main project is my train shed, so that will entail a lot of things, but here are some of the ones to come before any of the track gets laid:

1. Get shed builders to come and put in some whirly birds and a ceiling – I've decided I want a proper ceiling.
2. Get sparky in to wire the place. I’ll be going for a separate power box and panel in the shed as well.
3. Install insulation batts in ceiling and walls.
4. Line the shed with plywood – both walls and ceiling.
5. Complete the electrical wiring and install air-conditioning.
6. Move modelling workbench into shed and setup/build all the bits for this workbench to function, such as storage and shelves.

The other projects to run in parallel and kill whatever bank balance I have (the actual word will be “had”) will be to get a patio installed to cover from the shed to the house – this of course will give the crew somewhere to sit and rest. And the third project is to finally get a carport out front and a concrete driveway – I’m over the dirt and dust.

So you can see I’ll be busy for a bit. 

But busy can be fun and talking of fun, here are a few videos I made of the final demolition of my old garage. Some are from the video camera where I finally figured out how to do time lapse and the majority are from the still camera where I pressed the old trigger release many, many, many times. 

This one is on the Wednesday where the blokes used good old manpower for the destruction:

Demolition Time - The Destruction of my old Garage - Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnrsDYLMVx0

And these are the ones from Thursday when the mechanical power was brought into action:

Unloading the Excavator for my Garage Demolition:
http://youtu.be/WL7yGk34xaI

Demolition Time - The Destruction of my old Garage - Part II
http://youtu.be/O1nbSmidNRw

Bobcat Loading the Skip with my Old Garage no. 1
http://youtu.be/zrwShiuWq9Q

Bobcat Loading the Skip with my Old Garage no.2
http://youtu.be/Km050dSw7b8

Bobcat Loading the Skip with my Old Garage no.3
http://youtu.be/_97EpHSMbTM

Excavator Knockdown I
http://youtu.be/BWfGUeQVMt4

Excavator Knockdown II
http://youtu.be/dJ3O8UJG77k

Bit of Bobcat Boogie
http://youtu.be/eAgwfy0fUM0

Slab Cracking Time
http://youtu.be/3ok9PpunWNE

di di di di NEWS FLASH

I'm pleasantly surprised.

I have received my quote this afternoon for the demolition from one of the guys over at Virginia, a few suburbs away. I had been expecting a lot more since it, the old brick garage (shed), has the internal ceiling done in .......  A s b e s t o s.

But it looks like I will get away with it for under $4K. So add some temporary landscaping to flatten out the block for a little while, looks like $5,000 will see the old thing gone.

So once I get to work in the morning I'll be getting on the end of the Edison device and cranking the handle and placing a call and seeing if they can get it done yesterday!

Then I can arrange the relevant day off to film it all :o)