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)

Another Tradie Arrives

So today I had yet some more Tradies come round to do some work.

First I had Marshall Batteries come round. Geez - they just don't make batteries like they used to. That last one of mine they replaced this morning (was from Marshall as well) only lasted me eight years - shocking, absolutely shocking!

But this arvo was the visit from a Tradie that will progress the train shed - the Sparky.

So this bloke pops round and we have a discussion about the new shed and what I want to do with it for wiring and air-con. You know, how many lights, how many power points, the air-con, the separate power board in the shed from the house etc. So after that important information session, I got him to disconnect the 240 volts from the old shed so I can proceed with demolition.

Easy enough job for him - it's his job after all. The old cabling came across the yard and in through the besser brick wall at the back of the house into the rear stairwell. It actually went up in the wall for about a metre before coming out near the power box. The red arrow is the cable in question.

First switch he flipped got the power off, a pair of side cutters cut the old cable, a pair of flat nose pliers untwisted the cable joins and re-twisted the remaining wires. Back into the protective plastic junction box and screwed back into position. Power on and he proves the power is no longer going to shed - ie that the correct lines have been severed.

Old cables get ripped out of the wall and we are done!

All I have to do is get some Spak Filler and fix the inside and outside holes and it's done. 

No bill in the mail here either. The nice chap said leave it a month or so until we do the wiring in the shed - combine it all into one bill - I like this fella.

Friday the 17th Part II

or another heading would be - "Dang, I forgot the photos".

OK, they might not mean much, but it is of the old bits on the shed. So photo one is of the water out from the shed. It was only to carry out the old washtub water, and went out to this concrete junction (blue arrow points our way) with a small steel grate on top. From there it went down into the ground to meet up with the clay pipes that went off to where ever they go...

The red marking shows the area dug up to find and do the capping off.

Once this was done, they turned off the water at the street and capped off the inwards flow of water to the shed. When I came out to inspect it, it had me bamboozled as to why they cut the copper pipe above ground (red arrow).

Makes perfect sense when you think about it. They were about to dig a hole in the ground to then cut the pipe and cap it off. They cut the above pipe so there was very little water left in the pipe to run into the pit.

So they dug their pit, cut the pipe and then soldered a cap on the end of it. Water was then turned back on and all checked for leaks. Since all was good, they then back-filled the hole. Did a tidy job too.

 Then it was time for me to say goodbye and the famous words came back "the bill will be in the mail".

So that was Friday's Tradie's work.

Yup, It's Friday

Being that it is Friday, the plumbers turned up as arranged - on the dot of 07:30 this morning.

They have of course left by now, but the copper pipe has been welded off at below ground level and the old clay waste water pipe has this weird and wonderful plastic and rubber gadget clamped into it as below ground level.

So the shed is now isolated from the water systems - tick.

Next step is to get the shed disconnected from the electrical power systems. I have looked and it definitely not a job for me, so arrangements have been made and a Sparky will show up on Monday to do the disconnections.

I'll also have a chat to him about connecting up the new shed when it comes time and wiring in all the fluorescent lights I have for the new shed, plus air-conditioner of course.

Short and Sweet

OK, after a hiatus of 12 months of basically sitting on my fat ar$e and doing nothing about my own layout (but still working on the club one of course), I have started preparations for getting rid of the old shed so I can get final signoff on the new one and therefore be able to start using it!

Step one was the fixing of the locks on my roller doors on the garage so I could put valuables in there. Well, the Locksmith has now come, worked and gone today. Garage is lockable again and I have moved some more gear in there.

Step two is to get the services to the old shed removed. Well, I've just made the appointment with the Plumber and he'll send his bloke around this Friday morning to cap the water in and the water out of the old shed.

Then there is the sparky to arrange and the demolition crew - all in due course. But at least I've started progress again.

Make use of the Day Off

So I had today off since I had a quack appointment around noon - not worth going into work. So after the visit to my GP, it was time to attack the paving some more.

 

First I lifted and moved a pile of them to near the old chook shed for use later in putting down a decent floor in the little shed. It will do as a nice mower house I reckon since the chooks are now gone.

Then it was time to start lifting all the remaining ones and let them dry off a bit so as to make the removal of the dirt, sand and such before stacking them.

By the time I got back to the first one I'd lifted, it was dry and warm.

Then it was time to go move the remaining pavers. I added another layer or two near the chook shed and the rest went to down the side of the house.

So this left the old paved area nice and ready for demolition man to remove the concrete when I am eventually ready to arrange it - much more work to do emptying out the shed.

I suppose my next bit of work will be to move the stack of un-used tiles to the garage.