Demolition and site clearing
Demolition is a hauling problem wearing an excavator costume. The machine work is a couple of days; the cost is in what leaves the site and what it costs to put it somewhere. Which is why the first question we ask is what can stay.
What comes down
- Houses, shops, barns, and light commercial structures
- Concrete slabs, foundations, curb, and sidewalk
- Asphalt pavement and base
- Orchard and vineyard removal, including stump and root grinding
- Underground tanks, septic tanks, and old wells, abandoned to county standard
- Interior selective demolition ahead of a remodel
Crush it and keep it
Broken concrete and asphalt are not waste, they are aggregate that is already on your site. Where the spec allows recycled base, we crush on site and put it back under the new pavement. That deletes two truck movements per yard, the export and the import, and it is usually the single largest saving available on a demolition bid.
When the spec does not allow it, the material still goes to a recycler rather than a landfill, which costs less at the gate.
Before the machine shows up
Utilities disconnected and capped by the utility, with the paperwork. Asbestos and lead survey on any structure old enough to need one, and abatement by a licensed abatement contractor before we touch it, because that is a separate license and a separate liability from ours. Air district notification where it is required. A demolition permit from the city or county.
We will tell you which of those are on our scope and which are yours in writing at bid time. The one thing nobody should do is start a demo on a 1960s building on the assumption that it is clean.
Fire rebuilds and orchard turnover
The North State does two kinds of demolition more than anyone else does. One is fire: slabs, foundations, and burned debris on a lot that has to be certified clean before anything can be rebuilt on it. The other is orchard turnover: pushing, piling, and grinding an old block so it can be leveled and replanted, on the narrow calendar between one harvest and the next planting window. We do both, and we plan both around the deadline rather than around our schedule.
What demolition runs
| Item | Range |
|---|---|
| Residential structure, demolished and hauled | $5 to $14 per SF |
| Concrete slab removal | $4 to $10 per SF |
| Asphalt removal | $2.50 to $6 per SF |
| Orchard removal, push, pile, and grind | $1,800 to $4,500 per acre |
| Concrete crushing on site | $12 to $24 per ton |
| Septic or underground tank abandonment | $2,500 to $8,000 each |
Unit ranges are what this kind of work has been going for in the Sacramento Valley, put here so you can sanity-check a budget. They are not a bid. Quantities, access, haul distance, and the spec move every one of them.
Questions we get
No, and you should be careful with any demolition contractor who says they do without a separate abatement licence. We coordinate with a licensed abatement contractor, wait for the clearance, and then demolish. The survey and abatement are their own line and their own schedule.
Often, and it is worth asking. A sound slab can become the base for what goes in next, and a driveway that is in the right place is worth more left alone than removed and rebuilt.
Two to five days on site for the machine work on a typical single-family house, plus the haul, plus whatever the abatement clearance took ahead of it. The permit and the utility disconnects are usually the long pole, not the demolition.
Backfilled with clean material, compacted, and graded to drain, so the lot is buildable rather than a basin. That is in the bid unless you tell us otherwise.
Photos are stand-ins until our own job photos are up: public domain images from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Park Service, plus freely licensed photos from Wikimedia Commons (CC0 and CC BY-SA 4.0).
Request a bid: demolition and site clearing
Scope, rough quantities, the town, and when the site is available. If there is a bid date on it, put the date and time in and we will confirm receipt the same day.
- The yard
- (530) 555-0142
- Bids and plan sets
- bids@northstateconstruction.com
- Where we work
- Butte, Glenn, Tehama, Colusa, Shasta, Sutter, and Yuba counties
- Yard at 4180 Midway, Chico, CA 95928
CSLB Class A General Engineering · license pending, expected June