Bye Bye House - Demolition Day

On the way back from a meeting, I did the usual drive by detour and surprise, surprise the Terminator crew had arrived and already crushed most of the house - a whole one day earlier than they said. So much for getting the cool door in the kitchen before hand. It's now gone to god. Must say its a somewhat strange feeling to see the house you have lived in for many years transformed into a pile of twisted rubble.

But the termination of the house was a massive "sign" saying to us that it is actually happening. One massive surprise was how huge the land looked without the house and they haven't even finished taking the trees or the studio down. We are expecting flat earth within 3 days.

It will be interesting to see the level of the site once the site is clear and levelled. We may opt for some clean fill on the site to ensure the house is not below the natural contour of the land and set to low. I'll need some professional advise on this. You'll notice that Metricon display homes all seem to be on a elevated position probably for marketing and street presence purposes. May have to get some clean fill in to address this.

A couple of lessons in the demolition process:
(1) if you choose to allow Metricon the arrange demolition you will pay a lot more (but you will do a lot less)
(2) Get three quotes and ensure that they know what they are doing (ours did)
(3) Arrange the Council asset protection permit yourself it will save about $1K in metricon fee's
(4) Arrange temporary site and tree protection yourself this can be star posts and mesh fencing (about $80) all up
(5) Abolish all services Gas, Electric, Telephone and internet Cable, Water has to stay on as they need it for demolition and construction (But disconnect the main pipe going to the house and cap the supply so there is still water at the front tap. I did this my self, dug the hole and cut the pipe and capped it off. Plumber would have charged around $180, I did it with a shovel and a $18 wrench and $2 cap form Bunnings)
(6) Cash is king, quotes varied by $5000.

Three days later the house is history, Think I saw my missing USB drive crushed into the soil - I wonder of it will still work?


Metricon have been advised so Thunderbirds are go.