# Forum Home Renovation Demolition  DIY demolition Melbourne

## Field

Weighing up whether it's worth doing a DIY demo vs getting it done professionally. Can do the demo part no probs over time but wondering if the waste costs will end up being more than the whole job would cost if done by a demo company? 
2 bedroom weatherboard, hard plaster, tin roof - would this all go to the tip together or deposed of separately? There will be a lot of hard old timber framing,  joists , bearers, do people use this for firewood or something? 
Also assuming hiring someone with a truck to get rid of it cheaper than heaps of skips? 
Dealing with a few inches of toxic black dust in the ceiling of a hundred year old house also pretty hazardous I know!  
Thanks.

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## pharmaboy2

I wouldn't even think about it. 
1 hard work.
2 know where they can dump and what to sort in order to save on fees 
edit, I have no experience personally, I just know there are always lots of options to dump different materials and where

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## Marc

I agree ...
You can't compete with demolition "companies". They can sell the spoils, know all the tricks to avoid scrutiny, where to dump for free, and have heavy machinery to do it in record time. Not to mention the dangers of doing a demolition by yourself.

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## CraigandKate

Yeah I have been doing some demo myself and also had some done professionally on my renovation, honestly for the price of bloody bins you might as well pay the demo guys.

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## SilentButDeadly

A demo company would reduce your house to a mulched pile of hard waste in an afternoon. And a bare block by the following day. 
A careful demolition would reduce your house to a wide range of valuable recyclable and scrap products that others would happily pay for.  But it will take time. 
It's up to you which compromise you are willing to accept.

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## mudbrick

Save your time and energy for building the new place.

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## Field

Thanks guys, kind of what I expected. Just trying to scrounge around for savings  :Smilie:

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## Sir Stinkalot

> A careful demolition would reduce your house to a wide range of valuable recyclable and scrap products that others would happily pay for.  But it will take time.

  It also takes an age to dispose of your house via the weekly Council garbage pickup!

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## SilentButDeadly

> It also takes an age to dispose of your house via the weekly Council garbage pickup!

  Clearly nothing used is worth anything to most people these days these days. And yet every other person is complaining that everything is disposable and nothing is made to last. 
People are really strange animals.

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## Field

> Clearly nothing used is worth anything to most people these days these days. And yet every other person is complaining that everything is disposable and nothing is made to last. 
> People are really strange animals.

  I'm hoping at least the timber goes somewhere useful, if I lived on a farm I'd hoard it for sure!

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## mudbrick

> It also takes an age to dispose of your house via the weekly Council garbage pickup!

  It took long enough to dispose of the gyprock and YT from a little bedroom Reno in weekly lots  :Smilie:

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## Marc

When I need old Oregon or hardwood I go to a demolition yard. They do recycle everything including doors and windows and tiles and bricks. Even Baltic pine floorboards. It all depends on the company I suppose. Some may go the expedient way. I don't know, but in Sydney there are several places I can go for old stuff. One of them employs a couple of guys just to de nail old timber. In fact I built an entire house out of their second hand timber a (long) while ago, but they are still there. 
In Warragamba there is a timber recycling yard that recovers timber from large structures and sells them at incredibly high prices. 
Not everything is throw away.

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## SilentButDeadly

> I'm hoping at least the timber goes somewhere useful, if I lived on a farm I'd hoard it for sure!

  If the contractor uses a machine like an excavator then virtually nothing is saved. It all gets smashed down, squashed, crunched up and then loaded into tip trucks and sent to landfill...

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## toooldforthis

> Weighing up whether it's worth doing a DIY demo vs getting it done professionally. Can do the demo part no probs over time but wondering if the waste costs will end up being more than the whole job would cost if done by a demo company? 
> 2 bedroom weatherboard, hard plaster, tin roof - would this all go to the tip together or deposed of separately? There will be a lot of hard old timber framing,  joists , bearers, do people use this for firewood or something? 
> Also assuming hiring someone with a truck to get rid of it cheaper than heaps of skips? 
> Dealing with a few inches of toxic black dust in the ceiling of a hundred year old house also pretty hazardous I know!  
> Thanks.

  sounds like there is stuff there for recycling - weatherboards, structural timbers, tin roof; you can probably sell this for $ but is a trial.
 in Perth demolishers fall into two categories: strip anything valuable, try and sell from site otherwise take to storage yardbulldoze the lot into trucks for dumping 
ballpark Perth figures around $20k, obviously varies - asbestos etc 
I reckon you might save $10k if you did it yourself but will take ages, you need storage areas when stripping, safety issues if buyer removes etc etc

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