Demolition cost estimator
What Will It Cost to Tear Down Your House? Run Our Numbers
We don't price a teardown by the square foot. We count the containers the house will fill. This page shows you exactly how, and lets you run the same math on your own house.
By Scott "Schneur" Rosenberg, licensed General Contractor
Try it
Demolition and hauling estimator
This runs the same math we use on a single-story house, concrete block or wood frame. The outside wall length matters most, so measure it if you can.
Not measured? We're using about 159 ft for the shape you picked. Type your own number if you have it.
- Concrete (block, footings, slabs, tile, stone)
- about 105 cubic yards
- 6 × 20-yard containers
- Mixed debris (walls, ceilings, roof)
- about 120 cubic yards
- 4 × 30-yard containers
- Demolition and hauling estimate
- $15,000 to $19,000
- about $10 to $13 per sq ft for this house. Use it to compare, not to price another house.
Not included: permits, utility disconnects, septic pumping, asbestos, pools and anything unusual on the lot. Two-story houses and hand demolition change the math. This is a planning number, not a quote.
Why we count containers: a firm price, not a moving estimate
On a demolition job, two costs dwarf everything else: hauling and dumping the containers, and the labor to break the house down and load them. Both follow the same thing, the amount of material that has to leave the lot. More block wall means more containers to dump and more hours to fill them.
So when we measure the walls, footings, slabs and roof and count the containers, we're pricing the actual work. That lets us give you a firm, written price for the scope we measured. A per square foot number is a guess, and guesses tend to grow once someone starts swinging a hammer and finds out how much wall the house really has.
The only things that can change a firm price are conditions nobody could see before the walls came open, like a buried tank or asbestos inside a wall. If that happens, we put it in writing before any extra work starts.
What can turn up during a demolitionSquare footage can be badly misleading
Most of what comes off a South Florida teardown, by weight, is concrete: the block walls, the footings and the slab. The slab grows with the floor area, but the walls don't. A plain rectangle has the least wall for its size. Give the same house an L, or a few rooms sticking out, and the floor stays the same while the block walls and footings grow.
Height matters too. The block goes past the ceiling to the top of the tie beam, so a house with 9 foot ceilings usually has about 10 feet of block. And the wall between the house and the garage is usually block as well. A lot of older Florida houses had the garage converted into a room years ago, and that block wall is still there.
How we count it
The block walls
Length times height of every concrete block wall, outside walls and interior block walls, at 8 inches thick, which is standard block here. Broken concrete takes up more room than it did as a wall, so we add 45% and convert to cubic yards.
The footings
The same math for the footing under those walls. We figure about 18 inches wide by 12 inches deep for a typical single-story house unless the plans say otherwise.
The slab, driveway and patios
Square feet times thickness. Most South Florida house slabs are about 4 inches in the living areas, and garage slabs can be thicker. A house on a crawl space has no slab: we count the block walls around the crawl space instead, and the wood floor goes with the mixed debris. Heavy finishes count as concrete too: a tile roof adds about 1 inch over the roof area, ceramic tile floors about half an inch and marble or granite about 1 inch over the floor. All the concrete goes in 20-yard containers.
Everything else
Interior walls, ceilings and the roof are mixed debris: wood framing, plaster, drywall and roofing. We figure their volume, add about 30%, and count 30-yard containers. Older houses with plaster over furring strips run lighter than fully framed walls. On a wood frame house, the outside walls go here too: we figure them as 2x6 studs plus plywood over the ceiling height.
Two houses, same size, different price
Both are single-story concrete block houses of 1,500 square feet, with 9 foot ceilings, 10 feet of block, a 4 inch slab and a wood roof. No garage, pool or driveway.
| Plain rectangle | Rooms sticking out | |
|---|---|---|
| Outside wall | 160 ft | about 199 ft |
| Concrete containers (20-yard) | 5 | 6 |
| Mixed containers (30-yard) | 4 | 4 |
| Demolition and hauling | $13,500 to $17,500 | $15,000 to $19,000 |
| Per sq ft | about $9 to $12 per sq ft | about $10 to $13 per sq ft |
Same floor, same roof, more wall. That's why we measure the walls before we give a number, and why a per square foot price from someone who hasn't seen the house doesn't mean much.
What the estimate leaves out
- Permits, utility disconnects and the sewer cap, which we price as separate line items
- Septic pumping and abandonment
- Asbestos testing and abatement
- Pools, seawalls and anything unusual on the lot
- Two-story houses and hand demolition, which change the math
Questions about the estimate
How accurate is this demolition cost estimate?
It runs the same container math we use, so for a plain single-story block house it's a good planning number. It can't see what's inside your walls, how full your lot is or what the access is like, so the real price comes from a site visit and a written quote.
Why do you price by containers instead of square feet?
Because the two biggest costs of a teardown, dumping the containers and the labor to fill them, both follow the amount of material that leaves the lot. Counting containers prices the actual work, so we can give a firm quote instead of an estimate that changes once the job starts. Square footage can't do that, because two houses of the same size can have very different amounts of block wall.
What is the tie beam and why does it change the wall height?
The tie beam is the poured concrete band at the top of a block wall that ties the walls together and holds the roof. It sits above the ceiling, so the block wall is usually about a foot taller than the ceiling height inside the house.
Does the estimate include permits and the septic tank?
No. It covers demolition and hauling. Permits, utility disconnects, the sewer cap or septic pumping and abandonment, and asbestos are priced separately so you can see what each part costs.
Want the real number?