Plain-English definitions for the terms that come up on a demo or dirt job in central Illinois.
No jargon for its own sake — just the terms that actually affect your job, your permit, and your bill, explained the way we'd explain them standing in your driveway.
National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants — the federal rule that governs how asbestos is handled during demolition. It sets when a pre-demo asbestos survey and a 10-day notice to the state are required. Single-family homes (four units or fewer) are generally NESHAP-exempt; larger and commercial structures are not.
Our demolition work →An inspection of an older structure before demolition to find asbestos-containing materials — old siding, shingles, floor tile, and pipe wrap. Structures built before about 1980 are the ones to check.
Our demolition work →Uncontaminated broken concrete, brick, rock, and soil that can go to a CCDD fill site instead of a landfill. Clean fill disposes cheaper than mixed debris, which is why keeping the concrete stream clean lowers cost.
Concrete & foundation removal →Taking a structure apart in pieces — to save materials, protect an adjacent structure, or remove just part of a building. Slower and more careful than knocking the whole thing down.
Interior & selective demolition →Bringing a structure down with heavy equipment — an excavator or dozer. The fast, standard method for most barns, garages, and outbuildings.
Our demolition work →Carefully hand-dismantling a structure to salvage lumber, beams, and barnwood instead of crushing it. Takes longer but recovers reusable material.
Barn demolition →The per-ton charge a landfill or transfer station charges to accept debris. It's a real cost driver on a demo job — the more that goes to the landfill instead of a clean-fill site, the higher the bill.
Our demolition work →Illinois' free utility-locate service. You call JULIE (or dial 811) before you dig and the utilities send someone to mark buried gas, electric, water, and communication lines so nobody hits one.
Excavation →Value recovered from steel and metal — a grain bin, a mobile-home frame, structural steel — that can be sold for scrap and applied against the removal cost, lowering the net price.
Grain bin & silo removal →The two common farm silo types. A Harvestore is the tall blue glass-fused-to-steel silo; a stave silo is built from stacked concrete blocks banded with steel hoops. Each one comes down a different way.
Grain bin & silo removal →Filling an excavation — a removed pool, a basement, a foundation void — in layers (lifts) and compacting each one so the ground holds grade and doesn't settle later.
Pool removal →A cheaper alternative to full inground-pool removal: punch holes in the bottom for drainage, break the top of the shell down 18–36 inches, then backfill and compact. Must be disclosed to future buyers.
Pool removal →Ask Levi — the man running the machine, not a call center. Straight answers, free on-site estimates.
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