Buffalo House Demolition, From Asbestos Survey to Final Grade

What the City of Buffalo wants before it issues a permit

Buffalo's Department of Permit and Inspection Services refers every demolition application to the Preservation Board, which checks whether the property adjoins a National Register landmark or could itself be eligible for designation. A 30-day waiting period runs from the application date, and only an emergency skips it. That clock is the reason we tell city owners to start the paperwork before anything else.

Depending on the type of job, the city may also ask for:

• the asbestos survey, and proof of abatement if the survey found any
• preservation approval
• insurance certificates and a performance bond equal to the full cost of the work
• a copy of the contract
• a release, filled out by a Master Plumber, stating that water and sewer service to the address has been terminated
• proof of rodent baiting done no more than a week before the start date

The sewer side can need its own abandonment permit from the Buffalo Sewer Authority as well. None of these items is hard on its own. The catch is timing: baiting has to be recent, while the survey, any abatement and the utility removals can take weeks, so the order you tackle them in decides your start date. Outside the city, each town's building department keeps its own list, and that's the one to follow.

Asbestos comes first, whatever year the building went up

Under the Labor Department's asbestos regulation, 12 NYCRR Part 56, no building or piece of one comes down until it has been surveyed. On paper, three kinds of structures skip that step: farm buildings, anything whose original construction began on or after January 1, 1974, and structures that an engineer, architect, building or fire inspector, or other official has declared structurally unsound in writing. In practice, subdivision 56-5.1(c) closes most of that gap. A survey-exempt building headed for contracted demolition is presumed to hold asbestos and comes down under the full rule unless a prior survey, abatement records or other paperwork the department accepts show it's free of asbestos. That's why the department's summary sheet says surveys are required regardless of construction date.

The inspector, who carries a state asbestos certificate, reviews any plans and records, then walks the building. Anything suspect is treated as asbestos until lab results say it isn't. The rule's list of typical materials reads like a tour of an older house: aircell pipe wrap and boiler insulation in the basement, plaster and joint compound on the walls, floor tile, linoleum and mastic underfoot, vermiculite insulation, and shingles, felts and cement-board transite outside.

When the survey turns up asbestos the work would disturb, an abatement contractor holding a state asbestos license takes it out, and no demolition starts until that's done. Copies of the survey go to the building department issuing your permit and to the Labor Department's Asbestos Control Bureau district office. Our schedule is built around the survey and abatement dates, not the other way around.

Cutting off gas, electric, water and the sewer lateral

Every service to the building has to be permanently disconnected, not just switched off, before a machine touches it. If National Grid supplies your electricity, its removal-of-service form for demolitions asks for every meter number at the address and warns that pulling the drop and meter for a residential teardown can take 16 to 20 days from when the request arrives. You can't pick the date, and the account holder pays for usage until the meter is gone. If your town wants a utility sign-off form, National Grid asks you to send it along with the request. Gas needs the same treatment: the gas utility has to disconnect the service, because a closed valve at the meter isn't a disconnect.

Water and sewer get dug up and capped in the ground. In the city, the old sewer lateral is cut back near the main, where practicable, and plugged to the Buffalo Sewer Authority's abandonment detail, and a Master Plumber signs off that water and sewer are terminated. Suburban rules run on their own track. In Amherst, the building department wants written confirmation from each utility that service is disconnected and checks it independently before issuing a permit. Capping the sanitary and storm sewers there takes a separate Plumbing Department permit, and a septic tank has to be pumped out and filled with stone or sand.

Porches, additions, slabs and the smaller teardowns

Not every job is a whole building. Taking off a rotted porch, a failed addition or an attached garage while the house stays lived-in is partial demolition, and it's slower, more careful work than a full teardown. The cut line has to be planned so the remaining wall, roof edge and foundation stay sound, and the exposed side of the house needs to be closed up against weather. The paperwork doesn't shrink with the job. Rule 56 covers the portion being removed, and Code Rule 753 treats partial wrecking of a structure as demolition, so the 811 notice still applies.

Below grade, we break out basement walls, footings, slab floors, old concrete cisterns and buried pads, then load the concrete for hauling. Some jobs are only flatwork: a cracked patio, a heaved sidewalk or the asphalt on a commercial lot.

A few common jobs have their own pages with more detail. A detached garage and its slab are covered under garage tear-downs. Filling in or pulling out an in-ground or above-ground pool is its own process, explained under pool removal and fill-in. Worn-out asphalt or concrete drives go to driveway rip-outs.

After the teardown: haul-off, backfill and a lot that drains

Debris gets sorted as it comes down, because the loads go to different places. Clean concrete, block and brick can go to a crusher instead of a landfill, and metal goes for scrap. Wood, drywall, shingles and mixed debris go to a construction and demolition disposal site. Sorting on site keeps as much rubble as possible out of the landfill.

Whether rubble can stay in the hole depends on the town. Amherst's written procedure is blunt: all rubble and debris must leave the site, every excavation and depression gets filled to grade with clean, compacted fill, and tanks above or below ground are emptied, cleaned and removed, or, if a buried one stays, cleaned and filled with inert material. Plan on that standard even where a town is looser. Broken block buried where a future footing lands leads to settlement, and a basement slab left intact under fill holds water like a bathtub.

We backfill in lifts and compact each one, so the lot doesn't sink after the first wet spring. Then comes topsoil and a final grade that sheds water away from the neighbors. From there the lot is ready for hydroseeding or for the footings of a new house.