Bronx, NY
Demolition Contractor in the Bronx
We strip out apartments, houses, shops and commercial floors across the Bronx. Most of that work happens in a six-storey building where the one elevator is shared with everyone who lives there, or on a block where the container sits in somebody's driveway.
- Based at1869 Muliner Ave, Van Nest
- WorkingBronx, borough wide
- Call(929) 205-0575
The building decides how the job runs
Not the other way round.
Taking a wall down is the quick part. In the Bronx the difficulty is the elevator, the lobby and the block.
A prewar apartment building on the Concourse or in Van Nest has one passenger elevator and no freight. Every bag of plaster rides in a protected cab in the windows the super releases, or goes down the stair, and the lobby is the only way in and out for a hundred households. A two-family house in Morris Park has a driveway and a container, and a neighbour three feet away who can hear every hammer. A co-op has an alteration agreement that sets tighter hours than the city does.
We plan all of that before we plan the demolition. We walk the space, work out how material gets from where it is to the curb, and build the sequence backwards from there. That is what keeps a job from stalling on day three.
What we take on
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01
Interior
Interior Demolition
Full and partial gut-outs. We take a space back to whatever your next stage needs, whether that is bare brick and joists or a clean shell with the services left live.
Interior demolition
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02
Commercial
Commercial Demolition
Storefronts under the train, offices, restaurants under apartments and the warehouse floors of Hunts Point and Port Morris. We work to a fit-out schedule and around the tenants who are staying.
Commercial demolition
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03
Residential
Residential Demolition
Prewar apartments, two-family houses and the freestanding houses of Riverdale and the east Bronx. We work to your building's alteration agreement, its approved hours and its rules about the elevator and the lobby.
Residential demolition
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04
Concrete
Concrete Cutting and Removal
Basement slabs, boiler pads, yard slabs, curbs and openings. Cut clean, broken down to pieces the route out can carry, and taken out.
Concrete cutting and removal
Bronx rooftops
Before anything comes down
Two things decide when a Bronx job can actually start, and both of them sit ahead of the work.
The asbestos assessment. For a building put up before 1 April 1987, the city wants an asbestos assessment on file before the Department of Buildings will issue a permit for work that could disturb material. A DEP certified asbestos investigator does the inspection and files Form ACP-5. Nearly all of the borough's prewar apartment stock and most of its houses predate that date, so on most jobs this is the first gate rather than an unusual one.
The hours. Construction work runs 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM on weekdays. Anything earlier, later, or at the weekend needs an After Hours Variance from the city, and that has to be filed a few business days ahead. Your building may set narrower hours still, and in a six-storey building with a hundred households it usually does.
We will tell you where your job sits on both of these on the first call, before you have spent anything. How permits and building access work sets out the whole sequence.
How a job runs
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Step 1 of 5
We walk the space
Ideally with you there. We look at what is coming out, what is staying, what the walls and floors are actually made of, and how material will leave the building.
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Step 2 of 5
You get a scope and a number
Written down, itemised, and tied to a sequence. If something is likely to change the figure once the plaster is off, we say so then rather than later.
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Step 3 of 5
We protect, then we start
Lobby, elevator cab, hall, stair, floors and anything staying in the space. Protection goes in before the first wall does.
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Step 4 of 5
We clear as we go
Debris does not pile up in the apartment waiting for the end of the job. It leaves in the windows the building gives us.
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Step 5 of 5
You get the space back clean
Swept, clear, and ready for whoever is next in. We tell you what we found behind the plaster, because your next trade will want to know.
Where we work
We are based on Muliner Avenue in Van Nest and we work across the Bronx.
The borough is not one job. A Grand Concourse apartment has one elevator shared with a hundred households and a Landmarks certificate ahead of its permit. A Throgs Neck two-family has a driveway and room for a container off the street. A Hunts Point warehouse has a loading bay and a floor plate you can move around. Each changes the crew, the sequence and the price.
Common questions
What drives the cost of a demolition job in the Bronx?
Less than people expect comes from the demolition itself. Most of the figure is decided by four things.
- How material gets out. A passenger elevator you can book in windows is one price. A walk-up stair is a different one, because it takes more people and more time. A house with a driveway and a container off the street is different again.
- What you are taking out. Plaster on lath or on brick, which is most of the prewar stock, is slower than drywall on studs. Concrete is slower again. Tile on a mortar bed adds hours.
- When you can work. A job that fits inside the standard weekday window costs less than one that needs evenings or weekends, because after-hours work needs a variance and a crew outside normal hours.
- What has to be protected. An empty house needs very little. An occupied apartment building with a shared lobby, one elevator cab and a working corridor needs a great deal.
We price against the actual space rather than a rate per square foot, because in this borough the square footage is rarely the thing that decides it.
How soon can you start?
Usually sooner than the paperwork does.
If your job needs a Department of Buildings permit, the asbestos assessment has to be filed first, and the permit follows that. If your building is a co-op or a condo, the board and the managing agent will have their own approval to give, and that can take longer than the city's.
Call us early and we will tell you which of those apply to you. On work that needs none of it, we can start quickly.
Do you work in buildings that are still occupied?
Yes. In a Bronx apartment building that is the normal case rather than the exception, and in a two-family it is usually the family downstairs.
It changes how the job is run. It does not change whether it can happen. Protection goes further, dust control matters more, noisy work gets grouped into agreed windows, and debris moves when the building lets it move instead of whenever it suits us. We agree all of that with the super and the managing agent before we start.