Demolition excavation and foundation removal around Wichita

When a house, garage or shop comes down, the part above ground is the quick part. What's left is the excavation side of demolition: a slab or basement to break out, footings and an old sewer stub in the ground, maybe a pool or a buried tank, and a hole that has to be filled so the lot can be built on or mowed. This page covers that dig-out work around Wichita. Tearing down the building itself is a separate trade.

What a demolition dig-out usually includes

Wrecking permit and utility disconnects

In Wichita and unincorporated Sedgwick County, demolition runs through MABCD, the same department that issues building permits, using its wrecking permit application. The form asks for the contractor's name and license number, the square footage, whether there's a basement, whether asbestos or lead paint is present, and which connections serve the structure: electrical, water, gas, sewer, propane and septic. Those answers decide most of the excavation plan, so have them before the machine shows up. Permits and inspections go through the MABCD portal, and questions go to 316-660-1840. Towns with their own permit offices handle this differently; the before you dig in Sedgwick County checklist lists who to call in Derby, Haysville and Andover.

The utilities have to be shut off and disconnected by the companies that own them before anyone digs near the service lines. Gas and electric services feed through the yard right where the dig-out happens, and a capped sewer stub at the property line is easy to break with a bucket. On the sewer side, MABCD's sewer permit application includes a seal-off permit for a building that's being wrecked or moved, filed by a licensed sewer contractor. A Kansas 811 locate is still required: utility lines that serve neighbors, the street or the alley may cross the lot even after the house's own services are cut.

The asbestos step before anything comes down

The wrecking permit asks whether asbestos is present, and for some buildings that question comes with a state deadline. KDHE enforces the federal asbestos rule for demolition (the NESHAP, 40 CFR 61.145): before a commercial or public building is demolished, the owner or operator has to have it inspected for asbestos and send KDHE a written demolition notification at least 10 working days before work starts, even when the inspection finds none (KDHE asbestos program). Any asbestos found has to be removed first by a KDHE-licensed abatement company with certified workers, which files its own notice 10 working days ahead. So on an old shop building, office, church or strip of storefronts, count two weeks of state notice into the schedule before the excavator is booked.

A house is different. KDHE says homeowners working on their own residence aren't covered by the Kansas or federal asbestos rules. That doesn't make the material harmless: older building materials can contain it, and Brooks is the only one of the county's two C&D landfills that takes asbestos-containing material, by appointment (details below). If you aren't sure whether your project counts as residential, KDHE's asbestos line is 785-296-6024.

Filling the old basement

The biggest excavation decision on most teardowns is what goes back in the hole. A basement filled with loose dirt and chunks of wall will keep settling, and on Sedgwick County clay a soft spot under a future slab or driveway shows up as cracks and a low corner. If anything will be built on the spot, the fill should be placed in compacted lifts like any other pad (see fill dirt vs. structural fill), and many builders want the old basement floor broken so water can't collect in a concrete tub under the new house. If the lot is going back to grass, the top of the fill still needs clean dirt and topsoil so the yard drains away from neighbors. Lots in a mapped floodplain need a floodplain development permit before fill goes in.

Pools and buried tanks

An in-ground pool is a big concrete or fiberglass bowl full of water. Removing it is part demolition and part fill job: the shell is broken out or broken up enough to drain, and the hole is filled the same way as a basement. Tell the next buyer or builder where it was. Buried fuel tanks are a different case. Kansas' storage tank act doesn't apply to heating oil tanks serving a single-family home, or to farm and residential motor fuel tanks of 1,100 gallons or less used for noncommercial purposes. Tanks outside those exceptions, like an old commercial fuel tank, can fall under the state's storage tank rules, and any old tank should be emptied and handled by someone who does it regularly before an excavator touches it.

Hauling concrete and debris

Sedgwick County lists two construction and demolition landfills, both in Wichita: CDR at 4250 W 37th North and Brooks Landfill at 4100 N. West St. Both take concrete, brick and masonry, soil, rock, rubble and other building debris; neither takes hazardous material, garbage, tires or drums and containers. Asbestos-containing material is accepted only at Brooks, by calling to schedule a drop-off. The county says to call ahead for prices. Clean concrete with no rebar, wood or trash mixed in is cheaper to get rid of than a mixed load, so the way the crew sorts debris on site shows up on the bill. See what drives excavation cost for the rest of the line items.

Who to hire

Breaking out a basement and hauling the rubble is full excavation crew work: an excavator with a breaker or thumb, dump trucks, and someone who knows compaction (see hiring excavation contractors in Wichita). Ask who pulls the wrecking permit, who schedules the utility disconnects, where the concrete is going, and how the fill will be compacted. Call the number on this page and tell us what's coming out of the ground.