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- Occupied buildings
Demolition without closing the building
The tenants keep trading. The floor still comes out.
You cannot empty a building because one suite needs a new floor. So we work around the people who are still in it — containment first, air returns covered, debris out the same job.
Free, no-obligation on-site quote.
Why this is the hard version of the job
An empty building is easy. Yours is not empty.
Demolition in a shell is a scheduling problem. Demolition in a building that is still trading is a containment problem, and you are the one who hears about it when it goes wrong.
The suite that needs the floor is rarely the only suite. There is a tenant on the other side of the wall who signed a lease that says they can trade. There is a receptionist two doors down whose desk is under a supply vent. There is a lift lobby everyone shares and a loading dock with a booking sheet.
None of that is in the demolition scope, and all of it lands on you if a crew treats the job like an empty shell. The complaint never says “the tear-out was poor”. It says the whole third floor smelled of concrete, or somebody’s stock came out of the box grey, or the noise started at eight on a Tuesday with no warning.
So the work that decides whether this job goes well is not the work that removes the floor. It is the hour before it, and it is the part of the quote nobody reads.
The order it happens in
Six things, and the first three happen before anything comes up.
Most of what goes wrong in an occupied building goes wrong because the sealing was done after somebody complained instead of before the work started.
Ricky walks it
Which suites are let, which are empty, where the returns are, which doors have to stay usable and what hours the building will give us. That conversation happens with you, on site, before there is a number.
The zone is drawn
Where the work stops and the trading building starts. That line goes in the quote, because it is also the line where our cleaning stops.
Plastic and returns
Containment seals the work zone and the air returns inside it get covered. Before the first tool runs. This is the step that decides the whole job.
The floor comes up
Grinding and shot blasting run to vacuum. Hand tools at the thresholds and the shared doorways, where a machine would take the frame with it.
Load-out on your route
Out the way you told us, at the hours you gave us. The debris goes on the truck, not into a pile in a corridor your tenants use.
Plastic down, slab swept
The containment comes down at the end, not in the middle. You walk it with him before he pulls off the site.
Step one costs nothing and tells you more about a contractor than any brochure.
Get a Free QuoteThe step that gets skipped
Covering the returns is the whole difference
Sealing a doorway is obvious and everybody does it. Covering the air returns inside the work zone is not obvious, and it is the reason one job ends quietly and another ends with the building manager taking calls for a fortnight.
Leave a return open and the building’s own air handling becomes a delivery system. It lifts fine concrete dust straight off the floor we are working on, pulls it into the ductwork, and puts it out again through the diffusers in rooms nobody has set foot in — into the vents, over the equipment, and onto whatever is sitting on the desks.
That dust does not look like demolition when it lands. It looks like a grey film on a monitor two floors away, and by the time anyone connects it to the floor job it has been through the system for a day.
So the returns in the zone get covered before the first tool runs, and grinding and shot blasting run to vacuum so there is less to lift in the first place.
- Returns inside the zone covered
- Doorways and openings sealed
- Grinding run to vacuum
- Shot blasting run to vacuum
- Thresholds worked by hand
- Containment down only at the end
01
Said at the walkthrough, not on the last day
What is inside the line, and what is not.
The containment line is a scope line as well as a dust line. Here is which side of it everything sits on, before you sign anything.
Sealing the zone
Containment plastic, the doorways and openings, and the air returns inside the work zone covered before the work starts.
The tear-out itself
Floor coverings and adhesive off the slab, or the interior stripped out, with vacuum on the grinding and blasting.
Load-out and haul-off
The debris leaves with us on the route and at the hours you set. Not a second contract with an outfit you have to chase.
The slab swept
The zone is handed back swept and ready for the next trade, and you walk it with Ricky before he leaves.
Cleaning past the line
Dust cleanup beyond the work zone is not included unless it is quoted. Ask for the neighbouring suite to be wiped down at the walkthrough and it goes on the number.
Structural work
Anything structural, anything load-bearing, anything needing a permit we did not price is not our lane, and you hear that at the walkthrough.
The asbestos test
Old vinyl tile and black cutback mastic can hold asbestos. Arranging the test and paying for it is the customer’s, not ours, and it is not in our number.
The new floor
We take the old one out and hand over a slab. Your installer puts the new one down.
Every one of those is easier to hear now than on the last afternoon of the job.
Call for a WalkthroughWhere this comes up
Four buildings, four different problems.
The floor above is still working
A tenant changeover on one floor of a building where the others are let. Shared lift lobby, shared ductwork, and a landlord who cannot tell the other tenants to take a week off. The returns and the lobby route are the whole job here.
The unit next door is open
One unit going back to shell in a row that is still trading. Noise hours matter as much as dust, because the shop on the other side of the party wall has customers in it while we work.
Nothing can be in the air
Kitchens and clinical spaces where an open return is not a complaint, it is a problem. Out-of-hours work and a sealed zone, so the space opens the next morning the way it closed.
The racking is not moving
A section of slab coming up while the rest of the building runs. Phased so the aisles you need stay open, and the load-out does not cross the path of your own traffic.
Describe the building and which parts stay open. That is usually a two-minute call.
Call (501) 259-7997Straight answers
What building managers ask first.
Can you work outside our trading hours?
Yes. Nights and weekends when the space cannot lose a business day. Tell Ricky at the walkthrough which hours the building will actually give us — including the dock and the lift — and the job is scoped around them rather than around us.
Say it before the number is written, not after. Working hours change how a job is sequenced, so a schedule agreed at the walkthrough is a schedule that holds.
What do I tell my tenants?
Tell them the dates, the hours and which doors are affected — those are the three things they will ask you, and you will have all three from the walkthrough.
What we can tell you is what the work zone is, where it is sealed, and when the containment goes up and comes down. What the tenants are told, and when, stays your call. You know your leases; we do not.
What if dust gets past the containment anyway?
Then it is a conversation, not an argument, because you already know where our line is and what was and was not in the number. That is the point of drawing it at the walkthrough.
What we will not do is imply the whole building is included and then argue about it on the last day. If you want the neighbouring space covered too, say so and it gets quoted.
Will the price move once the floor is open?
No. The number does not move unless you change the scope in writing. Not because there was a second layer of adhesive, and not because the tile turned out to have a mud bed under it.
That is exactly why the job gets walked before it gets priced. A number written off a photograph is a guess, and a guess is what gets re-priced in the middle of the week — in your building, with your tenants watching.
Something is wrong a week after you leave.
He comes back and fixes it.
You call the same number you called the first time and you get the same man — the one who walked the building and priced the work. Not a claims process, not a different office, not somebody who has to be told from the start what the job was.
Ask the sixth one on the phone. He would rather answer it now than on day three.
Call for a WalkthroughBoth services, same rules
Floor or interior. The building still stays open.
Occupied-building work is not a third service. It is how the two we do get run when the place cannot be emptied.
- Floor demolition in a let building — tile and thinset, VCT and cutback mastic, glue-down hardwood, carpet with pad and tack strip, epoxy and coatings back to bare concrete.
- Interior demolition in a let building — non-structural walls, ceiling grid and tile, millwork and casework, restroom and break-room strip-outs, fixtures and old equipment.
- One contract for the tear-out and the haul-off, so nothing is left in a shared corridor waiting on a second contractor.
- Across Arkansas and West Tennessee — we travel for commercial work, and a building three hours from the yard is scoped the same way.
Next step
Tell him which parts of the building have to stay open.
Free on-site walkthrough within two business days of your call, and a written number the same day he walks it. He looks at the returns and the doors on that visit, not on the first morning of the job.
Free, no-obligation on-site quote.
Ricky answers (501) 259-7997