I started with an old asbestos-roofed garage, concrete with pre-fab sections for the walls. My plan was to simply remove the roof, take it to the local tip, then recover the sections of concrete to use them for other garden projects.
First mistake: Removing the steel garage door and taking to a scrap metal merchant before I started. The door and associated wood frame was adding a deal of strength to the structure as a whole, however I didn't realise that at the time, because I didn't know how unstable the rest of it was.
Second mistake: There was a huge amount of ivy to remove from the roof, about a foot thick should have cut the trunk that was feeding it some months before I started to let it die off, might have reduced the weight.
Third mistake: Didn't actually remove all the ivy before I started. I had good reason, because I couldn't reach it all from the side of the garage and didn't trust the roof to walk on, but I realised I should have tried harder with this as it would have made the garage less likely to collapse under the weight. My plan was to remove a panel, then, when I could reach the next bit of ivy working from inside the garage, remove the next panel and so on.
Forth mistake: Cutting all the bolts securing all the panels in one go. I hadn't realised the thing was so rickety that the roof panels were doing some of the job of keeping the garage up. They were keeping the steel roof supports square, and that was in turn helping to keep the uprights that the supports were connected to vertical.
So some way into the work, after I had recovered just three roof panels whole, it became apparent that the whole thing was on the brink of collapse, possibly with me underneath, so I switched strategy, donning respirator, and just started hitting the thing with a sledge hammer until it all collapsed. At that point, not wanting to leave bits of panel lying around for the kids to muck about with I decided to get on and start wrapping it up, leading to:
Fifth mistake: Wrapping the panels in 1000-gauge poly in freezing temperatures and having to resort to a hair dryer to dry out the areas where I was putting tape. This added at least a couple of hours onto the job.
I estimate the materials cost (poly, duck tape, bolt croppers) to add up to around £140, so although the council charge nothing to take it, complying with their requirements is certainly more costly than I anticipated. Also, most of the panels are now broken and have to be disposed of, about 2 tonnes in all. Ooops!
-S.
First mistake: Removing the steel garage door and taking to a scrap metal merchant before I started. The door and associated wood frame was adding a deal of strength to the structure as a whole, however I didn't realise that at the time, because I didn't know how unstable the rest of it was.
Second mistake: There was a huge amount of ivy to remove from the roof, about a foot thick should have cut the trunk that was feeding it some months before I started to let it die off, might have reduced the weight.
Third mistake: Didn't actually remove all the ivy before I started. I had good reason, because I couldn't reach it all from the side of the garage and didn't trust the roof to walk on, but I realised I should have tried harder with this as it would have made the garage less likely to collapse under the weight. My plan was to remove a panel, then, when I could reach the next bit of ivy working from inside the garage, remove the next panel and so on.
Forth mistake: Cutting all the bolts securing all the panels in one go. I hadn't realised the thing was so rickety that the roof panels were doing some of the job of keeping the garage up. They were keeping the steel roof supports square, and that was in turn helping to keep the uprights that the supports were connected to vertical.
So some way into the work, after I had recovered just three roof panels whole, it became apparent that the whole thing was on the brink of collapse, possibly with me underneath, so I switched strategy, donning respirator, and just started hitting the thing with a sledge hammer until it all collapsed. At that point, not wanting to leave bits of panel lying around for the kids to muck about with I decided to get on and start wrapping it up, leading to:
Fifth mistake: Wrapping the panels in 1000-gauge poly in freezing temperatures and having to resort to a hair dryer to dry out the areas where I was putting tape. This added at least a couple of hours onto the job.
I estimate the materials cost (poly, duck tape, bolt croppers) to add up to around £140, so although the council charge nothing to take it, complying with their requirements is certainly more costly than I anticipated. Also, most of the panels are now broken and have to be disposed of, about 2 tonnes in all. Ooops!
-S.
