Demolition

Salt Lake requires a permit for structural demolition. Only a licensed contractor can pull one — and a junk removal company, by definition, isn't one. So when you call a hauler about a load-bearing wall you get one of two answers: they turn it down, or they do it without a permit and don't mention that part.

The second one is the expensive answer, and you don't find out until later. Unpermitted structural work surfaces during a sale, on an appraisal, or at an inspection, and then it's retroactive permitting, an engineer's letter, opening finished walls back up to show an inspector what's behind them, or a price reduction because the buyer wants the problem gone. Any of those costs multiples of what the permit would have.

Black Diamond holds Utah general contractor license #14181665-5501 and pulls the demolition permit as part of the job. It's not an upsell and it's not a line item you have to ask about.

A house is a stack. The roof presses down on the walls, the walls press down on the floor, the floor presses down on the foundation. Some walls are just dividing up space — those are partition walls, and pulling one out is a Tuesday. Other walls are part of the stack. Take one of those out with nothing holding the load and the ceiling sags, the drywall upstairs cracks, and the door frames stop closing right. Sometimes that week. Sometimes next winter.

A load-bearing wall usually runs perpendicular to the floor joists above it, often down the middle of the house, and it lines up with something solid in the basement — a beam, a post, a footing. If you can't tell, that's normal. Telling is the job.

The work is straightforward once someone knows what they're looking at: temporary support goes in on both sides of the wall first and picks up the load, the wall comes out, and a beam or header takes over permanently. The temporary support doesn't leave until the permanent one is in and carrying.

Framing is the trade that puts the stack together in the first place. Twenty-seven years of it means reading a floor system from the basement and knowing what's above it before anything gets cut — where the load comes down, what span a header has to cover, which post is doing real work and which one somebody added in 1994.

That is a different skill from hauling. Anybody can carry the wall out to the curb. Knowing whether it should have come out at all, and what has to be in place before it does, is the part that keeps the house square.

Not asbestos. Black Diamond isn't certified for it and won't guess at it.

This matters more here than in most markets. A large share of Salt Lake County housing predates 1980, which puts asbestos in play in popcorn ceilings, old floor tile and the mastic under it, pipe and duct wrap, and some siding and roofing. None of that is a problem while it's undisturbed. Demolition disturbs it.

So on an older house the sequence is: get it tested before anybody opens a wall. If it comes back clean, the job goes ahead. If it doesn't, it waits for a certified abatement crew and we pick up after them. Anyone willing to swing a hammer at a 1958 ceiling without asking that question is taking a risk with your house and your lungs, not just their own.

Interior walls, load-bearing or not. Exterior walls. Decks, including the big ones with footings and stairs. Sheds. Detached garages. Basement finishes down to the studs. Kitchens and baths taken back to a workable shell.

Debris goes out on the same job. You aren't scheduling a demo crew and then a hauler and then eating the days between them.