Demolition in Shawnee usually starts with one of two calls. Something the storms wrecked is still sitting there. Or an old house on family land has to go before anything else happens. We run out of Ada, about 47 miles south, with a Cat D6 dozer and a 30,000-lb excavator. A tracked skid steer comes for the close work. Moving machines that size costs real money, so Shawnee jobs work best with full scope on the ground. Two structures, a slab, and a cleanup beat one shed. Here is how we take a structure apart.
Where the property sits changes the job here. Inside the Shawnee city limits, the city requires a demolition permit. City storm-repair guidance says a city licensed demolition contractor must pull that permit. The work we want sits outside those limits, on acreage around Bethel Acres, Pink, Dale, and Macomb. That is county ground, and it reads differently. Tell us the address and we will tell you which side of the line it falls on. Call (580) 344-7473 for a free estimate, or see our other work around town.
Tell us about your property and we'll get back to you fast.
On April 19, 2023, an EF2 tornado ran 15.5 miles across Pottawatomie County. The National Weather Service tracked it from southeast of Bethel Acres, through Shawnee, and on toward Aydelotte in Lincoln County. The damage path measured up to 2,300 yards wide. The same evening put an EF3 on the ground south of Pink and another EF2 north of it. Shawnee took two EF2 tornadoes in the first four months of that year. Houses got attention first, because that is where people live. Barns, shops, grain bins, and older mobile homes waited. If a building on your place has stood open since that night, three springs of weather have been in it.
Storm-broken buildings come apart differently than sound ones. Nothing sits square anymore, and a wall can drop before you touch it. We take them from the outside with the excavator and keep people clear of the shell. Metal goes in one pile, since tin and frame steel are worth hauling to scrap. Wood and shingles go in another. That pile burns on site where the county allows it, and gets hauled off where it does not. Pottawatomie County can be under a burn ban, and Oklahoma Forestry Services posts which counties are. Then comes the part people forget. Tin and nails scatter across pasture and end up in tractor tires and hay.
Plenty of acreage around Shawnee carries a house nobody lives in. A 1950s farmhouse, a rental that burned, a single-wide empty since the last tenant left. This is Cross Timbers ground, the same sandy post oak country we work at home in Pontotoc County. Sand moves when you disturb it. A cellar hole or a crawlspace gets filled in lifts and packed down. Pushed full and left, it sinks later. An old farmhouse also leaves a septic tank and often a water well. Both get dealt with before the spot is safe to mow or build on. Old sites down in the North Canadian bottom stay wetter, so we plan the fill around that.
A single-wide teardown is its own kind of job. The frame and axles under it are scrap steel, so part of the metal pays its own way out. Skirting, blocks, and tie-down anchors come out of the ground too, or a mower finds them later. A home that took wind damage rarely rolls out whole, so it comes apart in pieces on site. Once the debris is gone, the hole gets filled. Then the spot gets graded and leveled so water runs off it. Some owners set a new home or a shop back on that same pad. Others want the pasture back. Either way it ends with dirt that drains.
More about the service itself is on our Demolition page, and everything we do around town is on the Shawnee service-area page.
Answers specific to demolition work around Shawnee. Something else on your mind? Call us.
Cedar taking the pasture, a pad to build, an old house to take down, or a pond you have been thinking about for years? Call or send the form. We come look at the property with you, and the estimate is free, from the owner who runs the machines.
Tell us about your property and we'll get back to you fast.
