Shed Removal and Demolition in Chicopee, MA

Nobody moves a shed out whole. It gets taken apart where it stands and carried out in pieces, and how easily it comes apart is most of what you are paying for.

Wood sheds are the common one here and the most predictable. Roof off, walls down, floor up, and the material sorted as it goes. Metal sheds come apart fast, often in under an hour, because they were bolted together in the first place. Vinyl and resin kits sit somewhere between.

Price runs $300 to $900 for most. An eight by ten wood shed in fair condition is at the low end. A twelve by sixteen with a shingled roof, a concrete pad and thirty years of contents inside is at the top.

Empty it first

A shed full of mowers, fuel cans, paint and garden tools is two jobs. Clearing the contents is priced separately from taking the structure down, and the fuel and chemicals cannot be loaded at all. Emptying it yourself beforehand is the single biggest saving available on this job.

What the material split looks like

Wood, metal, brick and concrete were all shut out of Massachusetts disposal on 1 July 2006 under 310 CMR 19.017. So a shed does not travel as one load. Clean lumber goes to a wood processor, the roof metal and any framing steel goes to a scrap yard, shingles go to construction and demolition, and the concrete pad, if it comes up, goes somewhere else again.

Pressure treated lumber is the awkward one. It is wood, but it is chemically treated and cannot be composted or chipped, so it travels as construction debris rather than as clean wood. Most shed floors and skids are pressure treated.

Roofing shingles usually contain asphalt and have their own route. On an older shed, especially a pre 1980 one, it is worth mentioning the roof material, since some old rolled roofing and some cement board siding raise questions that a hauler should answer honestly rather than guess at.

The pad and the permit

Ask whether the concrete pad is coming up, because that is a separate line and a much heavier one. A wood or gravel base usually goes with the shed. Also worth a call to the building department before booking anything large: Chicopee, like most Massachusetts cities, wants a permit for demolition of a structure past a certain size, and it is a short conversation rather than a hurdle.