Demolition Contractor in Danbury, CT

What gets torn down in Danbury

Danbury was built around the hat trade. By 1887 about thirty factories in the city were turning out five million hats a year. Most of them sat along the Still River. The last hat plant closed in 1965.

What is left downtown from those years is brick and heavy timber on old slabs and stone footings. Main Street carries a National Register historic district, listed in 1983. It runs about three quarters of a mile through downtown. A property inside Danbury's local historic district can carry an extra review step before demolition.

Outside downtown most of the housing is newer. State records put the median Danbury build date in the early 1970s, and the lots are small. In Germantown, Hayestown and Beaverbrook the usual teardown is a detached garage, a shed or an old addition. Garage and shed demolition in that kind of space is mostly about the approach and protecting what stays standing.

How does a demolition permit work in Danbury?

In Connecticut the demolition permit comes from the town or city building official. In Danbury that is the building department. We tell you what the city will ask for and line the job up around it. Danbury publishes its own minimum list for a demolition application, so you can see the paperwork up front.

That list asks for letters showing every utility is disconnected. It wants the certified mail receipts from the adjoining property owners, and the disposal site for the debris. It asks for the asbestos side to be handled, which the health department regulates.

A building close to the street or to the one next door needs the public protected. Danbury asks for a fence at least eight feet high around the work. Connecticut also requires notice to the state health department before a building comes down, filed at least ten days ahead. On the jobs that call for it, a licensed asbestos inspector surveys the building first.

The statewide list of Connecticut towns with a demolition delay ordinance does not show one for Danbury. Several towns around it do have one. State law still lets a town adopt a waiting period of up to 180 days. Ask the building department before you set a start date.

What the ground is like to dig in Danbury

Danbury sits in the foothills and the ground climbs with them. Elevations in the city run from about 378 feet to about 1,050 feet above sea level. Under the topsoil is glacial till over schist and gneiss, so boulders and ledge turn up close to the surface. In this part of Connecticut the soil survey maps deep soil and shallow to bedrock soil on the same hillside.

The other layer to plan for is hardpan. The dense till under a lot of Connecticut yards sits roughly 20 to 40 inches down. Water perches on top of it from late fall into spring, which is where a wet cellar hole comes from. Footings here have to get below the 42 inch frost line, so the dig goes through all of it.

Danbury is wetter and colder than the shoreline. Weather normals at the Danbury airport show close to 50 inches of rain a year. Bridgeport on the coast gets about 43, and its winter average stays above freezing. Danbury's December to February average runs below freezing, so the ground here locks up harder.

When a house comes down, the old slab and footings come out with it. The cellar hole is filled and graded so the lot drains.

Clearing land and working near water in Danbury

Danbury grew up along the Still River. It rises near the New York line west of the city and runs north to the Housatonic. After the 1955 floods the downtown stretch was straightened, deepened, widened and enclosed in a concrete channel. Low ground and feeder brooks still run through the rest of the city.

In Connecticut a wetland is set by soil type, not by standing water. A brook that only runs part of the year still counts as a watercourse. Danbury's Environmental Impact Commission is the city's inland wetlands agency. Clearing, grading, filling or digging near a wetland or watercourse needs its permit.

A dry looking wooded lot out toward Miry Brook can still be regulated ground. The south end of Candlewood Lake is in Danbury, and the lake was filled in 1928 for a hydroelectric plant. Lake lots drop steeply to the water and the approach is usually narrow. A teardown or a clearing job there gets planned around access.

Out in King Street, Great Plain, Long Ridge and Pembroke the work is more often trees and brush clearing. Dead ash comes off the ground with it. Excavators handle that, and the stumps come out roots and all.