Heavy duty cleaning / work crew recommendations.

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sgip

sgip

Well-known member
Had a family member pass away recently who was a full blown hoarder. Don't want to schlep down to Home Depot and hire a crew off of the street to get large items and great volumes of stuff taken out of the back yard - too much of a liability issue.

Anyone have a recommendation on cleaning crews they used that was able to handle a large scale job. No cleaning is needed, just haul out and put in dumpster stuff.

Thanks,

SGIP
 
When I moved I used 1800 got junk. I had a driveway full of stuff they hauled away. They measure how much of the truck u full up and charge u that way. It costs me 375.  They were done in like 25 minutrs
 
Will give them a try. This job will require unstuffing both sides of the house in order to get to the back yard, then taking out all of the junk back there. Hope they have a crew that can get heavy lifting like this done.
 
Here are some yelps

http://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=junk&find_loc=irvine%2C+ca&ns=1#cflt=junkremovalandhauling&sortby=rating
 
Soylent Red called one of the goups listed on the "Hoarders" TV show. One of their referred clean out crew is coming by to give an estimate. Red's sister took about 8 hours to excavate 2 feet into one room - one of 2 rooms, plus a garage, plus a 3500 SF back yard. A 2ft per 8hrs it will take over a year to purge it all. The best way to eat an elephant? Pay people to dine with you. My guess is that the clean out group will take two weeks to git 'r dun.

The minivan clean out took two dumpsters worth of junk. Amazing how much those cars can hold once you strip out the seats.

Find of the weekend: A letter from Home Depot saying how thrilled they were to have my father in law as a "preferred customer". HD and a few other area stores were enablers more than anything else. I'm expecting them to hang a B+W photo over their nuts and bolt aisle with the caption "in loving memory of our best client EVER" soon.

More as the saga unfolds. Soylent Red thinks the fee charged to empty the place (not clean, just haul) will be over $10k, I took the under. We'll see.
 
I'm so sorry your family has to go through this. Do you think the house itself can be salvaged or will it be condemned?
 
Plenty of deferred maintainance. $50k or so worth of repairs and updates will bring it to the 20th Century. The problem spun out of control in the mid 1990's so 20+ years of weathering has taken it's toll. Good bones for a house from the mid 1950's. The patient is going to make it.

Thanks,

SGIP
 
Two large rooms, 1 garage, and full back yard clean out is $11k. Work can be completed in 4 days - they say 3, but my guess is 4. Best money we're ever going to spend.

We're thinking of setting up a time lapse camera just to document the process. A 2-3 minute video of the de-crapification done to the house might make for an interesting view.
 
Is the cost the labor or the junk disposal?

Seems like you can hire some day laborers to clear the house and yard for less and then find out what those junk haulers charge for disposing a gigantic pile of junk.
 
irvinehomeowner said:
Is the cost the labor or the junk disposal?

Seems like you can hire some day laborers to clear the house and yard for less and then find out what those junk haulers charge for disposing a gigantic pile of junk.
Click to expand...

the fee that i paid 1800 got junk was all inclusive.
 
That's hauling and disposal.

Don't want uninsured day laborers going back and forth through the house. There's plenty of chemicals (Paints/Solvents) loose metal, spiders, etc - a "slip and fall" paradise.

The last time we cleaned out 1 room it took 4 people a week. We didn't wear mask/filters and each of us got sick for a week from dust and other nasties.

I wish I could pictures up, but Soylent Red forbids it. I'll paint a picture on the junk level. Walk into your garage. Get a step stool. Stand on it. Raise your arm as high as it can go. Picture every space, other than a small trail to get around, with junk stacked that high. That's what's in one of 3 rooms, plus a yard full of stuff. This isn't an $1,800 job by any means.
 
So the work is done.

5 days were needed instead of the 4 the service thought they could get it done with. The hoarder wasn't just throwing stuff on top of stuff, but stacking it efficiently which allowed for a higher concentration of junk instead of just the appearance of greater volume. Once the cleaning crew started digging they realized how underbid the job was.

8 full industrial dumpsters (8 ft high, not the low rise versions). Full, as in over the top and "tarp'ed" to transport.

3 full truck loads (a long bed Ford with side walls 5 ft high) taken by a scrap metal re-seller.

There are still 300 paint cans (my guess) plus solvents of unknown origin to dispose of. The County of Orange allows you to drop off 15 gallons per trip to their sites in Huntington Beach and Irvine. I called a large scale disposal service but they want $1,200 to get rid of it in one fell swoop. Vista Paint has an unlimited drop off service so that's how I'm getting rid of the paint. The solvents go to the County in 4-5 trips.

Not everything was scrapped so there are piles of "donate-ables" throughout the house. I'm guessing there's another 2 weeks of stuff to pitch before the other chores get started like landscaping and deferred maintainance. The family is going to keep the property as it's got both sentimental and real value to it.

Anyone remember a story on Channel 7 last week about someone bringing a grenade to a fire station, resulting in a 1 block radius being evacuated? Yes, that was one of the things we found in the house. The hoarder was also a WWII veteran who had a couple of war trophies. The grenade itself was inert, but the fuse was live. Had the person who brought it to the fire station pulled the pin for giggles wouldn't have laughed too hard once it went off.

It's been quite an event, reiterating to me the eternal truth of the saying "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time". Our plate is nearly cleaned at this point of the meal. 
 
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