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Demox

Miami-Dade County

Interior Demolition

Partitions, ceilings, finishes and fit-out stripped back to shell, with the structure left intact.

Who usually calls

Usually a tenant improvement or a condo renovation. The buyer cares about dust control, elevator and loading-dock scheduling, and the building's rules.

Interior demolition is the part of a fit-out nobody photographs and everybody underestimates. The structure stays exactly where it is; partitions, ceilings, floor finishes, joinery, mechanical and electrical that the drawings mark as redundant all come out, and the shell is handed to the next trade clean, swept and measurable.

In Miami-Dade most of this work happens in an occupied building. The job is therefore half demolition and half logistics: a loading-dock booking, a service-lift reservation, a protected route from the unit to the skip, negative-air or dust shrouding at the openings, and work hours the building manager and the county both accept. A crew that has not read the building's own rules before day one will lose more time to the management office than to the walls.

The scope boundary that matters is structural. Removing a non-load-bearing partition is one thing; an opening in a shear wall or a slab penetration is another, and it needs an engineer's drawing and a different line on the permit. Anything uncertain gets marked on the walk-through and priced as structural, because discovering it mid-demolition stops the job.

Crew taking down a metal-stud partition in an emptied high-rise unit, dust shrouding on the openings, late afternoon light.
Crew taking down a metal-stud partition in an emptied high-rise unit, dust shrouding on the openings, late afternoon light. Generated footage, not a job of ours and not a recording of one. It shows what the scope looks like. Our own work goes up as clients release it.

Scope

What is in the job.

Included

  • Protection first: floor protection on the route, dust shrouding or negative air at the openings, lift and lobby protection where the building requires it
  • Partitions, ceiling grid and tiles, soffits, bulkheads and joinery out
  • Floor finishes lifted to substrate, adhesive residue included where the next trade needs a bondable surface
  • Redundant mechanical, electrical and plumbing disconnected by the licensed trade and stripped back to the agreed point
  • Debris separated at source, bagged or carted, hauled and disposed with the tickets kept
  • Final sweep, openings secured, photographs of the handed-over shell
Crew taking down a metal-stud partition in an emptied high-rise unit, dust shrouding on the openings, late afternoon light.
Licensed stock photograph of the same kind of work.

What moves the price

We do not publish a rate for this, because a number given without seeing the site is either useless or untrue. These are the things that decide it.

  • Access. A ground-floor unit with a roll-up door and a third-floor unit with one service lift are different jobs at the same square footage
  • Building rules. Work-hour windows, lift bookings and protection requirements set the schedule more often than the demolition does
  • What the floor is. Tile on a mortar bed is several times the labour of glue-down vinyl
  • Whether anything stays. Selective removal around equipment that must keep running costs more than an empty shell
  • Abatement. If the survey finds asbestos-containing material, abatement is a separate licensed scope and a separate clock

Permits

Where this scope sits with the county.

Miami-Dade treats interior demolition as permitted work once it touches anything structural, mechanical, electrical or plumbing, and most buildings run their own approval on top of the county's. Miami-Dade requires an asbestos survey before demolition regardless of the year the building went up, and the federal NESHAP notification runs ten working days from a correctly filed notice. That clock runs in parallel with everything else, so it is filed first, not last.

Have this ready

  • The floor plan with the removal scope marked, or a walk-through where it is marked together
  • The building's contractor rules: work hours, lift booking, insurance limits, certificate holder wording
  • Confirmation of what stays, including anything the landlord expects to be reinstated
  • A contact at the management office, because the first call to them should not be on day one

None of it is required to get a visit booked. All of it makes the number firmer and the date earlier.

The full permit sequence, with sources, is on the permits and asbestos page.

Questions

What people ask about interior demolition.

Can we keep trading in the rest of the unit while you work?

Often yes. It needs a sealed hoarding line, negative air at the openings and the noisy work sequenced into agreed windows, and it costs more than an empty unit because the containment has to hold every day rather than once.

Who disconnects the power and the water?

The licensed trade does, before demolition starts. We mark what needs disconnecting on the walk-through so it is scheduled and not discovered.

Will the floor be ready for the next trade?

Say so in the scope and it will be. Lifting a finish and leaving the adhesive is cheaper and is sometimes all that is wanted; if the next trade needs a bondable substrate, that is a separate line and it should be priced before anyone starts.

Usually bundled with