Say I own or inherent a home. It’s either in such disrepair that it needs to be demolished or maybe I just don’t like it and want to build something new.
It’s totally paid off and I cancel the insurance on it (I’m not trying to commit fraud here).
Let’s also say the yard is big enough and cleared of trees enough that the fire won’t spread. Obviously you don’t want to do this with adjacent town houses.
Legally, can I just toss Malotov cocktail through the window and burn it to the ground?
If “no”, would it be considered arson, or simply a violation of a town ordinace, similar to burning a pile of leaves?
No rush on the answer.
I don’t know the legal answer to your question, but if your burn caused damage to, or threatened to cause damage to, adjacent property, there’s probably some ordinance that you could be charged with violating. Not to mention air pollution, and possibly lack of a permit.
If you have a serious problem like this, contacting the fire department and arranging for them to burn it down for you would be the best solution. They’re always looking for practice, and they’re fascinated by fire.
And burning a house may not be the cheapest or best way to remove it. Several houses in my area have been sold and moved, even if they have to cut it in two pieces.
This would be a profoundly bad idea. You are quite likely to be charged for arson. Destroying your own house is not such a big deal as the danger you pose to others. The embers on the wind could easily set fire to other homes, grass, forests, etc.
A lot of these property laws are intended to make sure things are done in a safe and organized manner.
Very much true. I remember a case when the fire brigade was going to burn a house for practice and it ended with a large part of the village burning down.
Under ye olde common law, maliciously burning someone else’s dwelling was (and in common law jurisdictions, still is) the felony of arson. Burning one’s own dwelling was a misdemeanor called “houseburning,” provided the house was situated in a city or town or otherwise near enough to other dwellings so as to create a danger of their burning as well. If one’s house wasn’t so situated, no crime. In modern times that rule has been largely superseded by statute so that burning your own house for insurance or mortgage purposes, or in a city, town or otherwise close enough to other houses, or in any such circumstances that you will create a danger to the lives or safety or property of another will be felony arson as well. Under these restrictions it’s pretty difficult to burn down your own house and have it not be arson. In wildlfire season burning your own house down even miles away from the nearest house could conceivably be prosecuted as arson.
Depending on where you live, you can “donate” a decrepit house to a fire department for training purposes. They’ll go through the place to clean out anything environmentally questionable, destroy a few walls for breaching exercise, then burn it to the ground for you.
I have a friend who did exactly this. He bought a large property with an old farmhouse on it. When he eventually built a new house on the land, he had the fire department come and burn down his old house for training. He said it was a pretty awesome thing to watch.
You’re best off doing something like this if your house isn’t out in the middle of nowhere.
Factual tidbit: In ye olden days before mass produced steel nails were readily available wrought iron nails were used. These were valuable, and were the mainstay of blacksmith shops. When you went westward ho, or moved to the new house, it was common to burn down the old one to recover the nails. The phrase ‘dead as a doornail’ refers to wrought iron nails that were bent over twice to hold the strap hinges for doors so they couldn’t be pulled out from the outside by ye olde burglar. A wrought iron nail bent over once could be easily straightened, bent twice and they were near worthless. Strap hinges disappeared with the mass production of screws to hold…oh well, I could go on forever on this subject unrelated to the OP. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Plus counties (and some states?) have pollution laws that ban trash fires and the like. Even in the arson cop doesn’t get you, the local air management board/DEP very well could.
Just tell the fire department. When I was a kid (1987ish), my friend’s parents did just this. Grandpa died, dad inherited the property, but the house was falling apart. So they just had the FD come and burn it down. It was only on about an acre of land, and quite a few houses, trailers and trees were within a few hundred yards of the house, but I guess it was deemed low-risk enough to burn it.
Blight was eliminated, property was cleared for new construction, and the fire fighters got some real world practice. Win-win situation. I wouldn’t suggest doing it without the fire department’s blessing, however.
Heh. I don’t know all that much more about fasteners in general. I just wondered one day what ‘dead as doornail’ meant, and stated down the rabbit hole. Before I knew it I found out about the origin of hardware stores (they were originally just the blacksmith’s shop) and the way that mortise hinges changed the world by using screws instead of nails.
In my locale, you can’t have an open fire within 200 feet of a structure. That would make the OP’s task a bit difficult, to say the least. Also no burning during the summer, need a permit, etc.
The only real answer is to ask the local fire chief.
In the midwest it’s pretty common to burn old farmsteads down, presumably after tipping of the local fire department and getting a permit if required. It’s too expensive to get into farming and quarter section farms are not economical, so old farmers sell out to neighbors rather than to new young farmers. A typical farm nowdays can reach a section, so that means there’s 4 farmsteads and only 1 familiy to live in them, and they’re often too far out of town to rent to city commuters.
It’s not related to westward ho, it’s from the very old practice of using strap hinges on doors. Here’s a source that’s a little misleading. Clenching a door nail entailed a double bend not just a single one. Hinges were located on the outside of entrance doors which used to swing outwards. A nail with a simple right angle bend on the inside could still be pulled out with some effort. By bending it over once more, and then back into the door or wall again it couldn’t be pulled out. This is one reason the hinges were on the outside of the door. Saving space in the interior of small homes was another reason, and there may be more. I don’t know if there’s anyway to prove this origin of ‘dead as a doornail’ but it makes sense based on the way doors used to be hung before the invention of mortise hinges and wood screws.
