Demolished house lots

They do push the dirt around when they level the lot, this will either bury the good stuff or bring it up toward the surface. You may find coins that are damaged from the blade used. Around here they tend to add 6 inches of fill dirt or gravel after grading, this makes it hard to detect. Good luck.

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If you saw the place before the demo, it would be good to jog your memory to where the yard was. If they scraped the yard to fill the cellar, you may be able to find some deeper coins that were there, but may have lost some to the cellar.

In my experience if the land owner, or one of his crew had done that, they would push the surrounding dirt into the cellar and call it good. Easy for them, bad for us. Old homesteads we have hunted that this was done to yielded slim results.

On the other hand, if this home was inside a town, the pro demo crew would take the wooden part of the structure away, use the concrete, brick, and outside fill to put in the cellar hole, and smooth out the outer area to make it look uniform. Expensive for the owner, but good for us! I was able to find several more silvers, IHs, and old nickles after a demo of a home that I had pounded before the demo.

Others have taken out the home, and just smoothed out the area where the cellar was to make an oval depression. I have had great hunts in these areas too.

Have fun!

Thanks yes I have Google maps pics of where house was 6 months ago. Wasnt real sure last time. Gonna dig anything sounding good well see.

Vacant lots where old houses once stood can give up some real nice finds !

A few things I've learned ....

(1) When you drive down a road in a small town look at the spacing between the houses. If the spacing between the houses is even down that section of road it makes it very easy to spot an old home site.
Also look for other clues like old gas meters, old telephone poles without any wires and well covers in the weeds.

(2) Look at the root flares ( where the base of the tree flares to meet the ground ) on older - larger trees. This is a good indicator of how much the grade has been changed in that area.

(3) Start hunting the areas that are away from where the house stood - on the cleaner ground. The area's that are not usually graded that much include close to big trees, along sidewalks, close to property lines, etc.

(4) There could have been good finds from the front and rear yards that were pushed into the hole where the house was but this is also where the heaviest concentration of junk metal will be.
All this junk metal will slow you down - that's why I usually hunt this area last.

Good Hunting !

2108silver1 said:

Sonwhem the demo 1900s houses do they push a lot of dirt around. I usually try and detect the strip and corners where it would have been hard to push dirt going back to a 1912 lot gonna give it a try agin

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Good luck!
In my limited experience (newbie) the demolished house lots I've hunted have been a nightmare for trash. Those experiences are one of the reasons I bought a GTI2500 which I am still trying to learn. I have several more demolished home lots mapped, will get to them in time.

Lots

Went to one of my permission lots. Found two wheat pennies. Went to a beautiful 1910 house 2nd time there big corner lot found some clad. Good times but very hot out