No, you can't burn demolition debris in California. State law prohibits open outdoor fires for disposing of it, and the burn permits in Tehama and Butte counties only cover natural vegetation from your own property. A torn-down barn, shed, or garage doesn't qualify, even if you own the land and the pile sits a hundred yards from the nearest neighbor.
We hear this one every fall, right when the burn piles come out. Someone drops a pole barn or an old farmhouse addition, looks at 40 yards of dry lumber, and figures the cheapest way to get rid of it is a match. It isn't. The fine is the smaller problem. The bigger one is a fire that gets away from you in October wind, or smoke from old paint and treated wood drifting over a neighbor's house.
What the law actually says
The state rule is Health and Safety Code section 41800. It says that, except as otherwise provided in that chapter, no one may use open outdoor fires to dispose of petroleum wastes, demolition debris, tires, tar, trees, wood waste, or other combustible solids. You can read the full text of section 41800 yourself. It's short.
"Except as otherwise provided" is where people get hopeful, so here's what those exceptions look like in practice. They cover things like agricultural burning, fire hazard reduction, and supervised fire training by a fire agency. None of them is "I demolished a building and want to dispose of it." Your local air district and fire agency set the details, and neither one treats a demolished structure as burnable material.
What Tehama County allows
Tehama County Fire's burning information page is blunt: only natural debris from the property where it's burned is allowed. That means brush and pruned limbs. Residential burning needs a valid LE-62 burn permit, you can only burn on a permissive burn day, and burn hours run from 10 AM to 5 PM.
Lumber from a building isn't natural debris. It's been milled, nailed, painted, stained, or pressure-treated, and every one of those matters. A rancher off Corning Road with a collapsed hay barn can burn the weeds and brush that grew up around it on a permissive day. The barn boards go somewhere else.
What Butte County allows
The Butte County Air Quality Management District publishes a burn permit fact sheet with a matrix of every category of open burning it permits. Agricultural burning, fire hazard reduction, land clearing, and residential burning are on it. Demolition debris isn't. The same sheet says you may burn only clean, dry natural vegetation grown on the property where the fire is, and it bans burn barrels for residential disposal. You can check the Butte County AQMD burn permit matrix for the current version.
One thing that catches contractors off guard: burning brush on private property when a contractor does the work needs a district permit, even though an owner burning on their own lot of one acre or more doesn't. If you hire someone to clear a lot in Chico or Oroville and plan to burn the brush pile, ask who is pulling that permit before the crew shows up.
Why old wood is worse than it looks
Lumber from before the early 2000s may be pressure-treated with arsenic-based preservatives, and paint on anything built before 1978 can carry lead. Glued products like plywood give off nasty smoke. You can't tell by looking which boards are which, and a burn pile mixes all of them.
There's also the asbestos question. Federal rules generally require a notification before demolishing most structures, whether or not anyone expects asbestos, and roofing, floor tile, siding, and old pipe wrap are all common hiding places for it. If the debris is going to a facility, that notification and any survey results travel with it. If it's going into a fire, nobody knows what's in the smoke. That's why hazardous waste removal belongs before a building comes down, not after.
Burn it or haul it: how the options compare
| Material | Burn on site? | Realistic option |
|---|---|---|
| Brush and trees cleared from your own lot | Sometimes, on a burn day, with the right permit | Burn, chip, or haul |
| Barn, shed, or garage lumber | No | Haul to a landfill or transfer station, or salvage |
| Painted or treated wood | No | Haul to an approved facility |
| Concrete slabs and footings | No, it doesn't burn | Crush and reuse as base rock |
| Asphalt | No | Recycle |
| Roofing, siding, insulation | No | Haul, after any asbestos question is settled |
Where demolition debris goes instead
Most of a typical teardown by weight isn't wood. It's concrete, block, and asphalt, and all of that can be crushed and reused instead of buried. Walberg runs a concrete and asphalt recycling yard, and for a large enough volume we can bring a crusher to you. For a single residential slab, hauling it to the yard is usually cheaper than mobilizing a crusher. That's an honest trade-off, not a sales pitch.
The wood is the harder part. Clean, sound barn timbers sometimes have real salvage value, and it's worth a phone call before you tear them apart. The rest generally goes to a landfill or transfer station that takes construction waste. Which one depends on what the material is and where the job sits, and we'd rather tell you that on a site visit than guess in a blog post.
If you're demolishing anyway, ask the contractor to price the haul-off in the same estimate. Letting a demolition contractor handle it keeps a debris pile from sitting on your property all winter while you decide.
When the debris comes from a fire
Burned-structure debris is a different track entirely. We've worked the Camp Fire, Carr Fire, and Dixie Fire, and ash from burned buildings isn't something to push into a pile and light again. Walberg does fire cleanup work, and if you own a burned lot, start there instead of with a burn permit.
Common Questions
Is it legal to burn a demolished building on your own property in California?
No. Health and Safety Code section 41800 prohibits open outdoor fires for disposing of demolition debris, and ownership of the land doesn't change that. The only common exception is a supervised burn run by a fire agency for training, and that requires its own permits and an asbestos survey first.
Can you burn old barn wood or lumber in Tehama County?
Not under a normal residential burn permit. Tehama County Fire allows burning of natural debris from the property only, and milled lumber isn't natural debris. Call the Tehama County Air Pollution Control District before you light anything, since a wrong guess can bring a fine and a fire crew.
Can you burn treated or painted wood in California?
No, and it's a health problem on top of a legal one. Pressure-treated wood and old painted boards can release arsenic compounds and lead into the smoke. These are exactly the materials the burn rules are meant to keep out of the air.
What can you burn in Butte County?
Clean, dry vegetation that grew on the same property, on a permissive burn day, within burn hours. Burn barrels are prohibited, and contractor-run land clearing burns need a district permit. If you're not sure whether your pile qualifies, call the district office at (530) 332-9400.
How do you get rid of demolition debris in Northern California?
Sort it. Concrete and asphalt go to a recycler, clean wood may be salvageable, and the remaining wood and mixed material goes to a landfill or transfer station that accepts construction waste. A demolition contractor can usually sort and haul it in one trip.
Bottom line
Don't burn a building. Burn the brush that grew on your lot, if you've got the permit and the burn day, and move everything else out by truck. If the tear-down hasn't happened yet, ask for the haul-off and recycling plan before you sign for the demolition, because that's where the money is won or lost. You can request a free estimate for a demolition in Corning, Chico, Red Bluff, or anywhere in Tehama, Butte, and Shasta counties, and we'll walk the site and tell you what goes where.