Recycling the Whole Darn House
This is the final guest post from the latest round of additional voices I've featured over the last week. Please welcome Nicolette Toussaint , a San Francisco writer and designer. --Paul
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If old timber could speak, the steps on David Gottfried?S Oakland, California home (at right) might have a few wild testimonies to inform. The bullet holes testify to something that occurred in an earlier lifestyles. The wood became as soon as a part of a century-antique highway bridge, earlier than it have become part of Gottfried?S LEED licensed home.
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David Gottfried's LEED Gold certified home in Oakland, CA. Photo courtesy of David Gottfried |
New Digs from Old
The LEED rating system encourages builders to re-purpose materials, awarding points when wood, brick or other materials from an earlier structure are reused. The results can make for a good story as well as for a sustainable practice. Recently, Paul Pedini, a civil engineer who worked for 11 years on Boston’s Big Dig, built a house from the site’s leftovers .
Pedini?S remark approximately this puts the exercise of dumping building materials ? Refuse that takes up nearly 1/three of the gap in lots of urban unload websites ? Into sharp focus. ?These materials are as right as you may get,? He said. ?We have been being paid money to junk this stuff. There?S something inherently illogical about it.?
In a few locations, there?S additionally something illegal approximately it. Here and there, towns have began writing ordinances to inspire the recycling of not just the unusual object or too, however large amounts of building cloth. For instance, Orange County, North Carolina has drafted an ordinance that calls for builders to split timber, metallic and drywall discards at creation web sites.
Alameda County, California’s Measure D , passed in 1990, called for a whopping 75% reduction of dump-bound refuse over a ten-year period. That 2010 deadline has arrived, and Alameda County has gotten close to meeting its goal, in large part because of the county’s emphasis on recycling and re-purposing building materials.
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836 Market Street, renovated by the Challenge Program in Wilmington, DE. Photo courtesy of the Challenge Program |
A Rose by means of Any Other Name
I’m fascinated by home demolition sites. I find myself peering through the fence at the rubble behind them, wondering what useful treasures are hiding there. Many of the treasures I find wind up in my garden; short of money for the last couple years, I have created quite a paradise from seeds, cuttings and cast-off chunks of concrete that are dignified with the name “ urbanite .”
I’m not alone in finding gold amid the dross. Nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity and historical preservationists both share my interest in gleaning gems from old buildings. Kitchen designer and master blogger Paul Anater, who kindly invited me to write a guest post for this blog, tells me that he sends materials salvaged from his remodeling jobs to a ReStore, the materials storehouse run by and for Habitat for Humanity .
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| As I actually have worked to release my home transforming layout business during the last couple years, cash has been tight. That hasn?T saved me from my preferred interest: gardening. The beds inside the garden are bordered through discarded brick and the ?Urbanite? That borders the sedum shown in the top photo. |
Art from Found Materials
In addition, a developing number of designers share a fascination in designs that discover new uses for located objects. I?M surprised that a pair thousand regular paper clips can be woven into the silvery and sinuous chandelier proven right here.
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| Paperclip chandelier. Photo via Pish Posh |
I have written several times about furniture makers who make a point o f using reclaimed wood , either salvaged from old buildings, wine barrels, or from wind-toppled trees. Master furniture maker and blogger Mitch Roberson and furniture maker Michael Yonke, creator of the gorgeous Diversion Coffee table below ,are among my favorites.
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| Diversion coffee desk by using Michael Yonke. Color effects from the herbal ageing wood patina from 12 months outside treatment. |
Materials: Reclaimed and re-purposed tropical wooded area genuine mahogany.
It became from speaking with furnishings makers that I learned that reclaimed wooden is regularly much higher pleasant than newly harvested wooden. The cause is that vintage buildings had been constructed from first-increase wooden, which is stronger, denser and taller than the second one- and 0.33-boom forests now being reduce. This is why the period and mass of beams in vintage homes is so dazzling ? They clearly don?T grow ?Em like that anymore.
Indeed, the definitive Waste to Wealth website notes that, “The value of recovered wood is rising, because many species of wood are no longer available from forests. Furthermore, older wood typically is stronger and of higher quality than new growth wood, and it has already shrunk to its permanent size. Another key factor is landfill tipping fees, which are $65/ton in Connecticut.”
Back from the Brink of the Grave
It?S steeply-priced and wasteful to bury constructing substances in what fashion designer William McDonough has referred to as ?Product graves? ? I.E., sell off websites. And it?S now not just what receives carted away after the wrecking ball hits an antique constructing that receives trashed. Dumps additionally runneth over with left-overs from new homes. A new 2,000-square-foot house typically contributes nearly 8.Five heaps of substances to the sell off!
But spurred both by means of converting economics, law, and a desire to do the proper component, a number of corporations throughout america now specialize not just in reclaiming and reusing components of the house, however in deconstructing and recycling the entire darn house! The subject, referred to as ?Deconstruction,? Is associated with however special from demolition, the conventional swing-the-wrecking-ball method of taking down homes.
Of course, people have been selectively harvesting items from old buildings for centuries – there are many buildings in Northern England that were constructed of stones taken from Hadrian’s wall . And there has long been a market for salvaged items from Victorian houses , despite the fact that it’s a lot harder to pull nails out than it is to blow them in with a nail gun.
But both the motives for and approaches of recycling building materials are growing, led by using companies including those referred to at the lowest of this publish.
Three Cheers for the Good Guys and Gals
The Reuse People , a mostly-West Coast nonprofit that began in San Diego in 1993, have worked hard to standardize efficient building deconstruction practices. They have taken down hundreds of buildings in the San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Boulder areas, and have done much to educate the building trade. They write an informative newsletter called the Velvet Crowbar and and have even written a detailed training manual on deconstruction.Their website includes an annotated listing of 100 related local businesses and resources for deconstruction minded consumers in the San Francisco-Oakland region.
Reconnx, Inc. , a deconstruction firm that is located in Boulder, Colorado, has the distinction of creating the Nail Kicker de-nailing gun . The company was started in 1996, by Jon Giltner, a registered structural engineer, who like Paul Pedini, was frustrated by seeing useable 2″ x 12s” and other construction materials being dumped in a landfill. His career in reuse began. He first focused on developing finger jointing, and adapted table saws and multi-phased drills for deconstruction. Reconnx is now the premier equipment supplier for the deconstruction industry.
Another laudable organization involved in deconstruction is the Challenge Program , a non-profit youth training program in Wilmington, Delaware. Through the program 18 to 21-year-olds are given 6 months of intensive construction training that includes 700 hours of site-based construction training, deconstruction of buildings and on-site classes. As the biographies of the participants make clear , trainees come to the program without high school diplomas, but in many cases with prison records. Through the program, they gain both their GEDs and job skills. So it’s not only building materials that are being “upcycled” – it’s also human lives.
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| Habitat for Humanity Restore volunteers Vince Perkins and Bill Bumby (wearing red hat) remove salvaged doors from the Rennebohm building at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Photo by Jeff Miller |
Resource Links
- Building Materials Reuse Association
- Challenge Program: youth working in deconstruction
- Directory of Deconstruction Groups (multi-state)
- Economic costs of deconstruction versus demolition: chart from Reuse Peoplee
- Gottfried Regenerative Home
- Habitat for Humanity ReStores
- Living in Comfort and Joy, the author’s home blog
- Michael Yonke’s Upcycling blog spot
- National Association of Home Builders-Research Center
- Posh Posh: Amazing Chandeliers from Everyday Objects
- Remodeling magazine: Deconstruction v. Demolition
- Smart Growth.org: Deconstruction v. Demolition
- Waste to Wealth: Deconstruction Business
This post is a guest blog written by Nicolette Toussaint, who is visiting from the San Francisco Bay Area. Nicolette is the author of Living in Comfort and Joy .