Recycled house in Pass Christian, MS

Courtesy of Brad Guy, Building Materials Reuse Association

Monday, April 21st, 2008--

It may be the ultimate reuse project: recycling your house. Maybe you’ve outgrown your home: the kitchen’s outdated, the rooms are too small for your growing family, and the floor plan just doesn’t flow. You’d love to re-build, but your environmental conscience warns against a tear down and a brand new house.

If so, then recycling the house may be the answer. The idea is simple: the house is deconstructed, or taken apart piece by piece, and then rebuilt with the same materials, wherever possible. It’s a growing trend, says Brad Guy, president of the Building Materials Reuse Association, though he admits that firm statistics are hard to come by. The government doesn’t keep tabs on the number of recycled homes the same way it tracks new housing starts. Still, Guy says there are signs that reusing building material is an idea that’s catching on: the growth of stores that sell used materials, the recognition of the practice by the U.S. Green Building Council, and the trend toward landfill bans for construction and demolition waste.

Consider construction waste. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 270,000 residential units are demolished in the U.S annually, as of 2003. Much of that demolition debris goes into landfills. In this country, according the EPA, building debris (in total, not just from residential units) accounts for one-third of all solid waste, and an estimated 91 percent of that comes from renovation and demolition. Some states, including California and Massachusetts, are enacting bans, taking steps to divert construction waste from landfills.

Now, consider the waste from a single home. According to Guy, the average wood frame house weighs in at about 60 pounds per square foot. At about 2,000 square feet, that house, demolished and sent to a landfill, amounts to about 60 tons of trashed material. Guy says that, on average, about 85 percent of that wood frame house can be reused. Typically, the parts that can’t be reused are the painted drywall and plaster, the asphalt shingles, and any hazardous materials such as asbestos. And materials like ductwork, piping, and concrete that can’t be reused can usually be recycled.

How to get to the parts that can be re-used? Again, the idea is pretty straightforward. It’s basically construction in reverse, or as Guy puts it: “last on, first off.” A house is built from the ground up, in layers: first the structure or frame, then the wiring and plumbing, and finally the exterior and interior walls and the fixtures.

Deconstruction reverses that process. That wood frame house is a good example, since 95 percent of all houses are built that way, says Guy. First, all the surface fittings are stripped out, including lights, outlets, trim, windows, doors, flooring, and bath and kitchen fixtures. Next, the unbuilding starts at the roof and works down from there: off come the shingles, sheeting, plywood and the wood beams; then the second floor walls and floor; then the first floor walls and floor, until what’s left is individual pieces of timber.

The basic difference between demolition and deconstruction is in the approach. Because the focus is on the first reuse of everything that’s reusable, deconstruction takes more time and labor: 1-2 weeks and a bigger crew, versus a smaller crew working two days to raze a house and haul it away. Doing deconstruction costs more, too, though Guy points out that more money is spent on up-front costs like additional labor. The savings come later on in reduced disposal costs and savings on new materials. Depending on the quality of the material salvaged, someone doing deconstruction could end up with cheaper net costs.

And if anyone knows the benefits of recycled homes, it’s Brad Guy. He’s deconstructed and rebuilt about 30 homes so far, including some in New Orleans. He says that city is a perfect place for such an approach. One organization called Mercy Corps is supporting the deconstruction of homes there, with the materials mainly going to reuse stores, though some owners kept the materials at the site for future rebuilding. Efforts are underway to get FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and local officials to make deconstruction and reuse part of large-scale reconstruction plans like this one.

Finally, if recycling the whole house seems like a daunting idea, Guy says another option is to do a thorough strip out of an existing home, going beyond decorative or architectural items to pulling out everything from cabinets, doors, windows, fixtures, flooring, hardware and plumbing. It may not be recycling the entire house, but it’s a step in the right direction and leaves the landfill a bit emptier.

--Karin Vergoth

Sources

Brad Guy
President, Building Materials Reuse Association, Pittsburgh, PA

Co-author, “Unbuilding: Salvaging the Architectural Treasures of Unwanted Houses” (2007, Taunton Press)

Related Links

• Greening the Bronx, One Castoff at a Time

Tools:

Elsewhere on sciencefriday.com

• 

  How Subaru's Going Green
  Take a Tour of Subaru’s Zero-Landfill Plant

• 

  Just One Word
  There may indeed be a great future in plastics. A researcher is working on a recipe for a plastic that dissolves in seawater.

• 

  Garbage Truck 2.0
  Part refinery, part generator, a new portable machine eats trash and makes fuel.

• 

  Paper Or Plastic? Packaging Goes Green
  If you trade in your paper and plastic bags and your bottles for biodegradable packaging, how eco-friendly will you really be?

• 

  Video: Green Packaging

Explore More

• General Environment
• Environment
• Techniques and Tools
• Civil Engineering