Deconstructing an Old Home Can Give You Building Blocks for a New One

A salvaged staircase from deconstructed public housing in D.C. The deconstructing of homes can serve as employment and job training. (By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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Third, the reusing and recycling will keep this material out of landfills. In the United States, 30 to 40 percent of all landfill waste is construction and demolition debris, Falk said. Only 9 percent of this waste is generated by new construction. The rest comes from renovation and demolition of existing buildings.

To increase the likelihood that teardowns will be deconstructed instead of destroyed, Bennick has developed ways to speed up the process and reduce his labor costs, which has made him more competitive with conventional "smash-and-dash" firms. Rather than take a house apart piece-by-piece and stud-by-stud -- the usual way -- he often dismantles houses initially in sections and then his crews take each one apart. For example, he might cut a roof into four sections, bring each one to the ground with a crane, and then dismantle it. Not only is this faster, it's also much safer.

The work goes faster still, Bennick said, when he can bring down a house in sections and then immediately reuse the entire piece, without having to take anything apart. For example, with a one-story, Four-Square house that is 30 feet on a side, he can remove each exterior wall in two sections, producing eight, 15-foot-long "panels." The intact wall sections, with their door and window openings, can be reassembled into a farm or storage shed or a detached garage that could be connected to the new house by a breezeway.

One of the rewards of his job is getting to see the fruits of his labors incorporated into new houses, Bennick said. In one memorable case, he removed an 8,000-square-foot high school gym floor in sections and sold them. Some months later, he encountered a section of the flooring in a homeowner's living room, with the foul line markings still clearly visible.

For a deconstructor, the ultimate in time savings and materials salvaged is to move an entire house, Bennick said. He's moved about 20 houses, some as many as 20 miles. He said he feels enormous satisfaction when the old building is moved onto its new foundation, but local building officials often require that all the wiring, plumbing and insulation be updated, and this often necessitates tearing out much of what he worked to save.

For more information on building deconstruction and reuse of materials, contact the Building Materials Reuse Association, http://www.buildingreuse.org.

Katherine Salant can be contacted via her Web site, http://www.katherinesalant.com.

© 2008, Katherine Salant