28 January 2009

Building the eco friendly way - Demolition progress

As you can see from the photos above and below, demolition work has commenced. Progress is slower than would normally occur for a typical house demolition due to the time and care being taken to 'pull the house apart' piece by piece.

House demolition contractors typically take no more than a week to bring in a large machine, flatten the house and then ship everything out to landfill. Every time I see it happen it makes me fume. What a total loss and waste of tonnes of good construction materials and what environmental negligence, sending a house to landfill purely because people can't look past the way they have always done it. This sort of wastefulness wouldn't happen in a developing country.

As we explained earlier, green building isn't just about the building, it is about the entire process of creating a new house. When we started demolition, the key was to reduce the amount of materials that would go to landfill.
Generally, I am happy with what materials we look like being able to recycle.

The images above and below show the inside of the house with the walls and ceiling partly stripped of the plaster lining. All of the wall, floor and roof framing timbers are in very good condition and will definitely be able to be recycled, great news.

With no recycling facility available for used plaster lining it looks like it will unfortunately be sent to landfill.

All of the windows and doors will be salvaged and sent for recycling along with several bathroom and kitchen fixtures and fittings.

Over the next week or so the brickwork should start to come down and be sent for recycling along with the concrete footings.

2 comments:

Christina said...

Fantastic Project!

We are looking for people who would be interested in getting involved into turning an old caretaker cottage in Brookvale NSW into an example and showcase of urban sustainability. The idea is to have this 'sustaianbility centre' run by the community as an education centre that showcases technologies and processes and services available to make urban residences more sustainable.
We need people with the skills to renovate it sustainably and then we hope to establish a group of volunteer advisors that help others, looking at their homes and suggesting ways to make them more sustainable.

If you are interested in the project call either
Christina on 0411 699 266
or
Wendi on 0403255201
or email
bvcg@optusnet.com.au

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