3 pros!
Valuable tax breaks are but one benefit to recycling your home materials.
Are you a conscientious homeowner interested in salvaging unwanted materials from your home? Experts in the field of deconstruction say whether your project involves renovating a few rooms, demolishing an entire house, or just replacing the roof, the process not only keeps building materials out of landfills but also provides a tax write-off or extra cash to sellers who donate the materials to nonprofit reuse stores.
When a homeowner needs to demolish, instead of bulldozing the structure, these service providers use a crew to take apart the house by hand. “We systematically go backwards from the way the building was built,” says Shane Endicott, executive director of highly rated DeConstruction Services of The ReBuilding Center in Portland, Ore. “The last thing that went in to finish the building is the first thing we take out. Lighting, molding, flooring, the roof, then all the way down to the foundation.”
Keeping materials out of landfills
Deconstruction offers a green alternative to demolition because instead of hauling items to a landfill, workers salvage parts of the home that can be reused and recycle almost everything else. Salvaged items typically include doors, windows, cabinets, lighting and plumbing fixtures, framing lumber, roofing materials, and flooring, experts say. “I’d say about 85 percent of materials can be reused. The rest is waste or recycled,” Endicott says. “I’d say out of the remaining 15 percent, you have about 5 percent that ends up being waste.”
Highly rated BTR Construction & Roofing of Charlotte, N.C., recycles all asphalt roofing shingles it removes, which are then used to pave and repair roads. “I’ve heard that roofing debris is one of the largest contributors to landfills,” says BTR general manager Kevin McHugh. “If you start taking that out, you’re taking one of the largest sources [of waste] out of the ground. Landfills don’t fill up as quickly. Plus, you can put it in the roads.”
Doorknobs are one of many home items that can be recycled for future use. (Photo by Steve Miitchell)
Contractors offer partial deconstruction
Dirk Wassink, president of highly rated Seattle-based Second Use Building Materials, says his crews most often deconstruct one or a few rooms, as opposed to the whole house. “We come into a building, like a house, that is going to get torn down, and we get everything that is reusable and marketable in terms of finishes and fixtures,” Wassink says. “Our company is typically doing nonstructural demolition, so we are really good at removing things that are reusable, such as doors, trim, windows and flooring.”
Second Use then sells those salvaged items in its resale shop. One customer, Angie’s List member Wendy Lucio of Mountlake Terrace, Wash., says she’s purchased a toilet, several light fixtures, door hinges, a bedframe and a dishwasher in the past year. “I can get something usable and functional that fits with my older house at a much reduced price,” Lucio says, adding that as an avid supporter of reusing materials she appreciates saving half to two-thirds the cost of new by purchasing salvaged materials. “I bought three light fixtures at the same time for less than $40. I couldn’t buy the one I put in my kitchen new for that cost.”
Adding time to your project
Deconstruction often adds time to a project, however. According to Endicott, a traditional demolition on a house takes two to three days, while a deconstruction may last seven to 10 business days or longer, depending on the size of the home. Endicott says a smaller project, such as a kitchen deconstruction, should only take one to one-and-a-half days.
Deconstruction can also impact your bottom line due to increased labor costs. According to Endicott, a typical deconstruction project averages around $800 for a single room and $18,000 for an entire house.. However, customers can mitigate the cost by reusing deconstructed materials during reconstruction. That way, the homeowner spends less on materials later on.
Crews stack lumber into a salvage pile to be sorted later. (Photo courtesy of Shane Endicott)
Save money by donating
Lexington, Mass., member David Carpe hired highly rated Ciampa Construction of Bridgewater, Mass., to renovate a two-family home into a one-family abode. The house contained 100-year-old clear vertical grain heart pine flooring that Carpe wanted to keep. “I felt like it was a waste to throw all this stuff away,” he says. “It’s beautiful. Nobody makes this anymore.”
Carpe says most contractors he talked to had no interest in the meticulous work needed on such a large project, but Ciampa Construction did. Ciampa deconstructed the flooring, molding and trim on the home and put them into piles, then reused them at the end of the project. Carpe appreciated this, because he says outsourcing the wood to match what he already had costs around $18 to $25 per square foot. He estimates that by reusing his floor and trim, he saved over $10,000, because the floor alone would have cost over $25,000 for the specific wood he wanted. However, the project, which he says normally would only take a few extra weeks, took a few extra months because his family was living at the house during this time.
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Another way customers can mitigate the cost of deconstruction is by donating the materials to a nonprofit organization. Endicott says his company offers a receipt to customers who donate their salvaged goods so they can claim a tax deduction. He says that many of his customers report that they nearly offset the cost from deconstruction because of the tax deduction.
Wassink also encourages homeowners to consider deconstruction for smaller projects, such as having easily accessible fixtures and cabinets removed, because there’s little difference in time and cost in comparison with a typical demolition.
McHugh says the most important reason for doing deconstruction or recycling materials remains the environmental benefit. “We are making sure these materials don’t go in the ground,” he says. “We want to minimize landfills. That’s a win in my book.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published on Dec. 30, 2013.