Come by the ReSource this week, we have lots of goodies for your do it yourself projects.

We recently just finished up a deconstruction on Colvin Avenue (Thank you to those who helped out) and we have a good amount of new used building materials.

Why buy new when you can buy old? History comes free with purchase…

We have lots of lumber; 2″x6″ and 2″x8″s that we have saved from the landfill. Most pieces are at least 10′ in length. Come by today and pick some up for your projects, before it gets to cold and snowy.

Another jewel that you would find in the store are these library ladders that were generously donated to us.  They would look really nice in your living room where you have your book collection.  Why not pick out your next read by sliding around on one of these ladders.

Check out these really hip painted mirrors that take you back down memory lane and the carnivals of your youth.  We have a big selection of these mirrors and they are sure to be gone quick.  How could you resist?  You can even get creative and put a couple of them in your next tiling project you have planned out. They would be a nice little compliment.

Dennis Maher – lover of all things deconstructed, and we don’t mean words and sentences and paragraphs . . .

Carl Lee – our favorite filmmaker; his exhibited work will be familiar to demolition fans . . .

JM Reed – photographer, real estate broker and supporter/advisor of Buffalo housing activists such as ourselves . . .

All three are exhibiting at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College. Opening reception is this Sunday, 2pm to 4pm.

We will carpool to the job site at 10am.  There is a port-o-jon on-site.  It’s a good idea to pack a lunch.
Be ready to sweat!

To Buffalo Reuse -

This is a note to let you know how thankful we are for what you accomplished on the Extreme Home Makeover television show. When I say ‘we’, I mean all of us in the reusable building materials industry who can recognize the benefits to our industry of high-profile success stories such as your Powell project.

I was amazed to see how much time was dedicated to the subjects of building deconstruction, construction waste management, and building material reuse. Watching intently, I noted at least 6-10 instances where our industry had a role in the show. My trip to Buffalo to help take the house down had two purposes, to make Buffalo Reuse look good and the industry as a whole look like a viable option and we accomplished both on this show.

Finally, I am reflecting on the various communities that I visit around the Country, and it makes me want to thank the great people of Buffalo. Yes, the ‘great’ people. I was amazed at the sea of blue shirts I saw at this site and how they out-numbered previous sites.

Today, people across the Buffalo area have a reason to feel sorry for those in ‘better’ areas of the Country as I believe that strife builds character and you folks have plenty of both. It could be said that those who live with an abundance are not given the chance to overcome challenges and to grow from that.

So thanks again to Buffalo Reuse for setting the standard for Extreme Home Makeover on responsible building removal and to the great people of Buffalo for setting the standard on giving of themselves and overcoming adversity.

Dave Bennink
RE-USE Consulting
360-201-6977
www.reuseconsulting.com
www.bmra.org
National Building Deconstructor of the Year – 2009

A big thanks to all who came out last night to watch the show together and to support Buffalo ReUse, PUSH Buffalo, Re-Tree WNY and WNY Americorps

Photos here!

For us, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, the Buffalo Edition, is the culmination of over two years of hard work, ingenuity, and determination. When we started Buffalo ReUse in the Fall of 2006 we did so with the belief that a demolition alternative that reclaims materials, creates jobs, and protects the environment would be great for Buffalo and great for our community.  Although it seemed like a great idea, we weren’t convinced it would work– largely because of the low costs of disposal and the high costs of initiating a new start-up contracting company with very little available capital.

One thing these last two years has taught us is that tenacious attention to reducing costs and increasing efficiency is critical to our long term sustainability. Our mindset and techniques have evolved over time to ensure that we could continue to sustain our effort financially, save materials that otherwise would have been destroyed and dumped, and prove a concept that can advance the Building Re-use industry.

A lot of people have asked, “How much material do you actually save from each house?” The answer is, “Every house is different.” The Powell House was an excellent candidate for reuse because it had a significant quantity of antique rough-sawn lumber, hardwood flooring, doors and molding, cabinetry and hardware, brick and even cut stone. The wood components also came apart cleanly and easily. The sum of these materials was great and almost everything that could be saved, was saved during Extreme Makeover, largely because of the enormous human energy that was available and on hand during the 15 hour effort.

Here’s where things get a bit technical–Despite the tremendous effort, our 93% diversion rate that was recorded and explained in great detail by WasteCap, can easily be misinterpreted. From our perspective, we try to gauge our effectiveness by comparing how much was diverted from the landfill–reclaimed for future use.  We measure what would have otherwise been thrown away.  However, the green building industry has a different approach and attempts to quantify the total recycling and reuse percentage.  A closer look reveals that, in fact, their monitoring is largely skewed towards recycling.

93% diversion means that 93 tons out of every 100 tons of material were recycled or reused. Now, if you think about it, that includes the foundation floor, which was concrete and xx tons, the stone that was an additional xx tons, and even clean fill (dirt) that was removed to expand the foot print of the foundation. Certainly, whether this house was demolished or deconstructed, these materials would have been recycled. Concrete recycling has been the industry norm for decades and there’s always a need for clean fill on development projects in practically every city, at any given time. After all, who would pay $25 – $100 ton to dump concrete or soil in a landfill, when it can be dumped for free at a concrete recycling yard or a construction site? Once you remove those tonnages, you can get down to the gnitty gritty of how effective the reuse effort really was.

We’ve learned that we can reliably divert 25 – 40% of a residential building, by weight, from the landfill–that’s what we mean by Green Demolition. On the surface, that rate may not seem terribly significant; however, that material often represents over $10,000 in material value, significant tax savings for our clients, and a reliable source of high quality materials to enable our future efforts.

While we are able to save a lot of materials, we must still throw some away. People are surprised to learn we rarely reclaim any 2×4’s from our demolition projects. The reason for this is that walls require a significant labor investment–to harvest a handful of 2×4’s that have a very low value–we can’t spend even fifty cents worth of labor on an item that sells for $1.25. This labor investment greatly increases the cost of the project, without significantly increasing the value of the materials reclaimed. Consequently, we’ve focused on harvesting the materials with the greatest value: interior elements, rafters, floor joists, brick, stone, and windows. By being selective about what we make the effort to save; we are able to complete projects faster; and move on to more projects to reclaim more valuable material. So at the end of the day, our percentage of materials reclaimed per project is less, but, since we deconstruct more houses in any given period, we reclaim significantly more material.

The reality of the situation is that the building reuse industry is young and just beginning to crawl. While the many efforts of the BMRA (Building Materials ReUse Association) are consistent and admirable, there’s a tremendous need for advocacy work, policy support, and recycling research to really develop and expand the industry. Efforts in the reuse industry can be further advanced through more research and development into the use of recycled materials such as roofing shingles, drywall, plaster, wood waste, and vinyl products. We need more people in the country engaged in building reuse, so that we can share our learning and techniques to improve the entire industry overall.

Finally, we need policy support to ensure that recycling and reuse is a larger priority for the entire country. One of our greatest challenges remains that it is just too cheap and easy to throw things away. There’s no economic incentive for businesses, governments, and even homeowners to embrace recycling and reuse in a significant way.  Buffalo ReUse is doing its best to innovate techniques to enable the reuse of the largest quantity of materials possible, but we need a lot of players at the table to ensure that the reuse industry grows and expands in the coming years. Our collective efforts will create the new status quo for demolition that creates jobs locally, channels money into local economies, and protects the environment.

We initially agreed to support the Extreme Makeover project because we believed it was a tremendous opportunity to showcase the advances that have been made in the industry and demonstrate to the world the potential that exists for green demolition and reuse. Through this episode, Green Demolition has been put on the map!   Now we need your help to grow and expand the effort, so it can be scaled and expanded throughout the country to support the green jobs movement and protection of our environment in a time of widescale global warming. We invite you to get involved. Become a member of Buffalo ReUse and the BMRA and share your expertise, ideas, and energy.

We’re EXTREMELY proud of the part we played when we joined the huge volunteer team of contractors, suppliers, businesses and thousands of individual citizens. Our green demolition of the Powell’s old home helped David Homes achieve an Emerald Level LEED certification for the entire project (first ever in NY State!). Here are some of the things we were able to accomplish in our green demo:

• Did it in only 15 hours
• Achieved a 97% rate of diversion (by weight). This makes an EXTREME impact on what would usually go the landfill and be “thrown away”
• Preserved parts of the old house for use in the new house
• Made wood, interior furnishings, stone and other parts of the old house available for reuse in the new house, throughout the neighborhood and from our store
• Showed the world the economic viability of green demolition and the future of green jobs in Buffalo

Come to the premiere January 24! Get your free tickets at the Shea’s box office.

A network publicist confirmed the air date for the episode, which will highlight the Massachusetts Avenue home that was rebuilt last month for Delores Powell, a Jamaican immigrant, and her four children.

According to the Buffalo News, “The extra hour is expected to highlight the rehabilitation of several West Side homes near the Powell home, as the community rallied to expand the original idea of the program.” GO BUFFALO!

Buffalo ReUse will be planning something special for our big debut, so stay tuned…

Materials harvested from the demolition, such as roof joists, rafters, wall studs, interior trim, bricks and foundation stone, will be sold to the general public at low cost from Buffalo ReUse’s ReSource retail store at 298 Northampton Street in Buffalo and used to fund ReUse’s job creation and community revitalization programs.

Eric Walker, Lead Organizer for People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH), said “PUSH is taking a block by block approach, working in the community to stabilize this neighborhood. Jimmy Strach, who lives next door, has saved his Victorian home from the wrecking ball. When a guy makes a huge personal investment and saves a house from demo, we need to draw a line, take a stand and back him up on it. We also need to help community residents reclaim vacant spaces in ways that enhance and improve their quality of life. Green demolition of this house is a win-win for the neighborhood and for Buffalo.”

Buffalo ReUse sees green demolition as another way to reduce housing costs by using reclaimed lumber and other building materials from Buffalo’s large surplus of vacant houses, rather than crunch it up and throw it away at great expense.  By employing state-of-the-art green demolition techniques, Buffalo ReUse can harvest lumber efficiently and sell it to the public at costs averaging half of new material.

David Stapleton of David Homes and his team of builders welcomed the opportunity to build a new energy efficient house for the Powell family of 228 Massachusetts Ave on Buffalo’s West Side; however, there was one major obstacle in the way–the 2.5 story woodframe house the family had been living in for 4 years.  Buffalo ReUse got the call when the Project Manager was looking for a local contractor that could help them achieve an LEED Emerald Award for material reclamation, recycling and landfill diversion.  Buffalo ReUse is WNY’s first and only nonprofit Green Demolition and Salvage Crew.  They have been developing green demolition in Buffalo for over 2 years now.  Buffalo ReUse consulted with deconstruction guru, David Bennink.

David Bennink, of RE-USE Consulting, has been perfecting hybrid deconstruction for over 15 years and he has managed hundreds of green demolition projects across the country.  The biggest challenge of taking down the house was the time deadline.  “… but once I walked the building, I knew that Buffalo Reuse and I could pull off this project and my focus turned to doing it safely and finding the best way to represent the building deconstruction industry in this national spotlight.  It is likely that the building weighed about 80-100 tons not including the foundation or porch stone, or 150-175 tons with it, and of that we diverted an estimated 75% including a large volume of foundation stone hauled offsite for processing and reuse. ”

Buffalo ReUse’s rapid green demolition of the Powell’s old house was a demonstration of the practicality and economic feasibility of the technique–the house was deconstructed in under 17 hours! Our hope is that green demolition will soon be the mainstream method of demolition and the first choice for builders and municipalities in need of demolition.  Beyond reducing building costs, Buffalo’s “problem” of vacant houses can be turned into an opportunity to create jobs, train young people, fund community improvement programs and offer low-cost building materials to the public.

Volunteers from the public and Americorps WNY were directed on-site by ReUse staff and shown how to pull up flooring, prep wall panels and cut the joists in the attic so that the house could be taken apart efficiently and safely.  Hundreds of volunteers swarmed the house and salvaged interior finishes like window and door trim, baseboards, the stairwell and even piled 6 pallets of brick and 4 pallets of sandstone and limestone.  The Show chose select pieces from within the house to incorporate into its new furnishings and honor the history of the house and the family’s experiences.  Other house parts were carted off for use in adjacent houses and improvement projects in the neighborhood.
Buffalo ReUse DTech, Carrie Nader, commented, “It was great, if I needed a tool or something, I shouted for it and suddenly it appeared.  So many people were processing panels and loading trucks–all the material just disappeared.”  Amanda Alessandra operated the 10K telescopic forklift all night.  She has been a DTech Crew Leader for more than a year, “It was really a different experience to have an audience cheering for our progress as we separated each panel of the house and dropped it to the ground.”
Board Members of Buffalo ReUse were onhand to get dirty, perform safety checks, assist with cutting up the house, sorting materials, loading the trucks or spur the crowd to cheer on the Deconstruction Crew and Volunteers.
Everyone at Buffalo ReUse is proud to be a part of making a clear path of progress for the Powell family and all of Buffalo’s neighborhoods.

If you would still like to help as the project of building the home and helping out in the neighborhood continues this week, please email volunteer {at} davidhomes(.)com. Everyone must register at the Water Authority on Porter Ave where they will be given a hardhat and a blue T-shirt. Americorps is the official clearing house for the volunteering and they will send out further updates on shifts and needs. Thanks!