Farewell to Excavators – Building Deconstruction, as Opposed to Demolition, Increasingly Frequent in USA

Portland was first, and now more and more American cities are adopting the policy of “deconstruction instead of demolition”, which entails a careful “disassembly” of old facilities in order to preserve as much material as possible.

Portland is the first American city which requires houses of a certain age to be deconstructed instead of demolished. It means that, instead of using excavators, everybody who wants to tear down an old house must hire a deconstruction team which then manually, nearly surgically, takes the house apart. So, instead of piles of concrete, dust, crushed wood, the byproducts are windows, bricks, marble, old wood. The idea is that these materials can be sold or reused locally.

The idea has been recognized by other cities as well, so in the past five years, Baltimore, Cleveland, San Jose and Palo Alto have adopted their deconstruction policies. As the officials say, deconstruction is a green alternative to demolition, which sends 85% less material to the landfills. In addition to that, it is not as noisy as traditional demolition, it doesn’t emit dust and toxic materials into the air, such as asbestos.

In the past four years, Portland has deconstructed over 420 family houses and facilities which are registered as historical edifices or were built before 1940.

Deconstruction still considerably more expansive than demolition

As they say at companies specialized for this delicate job, in addition to the fact that using old materials for new things is ecologically justified, the wood obtained this way is very nice. Still, there are plenty of problems too.

Although demolition specialists says that the costs of deconstruction have dropped compared to the beginning of the implementation of this policy, this is still a considerably more expensive option than traditional demolition. According to a report of the Portland State University, deconstruction can be up to 80% more expensive. Another problem is the lack of workforce. Four years ago, Milwaukee required many old structures to be deconstructed, but this rule is still not implemented, because officials still have a problem finding local entrepreneurs that can deconstruct a building by hand.

Due to all these challenges, cities are not rushing to implement the new rules. Pittsburgh has launched a one-year pilot project in cooperation with local construction companies in order to see whether the deconstruction of old buildings on city land is cost effective.

Some cities opt to deconstruct old buildings exclusively, due to the complexity of the project, but also the quality of the materials. As they say, since the 1970s, materials which are not particularly valuable have been in use, and especially in construction, that is when the use of glue and other components which make manual deconstruction more difficult started as well.

M. D.

building deconstruction

deconstruction instead of demolition

construction waste

Baltimore

Cleveland

San Jose

Palo Alto

Portland

deconstruction of old buildings