Save Money And Resources By Recycling The Concrete And Wood From Your House Demolition
If you're demolishing an old house to make way for a new building, then you may be considering ways to minimise waste, reduce costs, and have a more sustainable building. One of the keys to achieving this is found in the demolition stage. Recycling building materials is becoming a popular practice in modern building practice, and there are two key things that can be reused or recycled when you demolish the old house.
Concrete
In the past, most concrete from demolitions ended up in a landfill site. However, these days there is a greater regard for the damage this can do to the environment and a better understanding of the resources and energy needed to dispose of it and then manufacture new concrete products.
The most common way to recycle concrete is to have it crushed into small pieces, much like gravel. This can be used as aggregate in new concrete components, which will dramatically reduce the amount of fresh concrete you'll need to buy. It can also be used as a base for driveways, sheds, or garden beds.
Concrete can be hauled away and taken to a concrete recycling yard, where it will be crushed until the aggregate is evenly sized. This can then be hauled back to your site and put to use as you choose. If you don't have a huge amount of concrete to crush, then a mobile crushing machine can come to your building site and do it on the spot. This will save you a considerable amount on haulage and handling costs.
Wood
When you think of recycling building materials, timber is often the first thing that springs to mind. Many beautiful wooden floors have been made out of recycled timber, and it's often in high demand. Recycled wood can sometimes even be more expensive than new timber. But it's not just the glamourous hardwood floors that are good to recycle; plain old structural timber can also be re-used, saving you a lot of money on the cost of wood.
If you're planning to recycle the timber from the demolition of the old house, then it's worth having a meeting on site with both your builder and the demolition company. Together you can ascertain what is salvageable and what can be discarded. Even timber that isn't in a good enough condition to be used structurally can still be used to construct garden beds, retaining walls, or wood stores in your new garden.
Salvaging as much concrete and wood from the demolition process makes sense financially and from an environmental perspective. For many people, it's also a way of including a part of the history of the old house in the new home. Contact a concrete recycling company like South Coast Concrete Crushing & Recycling for more information.