There are often a lot of news stories about eco-friendly ways of constructing a new house, but what about demolishing a house? Tearing down a home and tossing its parts in a landfill is not exactly friendly to the environment, which is why many homeowners are concerned with eco-friendly methods of demolition when they're ready to remove their home. If you want to demolish your home in the most eco-friendly way possible, note a few tips for how to plan this.
1. Start by educating yourself
Call around to local scrap yards and ask what can be recycled from a home; don't assume that raw materials like wood and glass are the only things that can be recycled, as you might be surprised at what items can be broken down and reused. Often entire appliances, old furniture pieces, and other similar pieces can be quickly and easily recycled. Discuss your plans for demolition with a scrap yard and ask them what home materials they would take, including wiring, plumbing pipes, carpeting, floor tiles, and so on. Make a list of all the items you might drop off or have picked up by a salvage or scrap yard.
2. Deconstruct
A deconstruction means to tear out the interior of a building by hand rather than simply demolishing it from the outside. You can often hire a crew to do this, or you might be able to manage this yourself. Once you know of nearby salvage yards and what they will take, you can organize these different materials in skip bins as you remove them from your home; floor tiles in one bin, plumbing pipes in another, and so on.
3. Protect the surrounding environment
Once you've removed everything you can recycle from a home and are ready for demolition, protect the surrounding environment. Nylon silt barriers, often used around construction sites as temporary safety fences, can be put down over soil and secured with hay bales to keep soil disruption and runoff to a minimum. Adding gravel driveways to the property so that the soil isn't disrupted by heavy cranes and bobcats can also help keep it compacted and in place. Add the silt barrier around the base of trees so they stay intact and their roots are not interrupted. If you're pulling up outdoor plumbing pipes with the demolition, note if trenchers rather than bobcats will cause the least amount of soil disruption; trenches dig long, narrow trenches rather than deep pits. By doing what you can to protect the surrounding environment, your demolition will be as eco-friendly as possible.
Share11 April 2016
Hello, my name is Sandra and I live in Australia. This is my new blog which is all about the benefits of planning when operating a business. I am new to the world of business but in the 6 months that I have been running my shop, I have learnt an awful lot. My teacher has been Mr Jones, a local businessman with many years of experience. Mr Jones helped me to plan my budget, source my stock and to negotiate with suppliers. I decided to start a blog to pass on some top tips to others. I hope you find it useful.
