The World Resources Institute have launched a Forest Legality Alliance to support the private sector efforts and policies to reduce trade in illegally harvested wood. The Alliance is a global public-private initiative open to businesses, industry associations, financial institutions and civil society organizations with a stake in legal forest product supply chains.
Illegal logging is acknowledged as a major environmental, social and economic problem by both timber-producing and timber-consuming countries. Countries that are major importers of wood products have begun to address the problem of illegal logging and associated trade with a variety of laws and policies. The Alliance produces innovative practical tools to help forest product supply chains screen out illegal wood.
“Some companies are not aware of the need to ask questions about the wood they are buying or the consequences of letting illegal wood enter their supply chains,” said Craig Hanson, director of WRI’s People and Ecosystems Program. “The Alliance seeks to build confidence that imported wood and paper products are legal. Done right, trade supports environmental protection and the Alliance recognizes the role trade plays in protecting our world’s great forests.”
NEWS RELEASE: Global Alliance Launched to Curb Trade in Illegal Wood
Forest facts
Forest Legality Alliance
Showing posts with label reclaimed timber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reclaimed timber. Show all posts
Friday, June 04, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Proposed prohibition on illegal timber
The European Parliament’s environment committee have taken a major step towards stopping illegally sourced timber and wood products from being sold within the EU. The committee voted through new draft legislation, proposals hailed by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency as the toughest and most meaningful yet to combat the trade and help curb the prevalent deforestation.
If endorsed by the European Council in July, the legislation means EU companies would have to prove they are buying and selling only legally harvested timber and wood products, with member states having the right to investigate those suspected of breaking the law and to prosecute and impose strong penalties on the guilty.
The environment committee which is led by UK Green MEP Caroline Lucas said she, "recognises that this issue is also the responsibility of Europe as a major consuming region of illegally sourced timber and wood products. It’s up to the member states now to ensure illegal timber and wood products no longer continue to be sold as legal. They must support a prohibition and ensure strong measures come into force.”
Environment Investigation Agency
If endorsed by the European Council in July, the legislation means EU companies would have to prove they are buying and selling only legally harvested timber and wood products, with member states having the right to investigate those suspected of breaking the law and to prosecute and impose strong penalties on the guilty.
The environment committee which is led by UK Green MEP Caroline Lucas said she, "recognises that this issue is also the responsibility of Europe as a major consuming region of illegally sourced timber and wood products. It’s up to the member states now to ensure illegal timber and wood products no longer continue to be sold as legal. They must support a prohibition and ensure strong measures come into force.”
Environment Investigation Agency
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Reclaimed wood is this years trend, says Linda Barker
In an interview featured in the May edition of Period House magazine, interior designer Linda Barker was asked what the new trend were for the coming season. She replied, "I've seen lots and lots of reclaimed wood, it looks set to be a big trend. Think reclaimed timber finishes on tables and cupboards and wood that has printing on it still and is half sanded. It's a very strong and beautiful look and goes wonderfully with the other key trend, the eclectic look and in the last year it has evolved to look not so polished."
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
'Outdoor room' from salvage
Check out Greenopolis for ideas on how to make an inexpensive outdoor room using garden and architectural salvage.
Traditional timber framers from Europe and Japan
This is a new comprehensive French website in English too with a mass of info about timber frames, beams, converting and fellling wood.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Rotting wood 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide
Each year anything between five and ten million tonnes of wood is thrown away in the UK. Recycling rates for wood have improved in recent years. In the mid 1990s, less than 2 per cent of discarded wood a year was recycled, that figure is now between 40 and 50 per cent.
However this still means that each year the equivalent of many forests are being buried in holes in the ground! As the biodegradable wood lies in landfills, gently rotting away, it creates methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide.
"Kitchen cabinets are regarded as the low-grade end of the used-wood market. Most are made from wood chip and are bound by glue and other substances, all of which have to be filtered out when recycled. Because of present economic conditions, there is a surplus of used wood on the market. But the great hope for the future are wood-fuelled biomass power plants: wood surpluses could be burned as more of these facilities come on stream. Wood recycling groups, operating in virtually every city and county, are an excellent drop off and buying point for used-wood products. Find out where your local one is at the charity Furniture Re-Use Network www.frn.org.uk" said the Green and Confused Organisation.
Times online
Thornton Kay said . . .
The figures given by The Times are misleading. The article says 'In the mid 1990s, less than 2 per cent of discarded wood a year was recycled, that figure is now between 40 and 50 per cent.' and that 7m tonnes of wood is discarded.
The truth is that much more than 7m tonnes of wood is discarded from all waste streams in the UK annually of which around 7m tonnes is discarded from construction and demolition alone. In the mid 1990s 10 percent of this C&D wood, or 700,000 tonnes, was reclaimed for reuse as wood by the salvage sector. Officially less than 2 percent was recycled by being chipped, mulched or burnt, although anecdotal evidence is that unrecorded burning was much more prevalent.
In 2009 the amount of reclaimable wood being recycled increased to 50 percent, and 250,000 tonnes are reclaimed for reuse by the salvage sector.
The Times story is greenwash. It is promoting the view that the best option for reusable old demolition timber is burning in waste to energy plants. All reusable wood should be reused. Burning reusable wood is never the best option, and it would only be carbon neutral if the world's forests are expanding by the amount of wood being destroyed and the energy costs of felling and converting the timber were nil. But in reality forests are contracting rapidly and the energy costs of growing new forests and logging and converting new timber are high.
14 NOVEMBER, 2009 02:52
However this still means that each year the equivalent of many forests are being buried in holes in the ground! As the biodegradable wood lies in landfills, gently rotting away, it creates methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide.
"Kitchen cabinets are regarded as the low-grade end of the used-wood market. Most are made from wood chip and are bound by glue and other substances, all of which have to be filtered out when recycled. Because of present economic conditions, there is a surplus of used wood on the market. But the great hope for the future are wood-fuelled biomass power plants: wood surpluses could be burned as more of these facilities come on stream. Wood recycling groups, operating in virtually every city and county, are an excellent drop off and buying point for used-wood products. Find out where your local one is at the charity Furniture Re-Use Network www.frn.org.uk" said the Green and Confused Organisation.
Times online
Thornton Kay said . . .
The figures given by The Times are misleading. The article says 'In the mid 1990s, less than 2 per cent of discarded wood a year was recycled, that figure is now between 40 and 50 per cent.' and that 7m tonnes of wood is discarded.
The truth is that much more than 7m tonnes of wood is discarded from all waste streams in the UK annually of which around 7m tonnes is discarded from construction and demolition alone. In the mid 1990s 10 percent of this C&D wood, or 700,000 tonnes, was reclaimed for reuse as wood by the salvage sector. Officially less than 2 percent was recycled by being chipped, mulched or burnt, although anecdotal evidence is that unrecorded burning was much more prevalent.
In 2009 the amount of reclaimable wood being recycled increased to 50 percent, and 250,000 tonnes are reclaimed for reuse by the salvage sector.
The Times story is greenwash. It is promoting the view that the best option for reusable old demolition timber is burning in waste to energy plants. All reusable wood should be reused. Burning reusable wood is never the best option, and it would only be carbon neutral if the world's forests are expanding by the amount of wood being destroyed and the energy costs of felling and converting the timber were nil. But in reality forests are contracting rapidly and the energy costs of growing new forests and logging and converting new timber are high.
14 NOVEMBER, 2009 02:52
Scrap wood table
A table made from random pieces of scrap wood which have been laminated together. Then carefully smoothed and polished only on one side of the finished block, leaving the underside rough to show off the process.
MAKE
MAKE
Thursday, November 05, 2009
The tallest reclaimed treehouse
Tennessee Cumberland County, USA
Horace Burgess has built the worlds tallest treehouse which stands at 97 feet. Now in his 14th year of construction, he is still not finished! He has never measured its size but estimates it to be about 8,000 to 10,000 square feet. "I did count the nails which I hammered into the wood — 258,000, give or take a few hundred," said Mr Burgess.
The treehouse is supported by an 80-foot-tall white oak 12 feet in diameter at its base. Most of his materials are reused pieces of lumber from garages, storage sheds and barns.
USA today
Friday, July 31, 2009
Bottomless bounty: DeadHead Lumber finds new markets for old, sunken logs
Todd Morrissette, 39, founded DeadHead Lumber in April 2008 a company that salvages logs from the bottom of lakes and rivers with the help of an Aqua-logger. The pontoon boat has been specifically designed to salvage logs from the bottom of lakes and ponds. It is Mr Morrissette's office during the summer months, when he scours Moosehead Lake in America with his sonar looking for sunken logs, also called deadheads, which, for some, last saw the light of day 150 years ago during log drives on the lake.
Mr Morrissette is currently working at a spot off the western shore of Moosehead Lake’s Sugar Island where logs cut from the island were floated to a plywood mill on the southern end of the lake. "Hardwoods like birch do not float, so loggers built rafts of buoyant softwoods like spruce and piled the hardwoods on top. Some of the logs never made it to the mill. On the journey, bad weather could create waves as high as 4 feet that would break apart the rafts, sending thousands of hardwood logs to the bottom of the lake where the lack of oxygen and sunlight preserved them," said Mr Morrissette. The typical hardwood log harvested from today’s forests averages between 12 and 14 inches in diameter. Morrissette’s deadheads average between 18 and 20 inches, with the largest being 36 inches in diameter. “You can’t find that now,” he says.
Once he gets the logs up, Morrissette mills them into rough planks, then dries and sells them to flooring companies or high-end cabinetmakers. Since the logs are old growth, planks can sell for as much as 20 times the amount per board foot of logs cut today. Old growth birch grew slowly in the shade of pines and spruce over 100 years, and therefore have fewer blemishes and knots and tighter growth rings. “When you have tight rings, it makes the wood more stable, harder, denser,” Morrissette says.
Mainebiz
Mr Morrissette is currently working at a spot off the western shore of Moosehead Lake’s Sugar Island where logs cut from the island were floated to a plywood mill on the southern end of the lake. "Hardwoods like birch do not float, so loggers built rafts of buoyant softwoods like spruce and piled the hardwoods on top. Some of the logs never made it to the mill. On the journey, bad weather could create waves as high as 4 feet that would break apart the rafts, sending thousands of hardwood logs to the bottom of the lake where the lack of oxygen and sunlight preserved them," said Mr Morrissette. The typical hardwood log harvested from today’s forests averages between 12 and 14 inches in diameter. Morrissette’s deadheads average between 18 and 20 inches, with the largest being 36 inches in diameter. “You can’t find that now,” he says.
Once he gets the logs up, Morrissette mills them into rough planks, then dries and sells them to flooring companies or high-end cabinetmakers. Since the logs are old growth, planks can sell for as much as 20 times the amount per board foot of logs cut today. Old growth birch grew slowly in the shade of pines and spruce over 100 years, and therefore have fewer blemishes and knots and tighter growth rings. “When you have tight rings, it makes the wood more stable, harder, denser,” Morrissette says.
Mainebiz
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Retrouvius design Tracey Neuls’ Pop-Up Shop
reuse of the week
Tracey Neuls’ Pop-Up Shop, designed by Retrouvius
Salvo supporters Retrouvius designed the display for the first ever retrospective of Tracey Neuls’ in her pop-up showroom in west London. Examples of the designer’s stunning, hand-crafted shoes dangling from the ceiling on red string, and displayed upon archival drawers that had been salvaged from the Natural History Museum in Edinburgh by Retrouvius.
The show coincides with with London Fashion Week, and will be running until 10 March at 1-5 Exhibition Road, Brompton, London, SW7 2HE
The museum drawers come from a selection which Retrouvius are selling for £15 each + vat (dims vary). The drawers come in different sizes, woods and styles which can be easily configured into storage plans.
Blueprint
Retrouvius
Tracey Neuls’ Pop-Up Shop, designed by Retrouvius
Salvo supporters Retrouvius designed the display for the first ever retrospective of Tracey Neuls’ in her pop-up showroom in west London. Examples of the designer’s stunning, hand-crafted shoes dangling from the ceiling on red string, and displayed upon archival drawers that had been salvaged from the Natural History Museum in Edinburgh by Retrouvius.
The show coincides with with London Fashion Week, and will be running until 10 March at 1-5 Exhibition Road, Brompton, London, SW7 2HE
The museum drawers come from a selection which Retrouvius are selling for £15 each + vat (dims vary). The drawers come in different sizes, woods and styles which can be easily configured into storage plans.
Blueprint
Retrouvius
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
BigREc Survey shows predicted decline in reuse between 1998 and 2007
London UK - THE report on the BigREc 2 Survey was launched in St Pancras, London last Thursday 4th December 2008 with presentations and talks by Gilli Hobbs and Katherine Adams of BRE, Thornton Kay of Salvo and Steve Tomlin of Masco.
The report had been commissioned by BRE in 2006 and was carried out in 2006 – 2007. The results showed that, overall, the reclaimed part of the reclamation trade had declined since 1998, although some sectors of the trade, reclaimed bricks and architectural woodwork for example, had increased.
Anecdotal evidence that the government push for recycling, spearheaded by WRAP, had diverted materials away from reuse and towards crushing and chipping, seemed to be confirmed by the survey, with total volumes down from 2.96m tonnes in 1998 to 2.23m in 2007. Employment was also down from 39,000 in 1998 to 25,800 in 2007.
The BigREc survey was in two parts: Yellow Postcards and the main BigREc survey questionnaires comprising 19 material sectors ranging from salvaged concrete to antique bathrooms
2,043 Yellow Postcards were sent out of which 1,900 were valid, and 180 were returned (compared to 1200 sent out of which 288 were returned in 1998). These gave an indication of the total size of the market, the type of business and sales turnover of each respondent.
323 BigREc main survey questionnaires were sent out of which 36 were completed (88 completed in 1998) comprising of a 28 page booklet with 235 questions in total. The survey gave detailed info on volumes, stocks, suppliers, customers, distances goods travel, employment and standards of supply.
The Yellow Postcards and BigREc Survey were two separate surveys which corroborated each other to an extent.
It is a long job answering 235 questions and after the failure of the BigREc survey of 1998 to make any impact on policy (in fact government policy moved against reuse after the survey was published in 2000) unsurprisingly there was less enthusiasm for completing the survey this time.
The Yellow Postcards went into a draw for a free Salvo mag subscription worth £50 (won by Anglia Building Supplies in Essex) and the BigREc main survey went into a draw for a free stand at Salvo Fair worth up to £750 (won by David Nightingale of 3A Roofing in Suffolk).
Nine businesses completed both surveys in 1998 and 2007 – it would have been eleven but two have since gone completely out of salvage and into new manufacture. Accuracy is an issue with this survey, comparative shifts are more reliable than absolute figures.
The Yellow Postcard and BigREc 2 survey was undertaken by Thornton Kay of Salvo Llp.
Construction Resources Waste Platform BigREc Survey Report 2008
Monday, November 05, 2007
Acqua, sapone e creativita
Casantica, Novembre/Dicembre 2007
L'antico incontra l'hitech
La soluzione piu bizzarra della nostra passerella e sicuramente rappresenta-ta da questo curioso (e, a nostro parere, efficacissimo) matrimonio fravecchio e nuovo, fra legno di recupero e materiali hi-tech (il vetro e le rubinetterie iper-contemporanee).
Un lavabo da antiquari
Siete in cerca di un lavabo elegante e classico? Questo vecchio tavolino rinvenuto in un mercantino antiquario e adattato allo scopo puo facilmente fare al caso vostro. Un consiglio: quanto piu e bello il mobile scelto come supporto tanto piu risultera ricercato ed esclusivo il risultato finale.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Lead paint
Above:Door painted with lead based paint
Technical Advice taken from SPAB (Douglas Kent, the SPAB technical secretary)
What is Lead paint?
Lead paint comprises lead pigment, usually lead carbonate ("white lead"), bound in oil. The pigment creates either a white paint or a base for tinting with colour. Historically, linseed oil was the usual binder and turpentine the thinner, their proportions determine whether the finish was Matt or semi-gloss. From the 20Th century, the flow gloss and drying time was improved by using an alkyd resin medium and the addition of titanium dioxide pigment boosted the covering power.
Lead tetroxide ("red lead") has been used extensively fro metal primers. Mixed with lead carbonate, it forms a pink lead primer for joinery.
Where might lead paint be applied?
Lead paint was popular until the 1960's, particularly on timber and metalwork. It was also applied to lime plaster in grander buildings (this had to have carbonate paint is now restricted by law for use on listed buildings grades I and II only, or, in Scotland, grade A), scheduled ancient monuments and works of art. Where care is taken, its careful application is to be encouraged, especially for the protection of 18Th and 19Th century joinery and conservation of important historic interiors.
What are the pros and cons of lead paint?
Lead paint has unrivalled durability on timber, possessed good flex ability and is "breathable". Its texture, depth of colour and mellow appearance are difficult to emulate with alternatives, and it emits less environmentally harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs) than modern oil paints.
The main drawback with lead paint is toxicity. A health risk only exists, though, where lead compounds are ingested or inhaled due to unsound or disturbed paint. Dust from sanding old lead paint is the greatest hazard. The presence of lead paint does not justify stripping historic joinery.
How do I identify lead paint?
Old lead paint frequently has a creamy or soft colour. Rather than splitting and peeling, it may develop a fine, oblong pattern of cracking. A chalky surface can provide a further clue, but is not exclusive to lead paint. Detached samples feel heavier than with other paints. Lead paint might be present in nearly any pre-1960s building. Its existence can be confirmed with a DIY test kit or more sophisticated analysis. Where found, it could be safer to renew or cover coat lead paint than attempt its removal. If removing, use wet (not dry) sanding, chemical strippers or low-level heat.
How do I obtain lead paint
Supplies of lead carbonate paint are limited, but still available. The SPAB may be able to advise. You must declare that your intent is lawful, using a form the supplier usually provides. Approval takes several weeks. It is not required when buying red lead paint.
On buildings where the use of lead carbonate paint is no longer permitted, a compatible alternative, such as linseed paint, may enable the retention and over coating of old lead-based layers.
How do I apply and renew lead paint
External redecoration on a 5-10 year cycle is not untypical with lead paint and, internally, it needs renewing infrequently. Because it tends to erode rather than peel, surface preparation may require little more than washing with sugar soap and, where necessary, lightly rubbing down with wet abrasive paper. Only loose paint needs scrapping off. When taking back non-lead overcoats, remove all stripper residue thoroughly. Vacuum cleaners must have HEPA filters. Children and pregnant women should not be present.
Lead paint should be well-stirred and applied thinly with good bristle brushes. Each coat must dry properly before the next is put on. Natural oil based formulations are slow drying and demand great skill by the painter.
Note: I strongly disagree with the idea of using lead-based paints - TK
[Cornerstone Vol 28, No 3 2007 www.spab.org.uk]
Monday, August 06, 2007
Gaze 18 Aug: Victorian pots and urns
Diss, Norfolk UK - THE forthcoming sale on Sat 18 August of architectural salvage and statuary at T W Gaze will include some unusual Compton Pots, 'elegant but in subdued way' said Carl Willows, some Doulton urns, Minton encaustic tiles, decent lead figures including a 1900's set of four seasons, a vaguely American under lifesize bronze lady with blooms, some good gates including Arts & Crafts Jekyll-style, and a load of oak and elm beams, some of them rescued by women from builders bonfires.
The auction catalogue will be out soon, but on Thursday at the latest.
T W Gaze & Sons
The auction catalogue will be out soon, but on Thursday at the latest.
T W Gaze & Sons
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Serbian smokehouse at this year's Salvo Fair
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Above: Some typical Serbian smokehouses looking for new owners before they fall down, or get demolished in the drive for modernisation.Knebworth, Hertfordshire UK - ANDY Triplow of salvage company Architectural Treasures in Kent is hoping to bring either parts of, or a complete, Serbian smokehouse to this year's Salvo Fair at Knebworth, Sat 30 Jun - Sun 1 Jul.
These rustic uncared for rural buildings, many of which have already fallen into decay, are being rescued, either as intact pieces or for their reclaimable oak. Is there anyone ambitious enough to want somewhere to smoke their cheese and sausages (is that allowed in suburban Isleworth?) or perhaps a Serbian ex-pat hankering after a bit of the old country in which they can retreat from the turmoil of the twentieth century.
The smokehouses are mainly built from hundred-year-old thick oak planking - which can make a product with its own merits either as resawn flooring or for use in building reclaimed oak furniture, windows and doors, or other building elements.
Andy Triplow said, "I am not sure whether we will have time to get a complete smokehouse to Knebworth, but if we don't, we will have some Serbian smoked sausage, maybe some elements from a smokehouse, and photos. We would be happy to talk to potential buyers of either complete buildings or reclaimed Serbian oak on our stand at the show. We will also be there on the trade day on Friday 29 June in case anyone wants a longer more serious chat. We hope to have one erected in our Smarsden yard later this year."
Contact Architectural Treasures telephone 01233 813355 http://www.architecturaltreasures.co.uk
Friday, March 16, 2007
Reclaimed Thai teak sells in California
Photo G Grant New York TimesAS Southeast Asia continues to modernize, many teak-wood homes and buildings are being torn down and replaced with Western-style brick or concrete ones. While this architectural turnover has been going on for decades, in recent years American companies like TerraMai have been buying up the old-growth teak wood and selling it to homeowners, writes Luke Kummer NYT.
This trade has raised concerns among US preservationists but not, it seems, those in Thailand who see it in a generally positive light.
"In the last three years, our sales of reclaimed teak have tripled," said Erika Carpenter, TerraMai's co-founder. "People are becoming aware, appreciating the material and designing their projects around it . . .
. . . Read more in the New York Times
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Two million board feet reclaimed white pine
Dismantling under way [Photo Woodchuck]Superior, Wisconsin USA - WISCONSIN Woodchuck, formed two year's ago, is dismantling what was the world's largest grain silo in 1887, to reclaim and estimated two million board feet of antique white pine, fir and spruce.
The building was covered with corrugated sheet metal, protecting both the wood and its grain contents. The inside of the main building was an architectural wonder. The top floors housed ten enormous antique cast-iron pulley wheels, each weighing 4400 pounds. It also contained three huge grain distributors, each of which fed grain into an octopus that directed the grain into separate bins. Oak-pegged mortise-and-tenon joints exist throughout the building. [Woodchuck's web site.]
"Taking down a 120-year-old wooden structure that's 150 feet high and has a footprint of 20,000 square feet is a formidable feat of engineering," says Hozza, a native Minnesotan who once served as president of the St. Paul City Council. "We hired the CR Meyer company, which brought in the biggest crane anyone up here had ever seen." The perimeter of the building is constructed of 2x8 and 2x10 planks pancaked on top of each other to form 10-inch-thick walls. Inside is a honeycomb of bin walls made of 2x6's and 2x8's - all reinforced with gargantuan beams. Many of the beams are 10 x 14's that range up to 36 feet in length. [Judy Peres, Architectural Salvage News Nov06]
Wisconsin Woodchuck Llc
Architectural Salvage News
Friday, February 16, 2007
Pine Supplies near Bolton
Thornton Kay writes about husband and wife reclaimed wood specialist Pine Supplies in Lancashire UK
Above: Fiona and Nick Gordon in the main machine shop of Pine Supplies in one of their farm outhouses on just outside Bolton. A husband and wife business working from home with no employees can result in a sometimes tempestuous very rewarding relationship. They look good on it anyway.
Bolton, Lancashire UK - "TWENTY-THREE year's ago I went to a salvage yard for a piece of old oak for a mantelpiece and thought, this guy is making a living by not being helpful and polite - I can do that. At the same time I was using a hand-saw to rip beams down and someone said get a table saw. I went to look at one which turned out to be a Wadkin 36ins circular dated - 1 June 1951 - my birthday. It was a beautifully well-made machine," Nick Gordon said in his stream of consciousness manner of speaking. It seemed like destiny, so he bought it on the spot.
Nick left school to start a career in the family scrap metal business in Westhoughton, but eventually decided to give flagging a go. This ended with him sending reclaimed flagstones to Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London and the Imperial War Museum. Fiona Gordon also lived locally. Their paths probably crossed at a very young age - neither seemed too sure - and they got married. The flagstone business had to stop when they lost their premises.
So they moved on to reclaimed timber, based at their farmhouse nestling in the countryside above Bolton. Nick put an ad in the Farmer's Guardian. The orders started coming in, mainly for pine flooring and cutting lists. His first big order came after the 1987 storms from a boat repairer. Nick already had good contacts with the demolition trade from his scrap and flagstone days so supply was not a big issue.
Nick Gordon's skill for mechanics soon came in handy and he started acquiring, commissioning and adapting machinery suited to the task of ripping beams, mainly pitch pine, into boards and sections. Fiona was, and still is, his labourer as well as his taskmaster, dealing with the phone and orders. One can be justly envious of their blissful life in a rural idyll with an old farmhouse land and outbuildings, poultry and dog running around - their kids have grown up and left now - and no employees to worry about.
The tools the Gordons have bought and developed include a bolt-puller, power-adze, bandsaw converted to run hydraulically using a six litre lorry engine, a Farm 2000 wood waste boiler in which they burn sawdust collected by their home-made extraction system, and a circular saw with Nick's unique home-made blade capable of chomping its way through a thousand six-inch steel nails. They use a Protovale Imp to search for nails, bolts and screws which Nick says will find things as small as a carpet staple. They also steam clean the beams to get rid of grit and reduce wear on the saws and planer.
The wood they buy is pitch pine or yellow pine, taken out of buildings locally and further afield, much of which is first growth forest timber of North America and the Baltic logged in Victorian times. As if to prove its pedigree, among the embedded objects found by the Gordon's, usually wire fencing and the occasional lead bullet, was an iron tomahawk-head which they found buried deep in a pine beam from the old Warburton's Victorian bakery building. Iron tomahawk heads were first taken to North America by the French in the late eighteenth century to trade with the indigenous population, and would have been the prized possession of an Indian brave who would rarely threw a tomahawk in anger unless in serious trouble and then would normally unerringly hit the target. What a story it could tell!
When converting the beams Nick will start with boards then, if the beam is good, take out the biggest sections, and then go back to floorboards again. For clean wood he uses a 1946 Robinson band resaw, which he describes as a lovely machine, the most powerful saw of its size in England, which will cut a 12in square beam at 3 1/2 feet per second. He converted it to run hydraulically on an old Ford Cargo six litre engine (petrol I guess). He also has a Wadkins 36in circular saw and blades, including one he has made especially for ripping through six inch nails, the result of a job he got from Michael Aspel who wanted extra naily wood for one of the floors in his house. Conspicuous salvage that. The Wadkin's saw blades date from early plate saws that are set traditionally, through to later complex inserted tooth tungsten-tipped saws. He changes them according to the number of residual nails and the amount of resin in the wood. There is a also a Dominion four-cutter for planer thicknessing.
Sawdust is collected in a home-made cyclone extractor and is then burnt, along with scrap off-cuts, in their Farm 2000 wood waste burner, which heats their house and hot water. Chickens forage for woodlice. Nothing goes to waste.
After converting the wood, it is stacked in a kiln made from the body of a 20ft lorry refrigeration container, containing a dehumidifier and a 3kw fan heater. "It is so well insulated that the fan heater is hardly needed," Nick said. The finished wood is kept in a barn, every piece of dimension timber marked with its length width and breadth. "Fiona deals with cutting list orders. She seems to be able to complete a £10,000 order without making a dent on our stock. I go in and have a look at the pile and it doesn't look any different," said Nick. "That said we are always after yellow pine and pitch pine. The trouble these days is that too many demolition contractors are shredding reclaimable timber on site or smashing it in the process of demolition. Buildings are not being sympathetically destroyed like they were a few years back."
He describes pitch pine as Pinus palustris - longleaf pine but accepts that other heavy pines could also lay claim to being pitch. (See Salvo Guide 2000 p209-212 for Salvo's story of pitch pine which names a dozen species that have been called pitch over the years.) He has a love hate relationship with pitch. It is a strongly figured dense durable wood which is sought-after by customers but it is a pig to work. "It is the worst stuff to cut," he sighs. On the subject of pine species, I mentioned that the only UK native pine, Pinus sylvestris Scots Pine, can grow dense enough to be considered a pitch pine. Nick said that at a castle in Elgin they had to supply floorboards to match the locally-grown originals which must have been cut from Scots pine. "They looked exactly like pitch pine, so I guess slow-growing Scots pine could be dense and pitchy enough to be classified as pitch pine," he said.
Contact Fiona and Nick Gordon, Pine Supplies, Smithills, Bolton, Lancashire UK. Tel 01204 841416. Fax 01204 845814. Mobile 07860 166808. PINE SUPPLIES web site
Above: Pine Supplies favour their old Protovale Imp metal detector for finding metal in reclaimed beams. "It was originally developed for finding wall-ties and studwork, but will find anything down to a carpet staple or drawing pin in an old beam," said Nick Gordon. His most unusual find was a chunk of metal well-embedded in a beam of American pitch pine that turned out to be a tomahawk head. Oxford-based Protovale has been taken over by the US Elcometer group whch has an office in Manchester. The Elcometer P600 is the equivalent model which has a 4ins 6ins and 8ins induction coil. The photo shows Pine Supplies four inch coil which Nick Gordon says is the best size for the job. Tel Elcometer on 0161 371 6000. Web Elcometer
Above: After denailing the beams are steam cleaned to get rid of as much grit as possible, and then sawn into sections using the 1946 T Robinson & Son band resaw, made in Rochdale, which Nick Gordon runs hydraulically using an adapted Ford Cargo six litre petrol engine as the power source. "We've had it for fifteen years and it really is a lovely machine," he said. "It's the most powerful machine of its size - and will cut a twelve-inch beam at three and a half feet a second. Although most of the work is flooring, we cut the largest section out of the beam first, and then drop into flooring thickness. This way we keep up our stocks of cutting list sections." The Robinson saw came with several old bandsaw blades which need sharpening after up to eight hours use, depending on the species of wood being cut (pitch pine is hardest on the blade) and whether any nails are hit. A Dominion four cutter is used as a planer thicknesser.
T Robinson & Sons was one of Britain's oldest family firms, starting in 1813 and being incorporated in 1835. The firm made flour milling and woodworking machinery. By 1864 'it was estimated that 6,000 people found sitting and standing room in one half of Messrs Robinson's machine shop' during a hustings speech by Richard Cobden MP. In 1881 the firm employed 1200 men, opened the first works canteen in the north of England, and had offices in London, Paris, Sydney and later in Odessa, Russia. During the two wars Robinson made munitions and tanks, returning to flour and woodworking machinery afterwards. Its machines were designed and built, with the correct lubrication, to last for 80 years and many of them continued for longer. By the 1960's the era of cheaper less durable machinery resulted in T Robinson & Sons becoming uncompetitive, and the firm finally threw in the towel some time in the mid-1980's. T Robinson history
Left: Saw dust is extracted by a home-made system and, along with any scrap wood, is then put into the Farm 2000 wood waste burner which runs their heating system. Carbonised wood is used for charcoal on the barbie, so nothing goes to waste.
Above: Pine Supplies kiln dries all its wood using an old refrigerated 20ft container with a dehumidifier and intermittent use of a 3kw fan heater.
Above: For heavier work and truing up, Nick Gordon uses a Wadkin 24inch circular saw, with one of four types of blades. The earliest blade is a traditional plate blade around 35 years old, with teeth that are set or swaged alternately either way, giving a wide kerf typically of a quarter to three eighths of an inch when the wood is sawn. These blades were often hammered into a slight dish shape to produce tension on the inner edge which would straighten as the blade got hot. The next chronologically is the tungsten carbide tipped blade, without a set, which is handy for ripping through harder woods and the occasional soft iron nail and any damage is usually confined to the loss of a tip which can be replaced. Next up is the carbide-tipped positive hook positive gullet circular inserted tooth saw blade, which is a very tough blade designed for general slashing and plywoods. Each tooth is replaceable without needing to remove the blade from the machine. It is a good blade for cutting resinous woods and pitch pine. The final blade is Nick's own invention and was inspired by a job he did for Michael Aspel of Antiques Road Show fame who asked for a reclaimed wood floor with a lot of old nail holes. Nick gave him a typical sample, but he said it did not have enough holes. Eventually he chose the most naily wood in the yard, full of steel six-inch nails, and then Nick needed to work out how to slab it up without ruining all his blades and spending a fortune on the saw doctor. The design he came up with was a blade with alternating tungsten tips, with a higher V shaped tip on one tooth and a slightly lower flat tip on the next tooth. The idea was that the V tip would notch the nail and the flat tip would punch through it, so Nick and Alec Garry, his saw doctor, cut and ground the new blade - and it worked. It did Michael Aspel's floor and will, according to Mr Gordon, cut through a thousand six inch steel nails without a problem.
Above: Another Nick Gordon special - a home-made power adze using a 16inch bar Stihl electric chainsaw with the chain replaced with a bike chain and sprocket, all attached to a heavy steel stirrup and an axle-mounted electric planer head. It is slung from the roof with some baler twine to give more control and takes seconds to create an adzed chamfer.
Above: Fiona Gordon demonstrating another home-made tool - this one designed to extricate those 12inch bolts. The heavy metal puller consists of inch square section steel frame, and an inverted hydraulic lorry jack attached to a five inch engineer's vice.
PINE SUPPLIES web site
Above: Fiona and Nick Gordon in the main machine shop of Pine Supplies in one of their farm outhouses on just outside Bolton. A husband and wife business working from home with no employees can result in a sometimes tempestuous very rewarding relationship. They look good on it anyway.
Bolton, Lancashire UK - "TWENTY-THREE year's ago I went to a salvage yard for a piece of old oak for a mantelpiece and thought, this guy is making a living by not being helpful and polite - I can do that. At the same time I was using a hand-saw to rip beams down and someone said get a table saw. I went to look at one which turned out to be a Wadkin 36ins circular dated - 1 June 1951 - my birthday. It was a beautifully well-made machine," Nick Gordon said in his stream of consciousness manner of speaking. It seemed like destiny, so he bought it on the spot.
Nick left school to start a career in the family scrap metal business in Westhoughton, but eventually decided to give flagging a go. This ended with him sending reclaimed flagstones to Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London and the Imperial War Museum. Fiona Gordon also lived locally. Their paths probably crossed at a very young age - neither seemed too sure - and they got married. The flagstone business had to stop when they lost their premises.
So they moved on to reclaimed timber, based at their farmhouse nestling in the countryside above Bolton. Nick put an ad in the Farmer's Guardian. The orders started coming in, mainly for pine flooring and cutting lists. His first big order came after the 1987 storms from a boat repairer. Nick already had good contacts with the demolition trade from his scrap and flagstone days so supply was not a big issue.
Nick Gordon's skill for mechanics soon came in handy and he started acquiring, commissioning and adapting machinery suited to the task of ripping beams, mainly pitch pine, into boards and sections. Fiona was, and still is, his labourer as well as his taskmaster, dealing with the phone and orders. One can be justly envious of their blissful life in a rural idyll with an old farmhouse land and outbuildings, poultry and dog running around - their kids have grown up and left now - and no employees to worry about.
The tools the Gordons have bought and developed include a bolt-puller, power-adze, bandsaw converted to run hydraulically using a six litre lorry engine, a Farm 2000 wood waste boiler in which they burn sawdust collected by their home-made extraction system, and a circular saw with Nick's unique home-made blade capable of chomping its way through a thousand six-inch steel nails. They use a Protovale Imp to search for nails, bolts and screws which Nick says will find things as small as a carpet staple. They also steam clean the beams to get rid of grit and reduce wear on the saws and planer.
The wood they buy is pitch pine or yellow pine, taken out of buildings locally and further afield, much of which is first growth forest timber of North America and the Baltic logged in Victorian times. As if to prove its pedigree, among the embedded objects found by the Gordon's, usually wire fencing and the occasional lead bullet, was an iron tomahawk-head which they found buried deep in a pine beam from the old Warburton's Victorian bakery building. Iron tomahawk heads were first taken to North America by the French in the late eighteenth century to trade with the indigenous population, and would have been the prized possession of an Indian brave who would rarely threw a tomahawk in anger unless in serious trouble and then would normally unerringly hit the target. What a story it could tell!
When converting the beams Nick will start with boards then, if the beam is good, take out the biggest sections, and then go back to floorboards again. For clean wood he uses a 1946 Robinson band resaw, which he describes as a lovely machine, the most powerful saw of its size in England, which will cut a 12in square beam at 3 1/2 feet per second. He converted it to run hydraulically on an old Ford Cargo six litre engine (petrol I guess). He also has a Wadkins 36in circular saw and blades, including one he has made especially for ripping through six inch nails, the result of a job he got from Michael Aspel who wanted extra naily wood for one of the floors in his house. Conspicuous salvage that. The Wadkin's saw blades date from early plate saws that are set traditionally, through to later complex inserted tooth tungsten-tipped saws. He changes them according to the number of residual nails and the amount of resin in the wood. There is a also a Dominion four-cutter for planer thicknessing.
Sawdust is collected in a home-made cyclone extractor and is then burnt, along with scrap off-cuts, in their Farm 2000 wood waste burner, which heats their house and hot water. Chickens forage for woodlice. Nothing goes to waste.
After converting the wood, it is stacked in a kiln made from the body of a 20ft lorry refrigeration container, containing a dehumidifier and a 3kw fan heater. "It is so well insulated that the fan heater is hardly needed," Nick said. The finished wood is kept in a barn, every piece of dimension timber marked with its length width and breadth. "Fiona deals with cutting list orders. She seems to be able to complete a £10,000 order without making a dent on our stock. I go in and have a look at the pile and it doesn't look any different," said Nick. "That said we are always after yellow pine and pitch pine. The trouble these days is that too many demolition contractors are shredding reclaimable timber on site or smashing it in the process of demolition. Buildings are not being sympathetically destroyed like they were a few years back."
He describes pitch pine as Pinus palustris - longleaf pine but accepts that other heavy pines could also lay claim to being pitch. (See Salvo Guide 2000 p209-212 for Salvo's story of pitch pine which names a dozen species that have been called pitch over the years.) He has a love hate relationship with pitch. It is a strongly figured dense durable wood which is sought-after by customers but it is a pig to work. "It is the worst stuff to cut," he sighs. On the subject of pine species, I mentioned that the only UK native pine, Pinus sylvestris Scots Pine, can grow dense enough to be considered a pitch pine. Nick said that at a castle in Elgin they had to supply floorboards to match the locally-grown originals which must have been cut from Scots pine. "They looked exactly like pitch pine, so I guess slow-growing Scots pine could be dense and pitchy enough to be classified as pitch pine," he said.
Contact Fiona and Nick Gordon, Pine Supplies, Smithills, Bolton, Lancashire UK. Tel 01204 841416. Fax 01204 845814. Mobile 07860 166808. PINE SUPPLIES web site
Above: Pine Supplies favour their old Protovale Imp metal detector for finding metal in reclaimed beams. "It was originally developed for finding wall-ties and studwork, but will find anything down to a carpet staple or drawing pin in an old beam," said Nick Gordon. His most unusual find was a chunk of metal well-embedded in a beam of American pitch pine that turned out to be a tomahawk head. Oxford-based Protovale has been taken over by the US Elcometer group whch has an office in Manchester. The Elcometer P600 is the equivalent model which has a 4ins 6ins and 8ins induction coil. The photo shows Pine Supplies four inch coil which Nick Gordon says is the best size for the job. Tel Elcometer on 0161 371 6000. Web Elcometer
Above: After denailing the beams are steam cleaned to get rid of as much grit as possible, and then sawn into sections using the 1946 T Robinson & Son band resaw, made in Rochdale, which Nick Gordon runs hydraulically using an adapted Ford Cargo six litre petrol engine as the power source. "We've had it for fifteen years and it really is a lovely machine," he said. "It's the most powerful machine of its size - and will cut a twelve-inch beam at three and a half feet a second. Although most of the work is flooring, we cut the largest section out of the beam first, and then drop into flooring thickness. This way we keep up our stocks of cutting list sections." The Robinson saw came with several old bandsaw blades which need sharpening after up to eight hours use, depending on the species of wood being cut (pitch pine is hardest on the blade) and whether any nails are hit. A Dominion four cutter is used as a planer thicknesser.
T Robinson & Sons was one of Britain's oldest family firms, starting in 1813 and being incorporated in 1835. The firm made flour milling and woodworking machinery. By 1864 'it was estimated that 6,000 people found sitting and standing room in one half of Messrs Robinson's machine shop' during a hustings speech by Richard Cobden MP. In 1881 the firm employed 1200 men, opened the first works canteen in the north of England, and had offices in London, Paris, Sydney and later in Odessa, Russia. During the two wars Robinson made munitions and tanks, returning to flour and woodworking machinery afterwards. Its machines were designed and built, with the correct lubrication, to last for 80 years and many of them continued for longer. By the 1960's the era of cheaper less durable machinery resulted in T Robinson & Sons becoming uncompetitive, and the firm finally threw in the towel some time in the mid-1980's. T Robinson history
Left: Saw dust is extracted by a home-made system and, along with any scrap wood, is then put into the Farm 2000 wood waste burner which runs their heating system. Carbonised wood is used for charcoal on the barbie, so nothing goes to waste.
Above: Pine Supplies kiln dries all its wood using an old refrigerated 20ft container with a dehumidifier and intermittent use of a 3kw fan heater.
Above: For heavier work and truing up, Nick Gordon uses a Wadkin 24inch circular saw, with one of four types of blades. The earliest blade is a traditional plate blade around 35 years old, with teeth that are set or swaged alternately either way, giving a wide kerf typically of a quarter to three eighths of an inch when the wood is sawn. These blades were often hammered into a slight dish shape to produce tension on the inner edge which would straighten as the blade got hot. The next chronologically is the tungsten carbide tipped blade, without a set, which is handy for ripping through harder woods and the occasional soft iron nail and any damage is usually confined to the loss of a tip which can be replaced. Next up is the carbide-tipped positive hook positive gullet circular inserted tooth saw blade, which is a very tough blade designed for general slashing and plywoods. Each tooth is replaceable without needing to remove the blade from the machine. It is a good blade for cutting resinous woods and pitch pine. The final blade is Nick's own invention and was inspired by a job he did for Michael Aspel of Antiques Road Show fame who asked for a reclaimed wood floor with a lot of old nail holes. Nick gave him a typical sample, but he said it did not have enough holes. Eventually he chose the most naily wood in the yard, full of steel six-inch nails, and then Nick needed to work out how to slab it up without ruining all his blades and spending a fortune on the saw doctor. The design he came up with was a blade with alternating tungsten tips, with a higher V shaped tip on one tooth and a slightly lower flat tip on the next tooth. The idea was that the V tip would notch the nail and the flat tip would punch through it, so Nick and Alec Garry, his saw doctor, cut and ground the new blade - and it worked. It did Michael Aspel's floor and will, according to Mr Gordon, cut through a thousand six inch steel nails without a problem.
Above: Another Nick Gordon special - a home-made power adze using a 16inch bar Stihl electric chainsaw with the chain replaced with a bike chain and sprocket, all attached to a heavy steel stirrup and an axle-mounted electric planer head. It is slung from the roof with some baler twine to give more control and takes seconds to create an adzed chamfer.
Above: Fiona Gordon demonstrating another home-made tool - this one designed to extricate those 12inch bolts. The heavy metal puller consists of inch square section steel frame, and an inverted hydraulic lorry jack attached to a five inch engineer's vice.
PINE SUPPLIES web site
Monday, January 15, 2007
Reclaimed wood gets bigged up in lalaland bash
Beverly Hills, California USA - Hollywood luvvies are throwing a Golden Globes bash for celebs, with organic food, recycled paper decorations and tables made of reclaimed wood, today. Actresses Maggie Gyllenhaal, Eva Longoria, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rachel Weisz and Paris Hilton are going. "Green living has become a way of life for many of today's celebrities," said Debbie Levin, Environmental Media Association president. "We are proud to be the first ones to step up and create a party that unites talent and social responsibility." Hmm.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Reclamation Protocol Part 2
London UK - Part Two follows Part 1 (below) and was a summary of a fuller version printed in the journal Salvo Monthly, April & May 1995
A RECLAMATION PROTOCOL by Thornton Kay of SALVO in 1995
Many building materials are being reclaimed throughout the world, but in Europe and North America, much more could be done. In these environment-conscious times we believe that more is being trashed in richer countries than ever before. This would seem to suggest that reclamation is not as successful as it should be due to the consumer ethic that "new is best". The main reason for this is not lack of interest from consumers, who are showing an increasing willingness to buy reclaimed material, but ignorance of the market and an unhelpful attitude on the part of producers of new materials who are understandably reluctant to relinquish market share.
There are limits to the total amount of material available to be reclaimed and these limits are determined by many factors, the most important of which is the primary supply from the demolition industry of components from whole buildings and the abundant amounts placed in skips from smaller demolitions during the course of alteration and repair works. If every scrap of material available were to be reclaimed, about 30,000 tons a day in Britain, we reckon that this would still only provide reclaimed alternatives to fulfil around 5% to 10% of the total building materials market. At present we reckon that less than 1% is currently sourced from reclaimed material, and it is this small, but significant, loss of material taken to landfill sites for which we are trying to encourage a market. The majority of this material is in the form of bulk items such as timber, bricks and masonry. However, much is still lost in the form of Victorian fixtures and fittings, early 20th century features, and incredibly we still hear all too often of very valuable features, such as, in February 1995, a carved marble Georgian fire surround from Edinburgh's New Town district in a skip going to landfill.
The recycling protocol that was embodied in the sustainability clause - known as Agenda 21 - at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit gives priority to the preservation of energy content when reusing resources. Broadly speaking it states that if it takes more energy to reuse an item than it does to make a new one, then in energy terms it is better to make a new one and throw the old one away. This relates directly to the voluntary efforts being made to reduce the amount of fossil fuel expended on producing new materials, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and so reducing global warming. The reasons for wanting to reduce global warming are primarily that future generations will have to cope with the considerable extra financial burden of minimising the effects of climate change, not least of which will be rising sea and river levels, which will require reduction in land mass or the expense of increased flood protection schemes. However, this is only part of the equation.
Agenda 21 also gives priority to preserving resources and respecting cultural identity. This does not have a simple formula, like the energy example above. How do you value resources such as old mahogany against new Iroko, or 300 year old Sitka spruce against 30 year old plantation Sitka? Many of the old indigenous timber species are known to be more durable, but there is no formula for making a comparison with plantation species. The environmental damage caused by forestry methods is now becoming known as a contributor to soil erosion and acid lakes and rivers. There is no formula to make comparisons between old and new timber but logic would say that it is sensible to reclaim timber rather than destroy it. It is also true that timber disposed of in unmanaged landfill will generate methane which is a greenhouse gas. As mentioned above, reclaimed timber will never replace the demand for new timber but it could reduce it by 5% to 10%, and so help preserve forests, which in turn will allow the greater use of these forests as habitat for wildlife and people. If timber is not demolished in large enough sections to be reusable, then it is possible to recycle smaller pieces. An Austrian firm is attempting to manufacture blockboard using recycled timber. If after attempts to reclaim or recycle prove impossible, then the timber should be used to provide fuel. All demolished construction materials have similar patterns of reuse opportunities, but the simple energy-based criteria is not the only one. Even energy formulae are difficult to produce. For instance, do you take the energy costs of felling wood, transporting it and converting it, do you add the energy involved to make the logging machinery, and house and transport logging workers?
The traditional manufacture of construction materials often overlap with, or even rely on, reclamation and recycling. For example, in Britain the Campaign for Real Iron is attempting to prevent the early 19th century charcoal-made wrought iron panels of early iron structures from being scrapped alongside modern mild steel, and melted down to make into new steel products. Charcoal-made wrought iron is impossible to manufacture in Britain, so as a resource it is invaluable if, like Yorkshire blacksmith Chris Topp, you make wrought iron railings with blown leaf scrolls and appreciate the difference. Outside Agenda 21, although remaining inside the Rio cultural protocol, a case can be made that old buildings and architectural items form part of the history of a culture, and so should be preserved for re-use. Even though something of the original integrity of an architectural item may be lost if that item is reused out of context, we believe that it is better used out of context than placed in landfill. Many examples exist where items rescued in the past and reused out of context, have been subsequently repatriated in their historically or architecturally correct setting at a later date. Ordinary people tend to appreciate the efforts made, although the current fashion in Britain is dictated by a small minority of historical architecture fundamentalists (which include the leading lights of Britains' conservation organisations) who would rather see both demolished buildings, and all the materials they contain, continue to be landfilled. Salvo has devised a recycling protocol with respect to the built environment that gives the following priority list for what to do with old architectural items:
1. Re-use a building without demolition or alteration. If this is not possible then:-
2. Reclaim components in as intact a way as possible. Relocate entire buildings, Reuse facades and structural elements, Reclaim whole features such as windows with their surrounds, shutters, and window furniture. Finally dismantle and Reclaim the individual items that were used to assemble a building. We define Architectural Antiques as manufactured items usually with a degree of skilled labour involved, such as carved items, doors and fireplaces, and Reclaimed Building Materials as the basic building components such as bricks and timber beams. If reclamation is not possible then:-
3. Recycle and remanufacture a new product. Reclaimed wood can be recycled to make furniture, floorboards or even blockboard. Concrete can be crushed to make recycled aggregate. Plastics can be remanufactured into new plastics products like polythene bags. If recycling is not an option then:-
4. Beneficially Destroy with energy recovery. Scrap wood and other carbon-based products can be used to fuel power plants, or for local heating or cooking. Methane can be recovered from landfill sites where carbon-based demolition waste has been tipped.
All political parties should adopt this sensible protocol in environmental policy documents on demolition waste - Reuse, Reclaim, Recycle, Destroy. This would at least create the correct theoretical background against which targeted effort and practical measures can be applied.
The UK Planning Acts have produced a planning process that creates an emotive link between local public opinion and old buildings. The concept of reusing buildings or their components again, or relocating whole buildings, does not enter into that process. Thus the local community is encouraged to believe it faces a stark choice - save intact or destroy completely. A sensible approach would be to offer a compromise - save some intact, relocate the historically important, reclaim the rest for local reuse, don't destroy anything. The old PPG15 (Planning Policy Guidance note - used by Local Authorities to interpret the Planning Acts) encouraged planners to make rarely-used conditions on demolition requiring that demolished material be reused. The latest PPG dropped these suggestions, for which the DoE said there was no room in the White Paper - which was not true, and merely pandered to the SPAB element of English Heritage. Conservationists prefer the stark choice believing that this concentrates peoples' minds and saves more buildings. This is not borne out by the facts. Even listed buildings are demolished in whole or part, and hundreds of thousands of historic unlisted buildings are demolished every year. The planning process itself also encourage eventual rapid demolition. Vandalism and theft occur as a result of buildings being left empty for years while planning disputes are resolved. During this period millions of tonnes of reclaimable materials are lost to fire and water-damage. Old buildings should never be allowed to remain unoccupied, it should be illegal. Instead, more buildings are now left unoccupied and boarded up pending their future than ever before.
Some local authorities' building control departments refuse to allow the reuse of reclaimed material. The most common reasons are that reclaimed materials contain dry rot, even if they are sound, or that reclaimed materials do not comply with modern standards. The dry rot brigade are wilfully ignorant since the spores exist in the air permanently so even brand new materials contain dry rot spores. Dry rot is created by environmental conditions that are independent of materials. Equally, planning and conservation departments have been known to refuse to allow the reuse of reclaimed materials in works requiring planning permission or listed building consents because they say that it encourages theft and demolition, and confuses the history of a building. Although theft is a problem, particularly of garden ornaments, the volume of materials stolen is small, and invariably results from the deliberate policies that allow buildings to remain empty for long periods of time. Those who believe that reclamation encourages demolition are even further down the track of complete insanity. With respect to confusing history, most buildings have changed and adapted over the years, many using old materials, or materials reused from one part of the building in another. If such policies require that materials, like a Louis XVI marble fireplace, can only be installed in an unlisted 1930s' semi, it makes a mockery of freedom of choice and good architectural sense.
The establishment of reclamation businesses is discouraged in the UK by planners, who see them as non-conforming undesirable businesses. In some areas they have ceased trading after planners have picked on them. This is despite the recycling commitment given by John Major in signing the Rio Accord. There is a glimmer of hope since the DoE planning inspectors who are called in at appeals seem to have a more sympathetic approach. We suspect that Conservation Officers have a hand in influencing decisions on local reclamation yards' planning problems. A well respected conservation-aware Midlands reclamation dealer was refused entry to an ACO sponsored conference (Association of Conservation Officers) solely on the grounds that he was a reclaimed building materials dealer. More or less every reclamation dealer has had problems with planners. What should happen is that planners should encourage reclamation, councils should earmark land and premises, conservation officers should require demolished materials to be sold to reclamation rather than landfilled, and local municipal, education, and health authorities should develop reclamation-only policies for all their demolished buildings and for a percentage (say 5%) of the procurement of construction materials. Partnership arrangements should be made between reclamation dealers and local authorities to save materials for local reuse. This could all be achieved voluntarily.
The new EC Construction Products Directive sets out to ban the sale of reclaimed materials if they are not manufactured to current euro-standards. Which, of course, they are not. Even if they were, it is no longer possible to prove since most materials are older than 75 years and detailed records of the manufacturing processes are not available. Even if they were, the quality control procedures would not have been recorded in the correct way to comply with modern standards. The Directive says that if you can't prove reclaimed materials (and they mean every single brick) comply with the standards then they must be substandard and therefore illegal. Our visit to Brussels, and meeting with Carl Heinz Zachmann, the Head of the Construction Directorate (DG12), made it absolutely clear that reclaimed materials were considered substandard, and would be banned. Even if the bureaucrats were sympathetic, legislation in Europe is dominated by small lobbies of powerful vested interests, who dictate the commercial agenda. I was told that environmental logic is of no importance in Brussels. Power talks.
A committee has been meeting to discuss an EU Demolition Waste Strategy which will inevitably lead to a Directive requiring national targets to be set for the recycling of demolition waste. From what we can glean, plans are at an advanced stage for this Directive. It will not follow the EC's own Recycling Protocol but will give any of the four recycling methods (Reuse, Reclamation, Recycling, Beneficial Destruction) equal merit. The drafting committee is being led by Germany and Denmark whose expertise in the field of reclamation is very weak and who appear to have a pathological dread of using old materials unless they have been remanufactured into something new. German federal recycling laws require that all demolition waste is separated and recycled. Specially licensed demolition contractors are paid additional money for recycling costs. But bricks are crushed and no reclamation takes place. Fly-tipping, illegal burning and the illegal export of demolition waste to neighbouring countries is common. We suspect that commercial and political pressures will result in the UK acquiescing to a proposed Demolition Waste Directive and that this will damage the UK, French, Belgian and southern European reclamation industries by encouraging recycling over reclamation. A target-driven directive will result in more capital intensive recycling, and less employment extensive reclamation. After the Directive is passed, the only recourse for the Reclamation Industry and its customers will be to break the law.
Visit the Salvo website at www.salvo.co.uk.
T Kay 1995
A RECLAMATION PROTOCOL by Thornton Kay of SALVO in 1995
Many building materials are being reclaimed throughout the world, but in Europe and North America, much more could be done. In these environment-conscious times we believe that more is being trashed in richer countries than ever before. This would seem to suggest that reclamation is not as successful as it should be due to the consumer ethic that "new is best". The main reason for this is not lack of interest from consumers, who are showing an increasing willingness to buy reclaimed material, but ignorance of the market and an unhelpful attitude on the part of producers of new materials who are understandably reluctant to relinquish market share.
There are limits to the total amount of material available to be reclaimed and these limits are determined by many factors, the most important of which is the primary supply from the demolition industry of components from whole buildings and the abundant amounts placed in skips from smaller demolitions during the course of alteration and repair works. If every scrap of material available were to be reclaimed, about 30,000 tons a day in Britain, we reckon that this would still only provide reclaimed alternatives to fulfil around 5% to 10% of the total building materials market. At present we reckon that less than 1% is currently sourced from reclaimed material, and it is this small, but significant, loss of material taken to landfill sites for which we are trying to encourage a market. The majority of this material is in the form of bulk items such as timber, bricks and masonry. However, much is still lost in the form of Victorian fixtures and fittings, early 20th century features, and incredibly we still hear all too often of very valuable features, such as, in February 1995, a carved marble Georgian fire surround from Edinburgh's New Town district in a skip going to landfill.
The recycling protocol that was embodied in the sustainability clause - known as Agenda 21 - at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit gives priority to the preservation of energy content when reusing resources. Broadly speaking it states that if it takes more energy to reuse an item than it does to make a new one, then in energy terms it is better to make a new one and throw the old one away. This relates directly to the voluntary efforts being made to reduce the amount of fossil fuel expended on producing new materials, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and so reducing global warming. The reasons for wanting to reduce global warming are primarily that future generations will have to cope with the considerable extra financial burden of minimising the effects of climate change, not least of which will be rising sea and river levels, which will require reduction in land mass or the expense of increased flood protection schemes. However, this is only part of the equation.
Agenda 21 also gives priority to preserving resources and respecting cultural identity. This does not have a simple formula, like the energy example above. How do you value resources such as old mahogany against new Iroko, or 300 year old Sitka spruce against 30 year old plantation Sitka? Many of the old indigenous timber species are known to be more durable, but there is no formula for making a comparison with plantation species. The environmental damage caused by forestry methods is now becoming known as a contributor to soil erosion and acid lakes and rivers. There is no formula to make comparisons between old and new timber but logic would say that it is sensible to reclaim timber rather than destroy it. It is also true that timber disposed of in unmanaged landfill will generate methane which is a greenhouse gas. As mentioned above, reclaimed timber will never replace the demand for new timber but it could reduce it by 5% to 10%, and so help preserve forests, which in turn will allow the greater use of these forests as habitat for wildlife and people. If timber is not demolished in large enough sections to be reusable, then it is possible to recycle smaller pieces. An Austrian firm is attempting to manufacture blockboard using recycled timber. If after attempts to reclaim or recycle prove impossible, then the timber should be used to provide fuel. All demolished construction materials have similar patterns of reuse opportunities, but the simple energy-based criteria is not the only one. Even energy formulae are difficult to produce. For instance, do you take the energy costs of felling wood, transporting it and converting it, do you add the energy involved to make the logging machinery, and house and transport logging workers?
The traditional manufacture of construction materials often overlap with, or even rely on, reclamation and recycling. For example, in Britain the Campaign for Real Iron is attempting to prevent the early 19th century charcoal-made wrought iron panels of early iron structures from being scrapped alongside modern mild steel, and melted down to make into new steel products. Charcoal-made wrought iron is impossible to manufacture in Britain, so as a resource it is invaluable if, like Yorkshire blacksmith Chris Topp, you make wrought iron railings with blown leaf scrolls and appreciate the difference. Outside Agenda 21, although remaining inside the Rio cultural protocol, a case can be made that old buildings and architectural items form part of the history of a culture, and so should be preserved for re-use. Even though something of the original integrity of an architectural item may be lost if that item is reused out of context, we believe that it is better used out of context than placed in landfill. Many examples exist where items rescued in the past and reused out of context, have been subsequently repatriated in their historically or architecturally correct setting at a later date. Ordinary people tend to appreciate the efforts made, although the current fashion in Britain is dictated by a small minority of historical architecture fundamentalists (which include the leading lights of Britains' conservation organisations) who would rather see both demolished buildings, and all the materials they contain, continue to be landfilled. Salvo has devised a recycling protocol with respect to the built environment that gives the following priority list for what to do with old architectural items:
1. Re-use a building without demolition or alteration. If this is not possible then:-
2. Reclaim components in as intact a way as possible. Relocate entire buildings, Reuse facades and structural elements, Reclaim whole features such as windows with their surrounds, shutters, and window furniture. Finally dismantle and Reclaim the individual items that were used to assemble a building. We define Architectural Antiques as manufactured items usually with a degree of skilled labour involved, such as carved items, doors and fireplaces, and Reclaimed Building Materials as the basic building components such as bricks and timber beams. If reclamation is not possible then:-
3. Recycle and remanufacture a new product. Reclaimed wood can be recycled to make furniture, floorboards or even blockboard. Concrete can be crushed to make recycled aggregate. Plastics can be remanufactured into new plastics products like polythene bags. If recycling is not an option then:-
4. Beneficially Destroy with energy recovery. Scrap wood and other carbon-based products can be used to fuel power plants, or for local heating or cooking. Methane can be recovered from landfill sites where carbon-based demolition waste has been tipped.
All political parties should adopt this sensible protocol in environmental policy documents on demolition waste - Reuse, Reclaim, Recycle, Destroy. This would at least create the correct theoretical background against which targeted effort and practical measures can be applied.
The UK Planning Acts have produced a planning process that creates an emotive link between local public opinion and old buildings. The concept of reusing buildings or their components again, or relocating whole buildings, does not enter into that process. Thus the local community is encouraged to believe it faces a stark choice - save intact or destroy completely. A sensible approach would be to offer a compromise - save some intact, relocate the historically important, reclaim the rest for local reuse, don't destroy anything. The old PPG15 (Planning Policy Guidance note - used by Local Authorities to interpret the Planning Acts) encouraged planners to make rarely-used conditions on demolition requiring that demolished material be reused. The latest PPG dropped these suggestions, for which the DoE said there was no room in the White Paper - which was not true, and merely pandered to the SPAB element of English Heritage. Conservationists prefer the stark choice believing that this concentrates peoples' minds and saves more buildings. This is not borne out by the facts. Even listed buildings are demolished in whole or part, and hundreds of thousands of historic unlisted buildings are demolished every year. The planning process itself also encourage eventual rapid demolition. Vandalism and theft occur as a result of buildings being left empty for years while planning disputes are resolved. During this period millions of tonnes of reclaimable materials are lost to fire and water-damage. Old buildings should never be allowed to remain unoccupied, it should be illegal. Instead, more buildings are now left unoccupied and boarded up pending their future than ever before.
Some local authorities' building control departments refuse to allow the reuse of reclaimed material. The most common reasons are that reclaimed materials contain dry rot, even if they are sound, or that reclaimed materials do not comply with modern standards. The dry rot brigade are wilfully ignorant since the spores exist in the air permanently so even brand new materials contain dry rot spores. Dry rot is created by environmental conditions that are independent of materials. Equally, planning and conservation departments have been known to refuse to allow the reuse of reclaimed materials in works requiring planning permission or listed building consents because they say that it encourages theft and demolition, and confuses the history of a building. Although theft is a problem, particularly of garden ornaments, the volume of materials stolen is small, and invariably results from the deliberate policies that allow buildings to remain empty for long periods of time. Those who believe that reclamation encourages demolition are even further down the track of complete insanity. With respect to confusing history, most buildings have changed and adapted over the years, many using old materials, or materials reused from one part of the building in another. If such policies require that materials, like a Louis XVI marble fireplace, can only be installed in an unlisted 1930s' semi, it makes a mockery of freedom of choice and good architectural sense.
The establishment of reclamation businesses is discouraged in the UK by planners, who see them as non-conforming undesirable businesses. In some areas they have ceased trading after planners have picked on them. This is despite the recycling commitment given by John Major in signing the Rio Accord. There is a glimmer of hope since the DoE planning inspectors who are called in at appeals seem to have a more sympathetic approach. We suspect that Conservation Officers have a hand in influencing decisions on local reclamation yards' planning problems. A well respected conservation-aware Midlands reclamation dealer was refused entry to an ACO sponsored conference (Association of Conservation Officers) solely on the grounds that he was a reclaimed building materials dealer. More or less every reclamation dealer has had problems with planners. What should happen is that planners should encourage reclamation, councils should earmark land and premises, conservation officers should require demolished materials to be sold to reclamation rather than landfilled, and local municipal, education, and health authorities should develop reclamation-only policies for all their demolished buildings and for a percentage (say 5%) of the procurement of construction materials. Partnership arrangements should be made between reclamation dealers and local authorities to save materials for local reuse. This could all be achieved voluntarily.
The new EC Construction Products Directive sets out to ban the sale of reclaimed materials if they are not manufactured to current euro-standards. Which, of course, they are not. Even if they were, it is no longer possible to prove since most materials are older than 75 years and detailed records of the manufacturing processes are not available. Even if they were, the quality control procedures would not have been recorded in the correct way to comply with modern standards. The Directive says that if you can't prove reclaimed materials (and they mean every single brick) comply with the standards then they must be substandard and therefore illegal. Our visit to Brussels, and meeting with Carl Heinz Zachmann, the Head of the Construction Directorate (DG12), made it absolutely clear that reclaimed materials were considered substandard, and would be banned. Even if the bureaucrats were sympathetic, legislation in Europe is dominated by small lobbies of powerful vested interests, who dictate the commercial agenda. I was told that environmental logic is of no importance in Brussels. Power talks.
A committee has been meeting to discuss an EU Demolition Waste Strategy which will inevitably lead to a Directive requiring national targets to be set for the recycling of demolition waste. From what we can glean, plans are at an advanced stage for this Directive. It will not follow the EC's own Recycling Protocol but will give any of the four recycling methods (Reuse, Reclamation, Recycling, Beneficial Destruction) equal merit. The drafting committee is being led by Germany and Denmark whose expertise in the field of reclamation is very weak and who appear to have a pathological dread of using old materials unless they have been remanufactured into something new. German federal recycling laws require that all demolition waste is separated and recycled. Specially licensed demolition contractors are paid additional money for recycling costs. But bricks are crushed and no reclamation takes place. Fly-tipping, illegal burning and the illegal export of demolition waste to neighbouring countries is common. We suspect that commercial and political pressures will result in the UK acquiescing to a proposed Demolition Waste Directive and that this will damage the UK, French, Belgian and southern European reclamation industries by encouraging recycling over reclamation. A target-driven directive will result in more capital intensive recycling, and less employment extensive reclamation. After the Directive is passed, the only recourse for the Reclamation Industry and its customers will be to break the law.
Visit the Salvo website at www.salvo.co.uk.
T Kay 1995
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