Emily Christensen knows this sounds a bit West Coast, but when she enters the old houses her company has hired to tear apart, she feels an energy. “It’s intense,” she says. “These houses have seen decades of human drama.”
Christensen and her partner, David Greenhill, started their Good Wood company in 2016. Portland, Oregon, where they live, had just become the nation’s first city to require houses of a certain age to be demolished rather than demolished. That means, instead of using a backhoe and backhoe to crush an old building, anyone who demolishes an older building in the city would have to hire a deconstruction crew, who carefully — almost surgically — disassemble it by hand. . Instead of a hodgepodge of broken wood, plaster, fixtures, insulation, concrete and fabric, demolition companies can extract cabinetry, masonry, windows, marble, brick and beautiful old wood. The idea is that these materials can be sold and eventually recycled locally. Christensen sees Good Wood, which also refurbishes and sells the reclaimed wood, as a kind of modern and sustainable forestry business, without felling trees.
Deconstruction, as Christensen has noted, is a nice idea. Using old materials to make new things feels meaningful. It also helps that reclaimed wood is often very beautiful. But a growing number of American cities believe the idea also makes good policy. In the past five years, cities like Baltimore, Cleveland, Boise and San Jose and Palo Alto in California have adopted their own deconstruction policies; San Antonio worked on it for four years.
Deconstruction, city officials say, is a green alternative to demolition, sending up to 85 percent less material to landfills. According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, building materials and construction are responsible for just under 10 percent of the world’s energy-related global carbon emissions. Using salvaged materials eliminates the emissions associated with making and transporting new building materials. In addition, it is not as noisy as demolishing a house, and does not spew dust or toxic materials, such as asbestos, into the air. Backers say it even creates jobs for those without high-tech skills, while highlighting the importance of sustainability. As the climate warms, “the circular economy is a promising alternative,” said Felix Heisel, an architect, assistant professor and director of the Circular Construction Lab at Cornell University.
Good Wood illustrates Portland’s success. In the past four years, the city has deconstructed more than 420 single-family and duplex homes that are registered as Historic Places or built before 1940. Good Wood has dismantled 160 of them. Today, 19 contractors are licensed to deconstruct in the city, thanks in part to city-sponsored training. The city’s construction waste specialist, Shawn Wood, is one of the nation’s leading experts on deconstruction policy. He says the cost of deconstruction has fallen since the rule went into effect, though it’s hard to say exactly how much.
But all that manual work comes with a price. Destroying a building can be more than 80 percent more expensive than demolishing it, according to a Portland State University report, although selling some of the reclaimed material can offset some of the costs.
