lvl to join the party today, page-28

re: lvl to join the navy Cheap materials reduce houses' green potential
(03 October 2006 18:17)


Firms urged to use products that can be recycled at the end of a building's lifetime.

The construction industry could be building itself into an environmental cul-de-sac if it doesn’t address how re-use and recycle the materials with which it beholds new houses, a housebuilder has warned.

According to Steff Wright, chairman of the Gusto Group, the environmental credentials of new homes are often undermined by the use of products that can’t be re-used at the end of the buildings’ life.



"Using traditional lime mortars and good-quality bricks means it was very easy to dismantle buildings and rebuild with the same materials, but recently this has gone by the way side. If you use lower-quality bricks and concrete mortars there’s no way you can dismantle and re-use them. There’s a very strong case for recycling and re-use at the end of the life of these houses to be a factor in their initial design."

Wright, speaking in a debate on whether to refurbish existing buildings or build new homes at BRE’s Resource 06 seminar, said construction should take a leaf out of the automotive industry’s book.

"If you look at new cars, all of them now have to be made so that they can be recycled. We need something like this for new houses. With old houses you can re-use a lot of them, like the floorboards or the roof beams or the tiles. The problem with new houses is that, because of the way they’re built and the materials they are made from – chipboard flooring, concrete tiles and truss roof systems – large parts of them can’t be re-used."

If the industry won’t, or can’t, embrace this approach, then even more radical solutions may be required, he added: "The alternative is perhaps to use cheaper materials like recycled newspaper in the full knowledge that they’ll be sent to a power station and burnt as this is the best way to get energy back from them."

The ability of new houses to offer varied uses over an extended period was also called into question during the debate.

"At first glance, a row of two-up, two-down Victorian terraces is very inflexible, but in fact they are often linked together to make larger living spaces. When we did an audit of this type of property in Nelson in Lancashire, 200 had already been combined," said BRE’s TimYates.

"Old housing does not necessarily mean inflexible housing," agreed Jo Wheeler of WWF. "In fact, new housing is often more inflexible."

[Contract Journal, 4 October 2006, p 13]