Green Demolition, aka “Deconstruction”, is a form of building demolition that utilizes a combination of machine and hand-dismantling to recover materials for reuse. The RE Store specializes in whole-building deconstruction, which is economically competitive with regular demolition and allows for the reuse up to 50 percent of most structures, recycling as much as possible of the remainder, typically leaving only 1-2 percent of an entire building as trash. Our services are fully adaptable to full or partial removal of structures.
We sat down with our Seattle Deconstruction Manager, Noel, this week and talked about green demolition and his position at The RE Store. His favorite part about being a Deconstruction Manager is “swimming up the waste stream to spawn. Seriously though, I do like going against the business-as-usual mentality that Demo has to be wasteful.”
Noel has many memories of doing green demolition in the last couple of years, but this one stuck with him the most:
“Most of my memories surround the good feelings of seeing people’s reaction to what we are doing. I once had a subcontractor who looked like he just got kicked out a cage fight for unnecessary roughness lock eyes with me and approach fast. He stopped in front of me and I sorta winced, waiting for something unpleasant. Then he told me a story about how his Grandfather used to make him deconstruct everything and even hammer nails straight. He smiled as he left and waved.”
Another great story he has is the dirtiest job he’s done for a green demolition project. He could never forget this one either:
“Pulling down rat tunneled insulation on my back in a 18″ crawl space lined with rough concrete. It was 85 degrees out on hood canal I had on a Tyvek suit, respirator, glasses and still managed to shower myself in rodent flavored tic tacs.”
Noel says that most of the people that hire The RE Store for building deconstruction or green demolition are those people that know that demolition is not the only option. “Once the job is done most people are excited to find that they were right to question the Demo tradition and overjoyed to find out that we exceeded their expectations.”
He also said that green demolition is very competitive with traditional demolition. Some advice from Noel:
“Don’t let any Demo contractor try to talk you out of it. Like all services that require estimating we may be more expensive at times on a job by job comparison, but overall we are very competitive and infinitely more satisfying. It starts off that what we do is too good to be true then ends up a pleasant realization that they [customers] have just participated in changing the way it was.”
To find out more, or to discuss your Green Demolition project with Noel Stout in Seattle, or Wade Johnson in Bellingham click here.
