Used Lumber Good For Environment, Economy, Say UF Researchers

December 12, 2000

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Long a staple of the architectural world, salvaged building materials now can have an economical — and environmentally friendly — alternative use as studs, trusses and other basic construction components, a new University of Florida study shows.

In fact, wood removed from older buildings could provide as much as a quarter of the lumber supply for the housing construction industry for the next 50 years, while putting a hefty dent in the amount of demolition waste that goes into landfills each year, according to the study.

That’s good news for the environment, says Charles Kibert, director of the Rinker School of Building Construction.

“You’re not filling up landfill space, you’re not threatening the groundwater, you’re protecting the forests and making more effective use of resources,” Kibert said.

Lucy Acquaye, a graduate student in building construction who did the research for her master’s thesis, said that in Florida, the construction industry constitutes 23 percent of all municipal solid waste, and of that, 92 percent comes from the renovation and demolition of old structures. Of the 280 Florida landfills identified by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1994, about 40 percent were lost to regulations and population growth by 1998.

“As Florida’s population continues to rise and land continues to be in demand, the regulations will continue to increase,” Acquaye said. “Deconstruction reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills and prolongs landfill lives.”

Acquaye studied wood from three houses in Gainesville. Built between 1900 and 1950 of Southern pine, the houses were taken apart using different techniques, from total demolition to careful deconstruction, where the focus was on salvaging as much usable material as possible. She said the contractor actually made a profit on the deconstructed house because he was able to sell much of the building’s materials.

Said Kibert: “Instead of demolishing houses, there is the potential for creating many new businesses. You have to take the building apart, extract the materials, resell them, move them from point A to point B and maybe even do some remanufacturing and clean up,” Kibert said. “We think it could generate a lot of new economic activity, and you’d have 10 times as many jobs compared to simply landfilling construction waste.”

Acquaye measured the quality of the salvaged wood and found its strength was comparable to that of new lumber. She also found that the old wood was 50 percent more dense because it was from an old-growth forest, while new lumber usually comes from younger trees.

“The quality that you find in the old lumber is of a quality you can’t find in the virgin lumber being produced today,” Acquaye said.

She said salvaged lumber has potential use as studs and other structural parts of new buildings, but some obstacles must be overcome before that can happen. For one thing, no standard grading system is in place for used wood like the one used for virgin lumber.

“When you get lumber from a particular building, you have some different characteristics. We have to get a lot of lumber tested before we’re going to come up with grading rules,” Acquaye said. “But what I found is this lumber has potential use.”

Kibert agreed that lack of a grading system is an obstacle. But he added that wood is one of the most reusable building materials, and a high demand for it already exists in the do-it-yourself market. If nothing else, he said, used wood should be recycled into chipboard, mulch or fertilizer.