Redmond Barn Deconstruction

On the short list of reasons to go through the effort to completely deconstruct a building is WOOD.  This barn in the Redmond area northeast of Seattle had a lot of wood in it.  Good reusable wood.  The structure was being cleared away by the contractor, Case Design & Project Management, in order to build a new work studio and guest house for their client.  Integral to their green building approach was stewardship of the materials coming out of the old structure.

Other than the fact that a large family of mice had made a home in one of the walls, the barn started off relatively clean (for a barn).  The deconstruction crew cleaned out the insides in a day.  The roof took the longest, because we wanted to save all the good OSB sheathing underneath the shingles.  With the exception of the truss material, nearly all of the structure was removed in a way that preserved the reusability of the materials.

In the end, Second Use recovered almost 4000 board feet of dimensional lumber, including about a hundred fifty 2x6s that the contractor retained for potential reuse on site.  More than 70% of the barn (by weight) was recovered for reuse.  Recycling added further to the recovery effort, raising overall recovery to 85%.

Considering the environmental impact of these recovered materials, the avoided CO2 production from reuse  was estimated at over five tons, while the embodied energy of the recovered materials was estimated to be equivalent to more than 650 gallons of gasoline.