[Greenbuilding] Reusing Painted Wood

[Chris Green]

Hardik Savalia wrote:
> I have a ton of painted fence wood sitting in the yard - whats the ideal way
> to dispose of it or reuse it or give it someone who can reuse it?
>   
If the paint on the wood isn't lead-based, the wood can be cleaned off 
and re-used a lot of ways.
There are a lot of people around who look for this type of material to 
use in building furniture or decorating architectural interiors. If you 
have a woodworkers' guild/ club in your area, contact them to see if 
anyone is interested. You could also post a notice on your local 
Craigslist,  on freecycle (if you're giving it away.), or community 
newspaper want ads. You could even phone around to the cabinet shops to 
see the builder or some he or she knows is looking for this kind of stock.
It's worth the effort finding someone to take it: recycled wood actually 
fetches a premium now. That is, it's worth more than new stock in most 
areas. There's a big demand for it.
> I always wonder where the majority of wood and scrap metal endup after
> construction is done on a house or site.
>   
A lot of it ends up in landfills, but more and more of it is being 
reused or recycled.
 Drywall has to be sorted out and taken to a special site in my area. 
More of my fellow construction workers in this area would like to see 
someone build a chipping plant to deal with the wood waste, to turn it 
into shavings or pellets for heating. (It was a topic of lunchtime 
conversation on one job this spring.)
A general rule of thumb is that any lumber over about 16" is set aside 
for re-use as blocking, bracing, for strengthening form work and 
what-not: The shorter stuff can be made into stakes to hold footings. 
Plywood and particle board bits can be doubled up and reused for footing 
forms, bracing, and a bunch of whatevers.
Some operations have collection boxes for left-over bits of wiring that 
the electricians leave behind, and also to collect cardboard and take it 
to recycle (an ongoing Homebuilders' Association program here.) The last 
two builders I worked for also had set-ups for collecting recyclable 
cans and beverage containers.
We also like it when someone comes along and asks for the woodscraps for 
heating (I take a lot home whenever possible and have enough right now 
to heat my shop for a week or more )  or hobby woodworking.
I've even gone to the extreme and re-used tie wire scraps at times: on 
the last job site we were always running out and it would have taken to 
much time to send a delivery truck to get new stock.
I always have nail pullers and even paint scrapers handy to be able to 
denail and clean off lumber for re-use, and if I don't have an immediate 
task, I keep myself busy at that. If I can recover the equivalent to an 
8' 2x4 within less than about 10 minutes, I've saved the project the 
price of a 2x4 and more if you factor in the cost of sending someone 
with a truck to get a new one.
Not everybody does this, of course, but only because they haven't taken 
the time to calculate it all out. [ 10 x 30Cents= $3. A stud costs about 
$4 to $5 these days]

One guy on my last job took a lot of scrap ceramic and stone tiles home 
to make mosaic table tops from. He would then give away the tables, or 
sell them. I've scooped a bunch of rare hardwood flooring for use in 
guitar-building whenever I get back to that.

I've learned to save cut-off bits of sewer and drain pipe to use in form 
construction to leave holes in the foundation for water and electrical 
lines, etc. as well as to do the inevitable repairs to pipes that need 
to be done. (guaranteed that one pipe will get broken on any given house 
porject...)

Having a system to organize and sort reusable stuff also helps tidy the 
jobsite up and make it bit safer. At the same time, setting aside some 
time to clean the site up as you go also permits systematic sorting of 
the resuables and recyclables.

All this helps, and if there's an official job site program to recycle 
and re-use as much as possible, it can add some LEEDs or Greenbuilding 
points to a project, but we still end up with big bins full of material 
for the landfill. :-(

Cheers,

Chris Green.