Collaboration Coordination and Sustainability in Action
Those of you who have been following GreenBy3 in the last year are aware of a project we’ve been working on in Hendersonville, North Carolina — it’s Biz 611, a new, contemporary-style incubator space for small, start-up software development businesses in Western North Carolina. The construction phase of that project is almost complete and this month we’ll be sharing lots of details on this exciting project with you.
But first, we want to back up almost two years. Before there was a new building, there were two existing buildings on the site that needed to be cleared from the lot. The work GreenBy3 did to identify useful materials in those two buildings and working with the new building’s architect and general contractor to reclaim and reuse those materials is a great example of what we mean when we talk about the importance of collaboration, coordination and sustainability.
We knew it would reduce the new building’s environmental footprint and save money for our client if we could reclaim and reuse brick, lumber, and metal from the original structures. Working with the architect, Ken Gaylord and the general contractor, Blackhawk Construction, we assessed what was available to us, then planned what we wanted to reuse — always considering the cost effectiveness of our savaging efforts.
The construction company raked the brick off the building for us. We moved reclaimed bricks to another area to clean and stack for later use.
Ultimately we reclaimed and cleaned over 9,000 bricks — bricks that have plenty of useful years in them, so this effort reduces the environmental impact of the new building and preserves the look and feel of the old building on the same site.
Here you can see the building stripped of its bricks. We’ve moved inside to find the usable wood we want to save.
When removing boards and timber from the interior, we were careful to select the older lumber since renovations over the years were made using newer building materials.
One of the unique things we ran across were these sash weights for the old-style windows that were in the buildings. We love it when we can give a new building some historical context through reclaimed design details. Even if they don’t find their way into the Biz 611 project, GreenBy3 will eventually find a creative alternate use for interesting reclaimed materials such as this.
In future posts we’ll be showing you the new building and all the cool features that have been built in. We’ll be sure to point out where reclaimed materials have been incorporated.
Tagged: Biz 611, Green Building
