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HEN I WAS A YOUNG MASONS LABORER IN SCOTLAND BACK IN THE 1970 S, master stone mason Hughie Mathieson would say to me, “You cannae build without the stones, Robbie, you cannae build without the stones!” It was his way of telling me to get the lead out and provide him with more building stones on his scaffold.
With timber framing, you cannae build without the timbers! Now, where are they going to come from?
Years ago, there used to be more old timber frame barns available for salvage than there are now. Jaki and 1 used lots of recycled barn beams at Log End Cottage, Log End Cave, and Earthwood. But, recently, a large barn became available. We heard about it through a friend. As Jaki and I didn’t need timbers at the moment, and a young neighbor did, we put him onto this resource.
But even though the number of available barns has diminished, the use of recycled timbers is still a good strategy. Listen to Jim Juczak, who built a huge 18- sided timber-frame home (with cordwood infilling) near Watertown, New York:
The post and beam frame of our home is made out of recycled beams from a large bowling alley that was being demolished within six miles of our site. 1 asked the destruction foreman if I could get the wood from the ioo-foot curved trusses that were being removed. I got ten of the huge trusses, 400 sheets of used %-inch roofing plywood and about 500 pieces of 2- by 12-inch by 21-foot (6.4-meter) framing lumber. Our cost was $10,000 for what I estimated to be over $50,000 worth of materials. Disassembling the trusses, denailing the lumber, and deroofing the plywood took the better part of a summer. The curved pieces became roof rafters, the straight laminated pieces
became the eighteen vertical posts in the outside wall and the four-by material became the radial floor joists for the second floor. The first floor was radially framed with the two-by-twelve-inch material and covered with two layers of recycled plywood.
Now, $10,000 may seem like a lot, but it supplied virtually all the structural, roof sheathing and flooring materials for a beautiful 3,000 square foot home. As Jim is skilled at scrounging materials like windows, doors, and even plumbing fixtures, the total cost of the home was only about $30,000 or $10 per square foot. Jim tells the full story of this project, with pictures, in my previous book Cordwood Masonry: The State of the Art.
Jim also gives a warning: “Unfortunately, getting all this great stuff into one place can be a detriment. Last June, someone with a housing need greater than my own felt compelled to ‘borrow, without permission,’ a tractor trailer load of salvaged construction lumber from our home site.”
There are people in the salvage business who make a good living by tearing down old warehouses and the like, and selling the materials. In February of 2003, I had a lengthy and informative phone chat with my friend Bob Samuelson, a very successful dealer in recycled materials in the Chicago area. Bob built a io, ooo-square-foot lodge in Wisconsin with huge timbers salvaged from Chicago warehouses that needed to come down. The walls are made from sixteen-by — sixteen-inch timbers, laid like logs. Internal posts are huge. Roof rafters are six — by-tens. Bob’s comments were encouraging.
“Any city, small or major, has a demolition contractor, maybe several,” Bob told me, “and there are plenty of timber frame materials being salvaged all the time. Also, more and more laminated timbers are becoming available. Use the internet or the Yellow Pages to find these contractors. And it’s okay to gently bug them. They’re nice people. If they see that you are trying to do something good for yourself, they will bend over backwards to help. There are around 3,000 demo projects a year, just in Chicago, but it’s a small network and everyone knows everyone else. One person may not have what you want, but there’s a good chance that they know someone who does.”
Some demolition contractors may have recycled materials available, even old hewn timbers, but they are likely to charge a pretty penny for them, as they are in demand as atmospheric pieces in new restaurants and upscale homes. Bob says that Bill Gates of Microsoft fame used mostly recycled timbers on his big expensive house. You can’t blame people for charging what the market will bear; they’ve gone to the trouble of doing the salvage work and need to be reimbursed for their time and effort. But, many of these contractors make their money from the actual demolition, not by selling the materials. They haven’t got storage space to keep up with the rate of teardown. Bob tells me that with landfill charges of $400 to $600 a load, contractors are happy to find a cheaper way to get rid of materials, like bring them to you, for example. “You’re helping them to clean their site,” says Bob.
“Materials can be expensive or cheap and so can haulage, so shop around,” Bob advises. “If you’re not too far from the demolition site, the contractor might deliver to you fairly cheap, but if you are some distance away — say 250 miles or so from the site — expect to pay $400 to $500 for a semi load as a reasonable haulage charge.”
Bob likes to speak in large units: “semi loads.” A semi is a tractor-trailer unit, with, perhaps, a 50-foot (15.2-meter) flatbed trailer. Such a vehicle can carry up to 24 tons, which could be 12,000 to 15,000 board feet of lumber, depending on the density of the wood. This is enough lumber to frame — and complete — a good — sized home.
Bob had some other good tips. He mentioned that utility companies often have old cedar poles that they have replaced with new pressure-treated poles. Often times, only the large butt end (the part that went into the ground) was treated, usually with creosote. The rest of the pole might be in excellent condition and quite suitable for a viga-type rafter system, or tie beams, or internal posts. You can even flatten one or more sides, if you are careful to check the whole piece over for nails and spikes. A metal detector works well for this.
Summing up his commentary on salvaged material, Bob told me, “It’s still there. Old buildings with great materials are coming up all the time, sometimes with virgin growth lumber you can’t even get new.”
For a bargain on recycled timbers, you are going to have to do some legwork (see Cultivating Coincidence below) or make the effort to find the old buildings and tear them down yourself, a strategy better suited for rural areas.
Tearing down old buildings is a lot more dangerous than building a new one. Heavy timbers can fall on you, and they don’t shout a warning first. You can step on rusty nails, get poison ivy, or tangle with nasty dogs.
This is a book about building, not demolition, which is a whole different kettle of fish. The safest way to tear down an old barn, particularly one which is
