They do, seriously. They are fine people with tons of information, and without them, all of us Architects would be, well, out of luck.
So, we first want to say THANK YOU to all of our contractor friends who took part in our Contractor Coffee Talk on Tuesday. THAT WAS AWESOME!
We learned things like:
- It is easier to divert waste than re-use products.
- We need to include specific direction in our specs and documents that will allow contractors to use reclaimed product.
- Warranties are a huge concern. “Is this re-used (fill in the blank) going to last, and if it doesn’t last, who is going to fix it exactly?!?” says Ms Owner.
- We need infrastructure set up to cover all of this:
- Where do you store it?
- How far away is the storage?
- How much will it cost to do all of this?
- Contractors think A LOT about cost (see above).
- Ha – unlike the rest of us, who are all focused on Daisies.
We came up with some preliminary ideas:
- First, we need to make everything in the new buildings re-usable. So, NO ADHESIVES. Just strike the concept of gluing from your existence.
- Write a deconstruction spec (on it!) Don’t make demo an option.
- A great option for re-using concrete is to crush it to make aggregate – embodied carbon solution.
- All Metal can be recycled, and there is cash in this (see above). At least for now, focus elsewhere.
- We are all going to give up on low iron glass as it makes the recycle effort more difficult.
And we found some things to look at more closely:
- RHeaply is a resource that attempts to connect folks and share resources. I first heard about this in conversations with Knoll furniture, they use this. But it looks like a great resource. Take a look at this.
- Blue Stained wood: This is caused by a fungus and basically means that lots of wood is no longer usuable and is discarded. A contractor posed the question – “Can we find a design solution that makes this stained wood beautiful?" Another term for stained wood is spalted wood, and spalted wood is actually sought after by crafts people. So is there a way to divert this waste?
- Recycled PVC potato cannons
- Ok, this last one is from Lisa Goodwin Robbins, a new member of our group. She is a spec writer with Kalin Associates, and she suggested this as the best use of old PVC. Welcome to our merry clan Lisa!
The biggest thing we learned though, is that connecting with our likeminded, but differently employed peers is the Bomb! When Meredith Elbaum and Nellie Reid first started this network, I believe it was about expanding our reach and I think that this was a good example of what they had in mind. So, I wanna do more of this, and I think we need to find out what our Mechanical Engineering friends have to say.
So, calling Luke, calling Kim, calling Don, calling Sarah, calling all of you, we need to set up another coffee talk, and we need to know what you think is critical, to get us to our goals.
Please.
