Beginning construction of our new SuperGreen Home starts with destruction

Last week we started construction on our new SuperGreen laneway house.  But before we could start, we needed to remove the old "suite" that was occupying the back half of the lot.  The property (704 Wood St.) consists of the registered heritage "Hulland House" on the front of the lot, with an old, dilapidated garden suite in the back.  I think it was originally a tool shed that, in a very ad-hoc fashion, got made into a dwelling unit.  It was pretty rough. 

We'd been renting the garden suite out for a number of years at very modest rent because it was so small and "primitive".  What was interesting is almost all of our renters were very happy having a modest place to live.  That taught me that there is a need for modest, basic accommodation for folks, especially at various stages of their life (e.g. if they are young, moving around, on adventures, have had some bad luck, etc.).  But the place was VERY poorly built right from the start and it just got to the point where we were no longer comfortable renting it out.

Although I was proud to provide low cost, modest housing to my friends and community, I just didn't want it to get to the point where I was a slumlord.  Hence, we commenced this project to replace the shoddy garden suite with a modest but dignified, new laneway house.

Having a focus on sustainability, we sought to salvage as much as we could practically from this building.  I invited my extend (and thrifty) family over for a salvage weekend.  It's amazing how over 2hrs on a Saturday morning a house can be rendered totally non-livable.  It was like a band of Vikings razed the house.  Unfortunately, because the place was so shoddily constructed and built of scrap and misc. salvage originally, there was very little of value in the building.  I have quite a bit of project experience and knowledge with "architectural" salvage (residential or industrial)--what I know is that salvage/demolition diversion is a VERY hard thing to make viable & reasonable, especially in a small community like Whitehorse.

Note that as part of our LEED Canada for Homes project, we do not get any credit for salvaging the old building.  We did this just because we think it's the right thing to do. 

Here is what we DID manage to salvage/recycle.

• All windows - not suitable for a new home, but would be used for a shed.
• Front door - again, too bad condition for a new home, but taken for use as as shed.
• Greenhouse glazing - again, not usable for new, but tenant hopes to use them for a new greenhouse.
• Click flooring - for my parents cabin.
• Stove - in rough shape, but picked up by a guy from Skagway for summer worker housing.
• Fridge - again in rough shape, but donated to the local gaming club to make a "kegerator."
• Kitchen sink - rough, but salvaged to be cleaned up for use in the new home's guest suite.
• Toilet - was fairly new and High- Efficiency Toilet (HET) rated - can be used in new home.
• Upper kitchen cabinets - again rough, but can be nailed to the wall in the new home's basement.
• A bit of misc. hardware including towel bars, some screws, murets, rope, etc.
• A bit of wood trim and some misc. dimensional lumber and relatively new plywood for backyard projects.
• Exterior 2" XPS foam - will be incorporated as deep footing insulation as part of backfill in new home (better than landfilling it at the dump.)
• Electric wall-mounted heater (donated to electrician in exchange for work.)
• Electrical service mast, service wire and electrical panel - again old, but not too old and creative electrician felt he could use them for remote/temporary camps.
•  About $7 in copper and brass.  The brass wasn't worth much.
• About $5 in aluminum from the eavestrough and some of the flashing - check that stuff, some might be aluminum!

So overall, what did we salvage?  Maybe 10% by volume?


Not salvageable/ recyclable

• Lower kitchen cabinets - crappy particle board, low quality and falling apart
• Vanity & tub - dated, poor condition, nobody wanted it.
• Not much copper - house had been plumbed with plastic
• Wood siding - hoped to use if for kids playhouse, but it was all short salvaged pieces doubled nailed with BIG nails.  It all split and splintered when removed.  Probably fir.  Useless.
• Dimensional lumber - again, no value.
• The rest of the house.

When demolition time came, it was maybe four end-dump trailer-type loads went to the landfill.  It is amazing how fast it came down.  By noon the old garden suite was gone, but that was very slow because the work had to be done very carefully due to the low overhead electrical service at the back of the property.  It was quite interesting to watch (for all of 2 or 3 minutes) how carefully the excavator operator had to work to move each bucket load under the wire, then up, and into the dump truck.

My son and his cousin took the morning off school to watch the house smashing. How cool is that!  My brother took a timelaps video of the start of the demolition, but they started off doing a bit of site grubbing.  Although the real action only starts at the end, his video is only 50 seconds long.

My brother's cinematic commentary on this film:

"here is some time-laps footage of the little yellow house going down (and also a stump being pulled at the start). sadly the batteries in my camera were not fully charged this morning and it turned off mid demolition.  The dump trucks pulled up shortly after and blocked the view anyways. "