Wasted Products From Christchurch Earthquakes

Hi everybody, Well today I am going to talk a little bit about the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes. There are thousands of houses yet to be levelled and around 150 commercial buildings to come down. I have an issue with the amount of wastage, firstly when I was on contract taking down the Clarendon towers the amount of wastage was beyond a joke. Computers, tables in fact everything one would find in a 21 level building. Some things were saved an most metals were sold by management. But there was thousands of items that could have been used for families and or community projects.

  Historic houses Wasted

Flooring panels we have saved and
now I am building a project!

There are so many houses that have been torn down and only some of the big companies are making money from it. An example would be, let's say a house that was built in the year of 1850.

 Now these houses were built to last and I will show you examples of this shortly. All the roofs were covered with Rimu then the iron was laid on top of this.

 There is evidence of tar used on some of the roofing timber but I will share full report with you once I get it from the Archaeologist that is documenting our historical house.

Recycling Or Profit Focused

 Some companies here are saving the Rimu  and then selling it back to people for $7.00 to $10.00 per lineal meter. I would have liked to see some deconstruction sites give this timber to community projects, as there are lots of people that can utilize these materials. This is only the tip of the Iceberg as there has been many under-handed deals go on with some people making lots of money from taking stuff from these houses and selling it.

Days Of Old Carpentry

This is part of an old light switch and I will do a blog about
this at a later date.

The houses built in the mid to late 1800's were built to last with many techniques by skilled men compared to the through it up attitude we have today. Examples like all the doors are solid wood biscuit or dowel together. All the walls were covered in Rimu timber that was 400mm wind and 10mm thick. The carpenters then tacked scrim over the boards for wall paper to adhere to.

One house in particular that belongs to our landlord got smashed hard in the quakes. This house has had many owners and you can see the building practices of each lot of craftsmen changed through each decade. We have found some interesting items that i will talk about in-depth at a later time.

Saving What We Can

Led-light window out of the house above this will be
 turned into an artistic piece

After sorting out a deal with my Landlord I have had the help of some strong friends remove all the led-light windows and some of the early style doors.

 I have plans for some of the led-light windows and I can use the Rimu that is thicker for building furniture.

 The other windows I will find a good home for them but not someone that will on-sell to make money. Here are a couple of images of the material we have saved from being wasted.