We started working on a story about this interesting project some time back and got sidetracked. Never fear – now you can read all about it at the Delridge Leadership blog, which is a great place to check daily (the link’s in our Neighborhood Groups sidebar section) for all sorts of interesting announcements and information, mostly about the eastern half of West Seattle.
I am reminded of the last “deconstruction” project in the neighborhood. 8 houses were dismantled at highpoint along Morgan with great fanfare and publicity. The other 400 units (out of the view of the street) were crushed by large loaders and scooped into trucks. If we the neighbors had not complained, their would not even have been any water sprayed on them to keep the asbestos from taking off on the wind.
So forgive me if I am insufficiently impressed and suspect the houses contain old growth fir and cedar which are valuable as salvage materials.
Note many of the WS homes built right after the war contain very valuable brass water lines acquired as salvage from the wartime shipyards as they were shut down.
Dressing up and subsidizing the straight forward business plans of the housing salvage industry as “green” ignores the fact that they will have nothing to do with “deconstructing” the current chipboard and pine townhouses of today when their time comes.
Ken – I don’t know much about old construction, but isn’t some of it usable, and if so, doesn’t that lighten the garbage load somewhat?
I’m also curious about the brass water lines. Guess our house doesn’t apply because it was actually built as the war was beginning — fall 1941 into spring 1942. But what an interesting tidbit.
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