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The Recycled

House

by Paul Young

· Case Studies

Like many people, I had always wanted to build with as small as environmental footprint as possible. Coming from a family of builders and engineers the mantra has always been, efficiency. Efficiency in labour ,materials and maintenance. A matrix that largely excludes recycling because of the inherent inefficiencies in recovering and re-tasking the materials at an economically viable scale.

Being the black sheep in the family, I thought to go the other way. I take the artisan approach to building, working collaboratively with the trades to make the most of the materials available.

This approach worked out wonderfully on my last project. The money I saved on the recovered materials more than made up for the increased labour and gave a stunning result with the award winning finished house that was featured on Chanel 7's Better Homes and Gardens.

Click the following link. https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/better-homes-gardens/tv-and-video/video/watch/21197491/joh-griggs-recycled-house-walk-around-ep-1-31-01-14/

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In this house we managed to use recycled Timber for the frames, flooring, posts, architraves and beams with recycled stone and steel making up the balance of the components. Using the recycled structural components took some design rework, but the end result was better than we had planned and stunning to live with.

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