Protect Your Passion

As a construction professional, you have a passion for buildings. After completing a project, you tell stories about the job, enter design and construction contests, and point out buildings to family and friends, saying, “I built that.” Your heart pounds with excitement when you find a solution to a construction problem, and you see the beauty in the parts of buildings consumers may find mundane.

Yet, too often, Americans overlook your passion and choose to demolish a building instead of carefully deconstructing it so parts of it may be used again. True, deconstruction takes longer than demolition, it may cost more, and Americans don’t have a lot of time or money these days. However, there is new evidence that suggests not only will deconstruction allow you to preserve and protect your passion, but it can be done almost as quickly as and less expensively than demolition. In addition, deconstruction can address some of our nation’s current woes, specifically job creation.

Deconstruction Economics

According to the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, deconstruction is defined as systematic disassembly of a building with the purpose of recovering valuable materials for reuse in construction, renovation or manufacturing into new products. Dave Bennink, owner of RE-USE Consulting, Bellingham, Wash., has been deconstructing for 19 years and currently is the Chicago-based Building Materials Reuse Association’s National Building Deconstructor of the Year. Bennink notes the word deconstruction tends to make people think about taking a whole building down, but a lot of his work is in remodeling or renovation. “There are all sorts of opportunities to deconstruct, like when you incorrectly measure for a window and it doesn’t fit and you can’t return it. Or when you complete a ‘pop top’—remove the roof, add a story to the home and put the roof back on. Deconstruction is really about keeping things out of the landfill.”

Bennink travels around the country teaching others how to make deconstruction work financially. “I looked at how people were deconstructing—doing things all by hand, taking forever—and then I looked at demolition and how they follow a routine and take very little time, so I came up with a hybrid of the two,” he says. “What I call hybrid deconstruction is a series of techniques that minimizes time and maximizes landfill diversion. Basically, from the owners’ standpoint, it minimizes the time we’ll be on the project but maximizes the benefits for them.”

In addition to his systematic approach to deconstruction, tax deductions are part of making deconstruction work financially. When remodeling contractors are paid to carefully remove items, such as kitchen cabinets or pre-hung doors, their clients recoup the added labor costs by collecting a tax deduction (and avoiding disposal costs). For example, the Evanston Rebuilding Warehouse, Evanston, Ill., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and accepts salvaged materials and issues a confirmation letter with an itemized inventory for tax purposes. A typical whole-house remodel includes salvaged hardwood flooring, cabinets, doors, windows and lighting. The appraised value varies widely, but typically is around $14,500. Assuming a federal tax bracket of 28 percent, the after-tax cash value for these materials is around $4,000. Avoiding loading/hauling/disposal costs saves the homeowner another $1,000. Therefore, a homeowner choosing deconstruction would receive a benefit of around $5,000. There may be regional differences in demolition and landfill fees, but the value of the deduction frequently justifies the added labor costs.

Contractors and homeowners should be leery of tax deductions that sound too good to be true. Recent cases of tax fraud connected to deconstruction have occurred in various parts of the country; these may be because appraisers are basing appraisals on the intact home. “Imagine you’re driving a $50,000 sports car to a nonprofit to donate it, and you get hit by a logging truck on the way to the nonprofit,” Bennink explains. “You pick up all the pieces of the sports car and put them in a shopping cart and roll it to the nonprofit. Is it still worth $50,000?”