Astur-Araba S.L., a company from the Basque Country, Spain, dedicated to recover and reuse timber from demolition is currently collaborating with the InFutUReWood’s Spanish partner, Timber Construction Research Group from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM).
A deconstruction site in Mendiola (Vitoria) conducting by Astur-Araba was visited last February. The building was around 200 years old. The building area was is 566 m2 divided in house and hayloft. It was a traditional post-and-beam construction using masonry loading-bearing wall facades and an internal post-and-beam oak timber structure (Fig. 1 and 2).
The reason for deconstruction is to build new semi-detached houses. The site is only four kilometers from the city of Vitoria and nowadays is a residential area.
Deconstruction was carried out in three phases:
1st Timber planks from floors in good condition were removed by hand (Fig. 3).
2nd The building structure was deconstructed using a truck with an incorporated crane for forestry purposes, segregating timber from debris (Fig. 4 and 5). Timber in good condition (Fig. 6) is directly segregated from rotten or broken timber.
3rd Debris was segregated on the ground in different skips (Fig. 7).
Astur-Araba kindly supplied us timber from this deconstruction free of change for the experimental purposes of the InFutUReWood project.
Fig. 1 Building before deconstruction
Fig. 2 Timber structure
Fig. 3 Recovered floor timber planks
Fig. 4 Deconstruction of roof structure
Fig. 5 Recovered beam
Fig. 6 Recovered timber
Fig. 7 Debris segregated by material in skips (source: Jorge from Astur-Araba)
