Home buy-back demolitions giving a new lease of life to building materials

In a structural sense, the end result of Queensland’s voluntary home buy-back initiative is the demolition of severely flood-impacted homes at high risk to future flooding.

This process, however, doesn’t mean the end of the line for many of the materials that make up these homes. Far from it.

The buy-back program, part of the $741 million Resilient Homes Fund, has engaged resourceful Queensland contractors like Maryborough’s D & M Hose.

The Hose family specialise in demolition, asbestos removal, earthworks, and recycling building supplies.

Eleven voluntary home buy-back contracts have now settled on the Fraser Coast, helping some of the residents hardest hit by the 2022 floods.

And when demolition works began on a number of these Maryborough properties, the D & M Hose team were focused on gathering as many reusable building materials as they could.

The list of items that can be recycled from homes is extensive: structural timbers, roof sheeting, doors, windows, weatherboards. Even things like garage roller doors and the whirlybirds you see on household roofs.

According to Tricia Morrison from D & M Hose, there isn’t much that can’t be reused or recycled from the demolished homes.

“The shapes and thicknesses of materials such as weatherboards, cornice and skirting boards are unique,” Ms Morrison said.

“Roofing iron can be reused or sold for scrap, while rusty iron is sought after by people building bars for their decks and patios.

“Even the concrete in steps or slabs under houses and sheds can be recycled,” she added.

“It is crushed to recover the reinforcing steel which is sold for scrap, while the crushed concrete can then be used as road base.”

Of particular interest as well are many of the unique, perhaps one-off items that were custom-made for these homes and now no longer produced. 

Eager renovators are quick to snatch up these bespoke materials rather than seeing them go on the scrapheap.

With almost 360 voluntary home buy-back offers now accepted, this process of reclaiming, reimagining and reallocating will continue, leaving the land clear of residential structures and families free from flood threat.

The Resilient Homes Fund is a Queensland and Australian Government initiative, supported through joint Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA).