Quote:
Originally Posted by drummer
That's a good point. If anything else, they could be used for paved walkways or patios - doesn't have to be something structural.
|
Back in the day - like in the early 90s, my dad and I and my brother would go down to Waller Creek and screen for coins and whatever else we could find. My dad built a box out of 2x4s and covered it with some mid gauge wire mesh. Then we'd take shovelfuls of rock and gravel from the creek and sift it. We mostly just found a lot of change, but we did find some silver and even some gold jewelry that had been washed in. The creek also was full of old brick that had both washed in there over the years - brick that used to pave the streets or caved off from whatever was lining the creek. And sometimes it was even just thrown in there whenever something was torn down way back. Anyway, we must have hauled out thousands of bricks from the creek. My dad paved our driveway with it, built walkways and a patio with it. I later had to bust out that patio to repair the sewer line, but I still reused as much of the brick as I could. The old patio was replaced with a concrete one, but I reused all of that brick that I was able to not break getting out to build a plaza off the patio. I also expanded a walkway down to our storage shed, and then last year I replaced that shed with a bigger one. When it came time to decide how to do the floor in there, I used brick. All of the brick I used was reclaimed - either some we bought used or that I found that people were throwing away. I probably gathered about 1,000 brick to pave the floor of our shed, plus expanded the walkway next to it, and between another storage shed and paved the floor of that one, too. I'm betting we probably have 7 or 8,000 bricks on the property for landscaping. I love 'em because the water can still get through and they're a bit more attractive than concrete is. And even when it gets icy they're not too difficult to walk on - definitely better than concrete.
Anyway, it's good to see this moving forward, but yeah, every time I see some brick getting demoed I always think about what it could be reused for. Depending on the type of brick, it isn't too hard to bust off the concrete and reuse the brick, though, most older concrete seems to be stronger than more modern stuff.
Prev
Hybrid Mode