RECYCLING: A Barn Reborn

Mar 1, 2002 12:00 PM

Kim A. O'Connell

Every morning, John High climbs into his pickup truck and drives to job sites in Pennsylvania, New Jersey or Delaware to save doomed barns from the landfill. His motto: To save every barn he possibly can.

As part of the Barn Saver Project he started in 1990, High uses crowbars and hammers to dismantle barns that are destined for demolition. Typically, barns are demolished with heavy machinery and sent to landfills. But recognizing the value in every piece of the old structures, High left his job at an excavating company — where he bulldozed old houses and barns to make room for development — and began disassembling old barns piece by piece to save the flooring, siding, windows, doors, roofing, beams, joists, hardware and even the contents, such as lightning rods and pig troughs.

In the 10 years that the Barn Saver Project has been in operation, more than 200 barns and houses have been salvaged. Between 90 percent and 100 percent of every barn is saved, High says…

A network of contractors, such as Hometown Carpentry, a Boyertown, Pa., company that specializes in barn restoration, helps to find dismantled barn buyers. For instance, when Hometown Carpentry owner Jim Slabonik is looking for a particular kind of material to restore a historic barn, he lets High know. Conversely, after dismantling a barn, High will let Slabonik and other contractors know what materials he has salvaged.

“It's a growing industry and there are a lot of people utilizing these old materials,” Slabonik says. “People who have old barns want to keep them looking like they did 150 or 200 years ago.”

Deconstruction can take weeks to complete — usually longer than the standard one- to five-day demolition job. However, deconstruction costs a fraction of demolition on average, High notes.