Recycling Plant for Construction Debris/Demo

Back in March, the Wildflower Center had set up a trip to visit 969 Pit Materials, a recycling plant, just east of Austin.  You’ll have to forgive my photos.  They were taken a long, long time ago…remember rain???

This place recycles concrete and construction debris to make materials that can be reused for other projects.  They take concrete w/ rebar, rock, asphalt, cmu block, brick and dirt.

They take old and broken up concrete and asphalt and turn it into material suitable for base material or pipe bedding.  There’s a project I’m working on that has a huge concrete structure that will have to be demolished.  What a great way to re-use all of that construction demo! 

Here’s my favorite part:  the concrete wash-out facility.  I’m sorry I’m so excited, but we Landscape Architects don’t always get to be involved this deep into the construction/demo procedures.  969 Pit will take out these washout systems and recycle the material inside them.  They make a stabilized sand product that is separated from the concrete mix and that can be use for pipe bedding and in lieu of regular sand under concrete walks.  I was talking to Jim and he said that a lot of times, temporary washout pits are created and then semi-cleaned out and filled back in.  Not only do you eliminate any of that waste going into the ground, you get to re-use the material.

 

So, how did we incorporate this material into our project?  I’m glad you asked.  Our wonderful civil engineer and structural engineer did some research and got some testing reports from Jim Lozier, the owner, and decided that they could use this material for pipe bedding and base.  We were pretty excited about that.  I think the idea of creating a material that can be used, ripped out, crushed, re-used, ripped out, crushed……(you get the idea)…. is awesome.  Talk about cradle to cradle.  We shouldn’t be excavating new material to use as base or bedding materials.  We hope to talk more with Jim to see what we can utilize in the future on more projects.  If you’re interested, here’s more info:

969 Pit Materials; Jim Lozier

6005 FM 973 South; 512-276-7575

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