{"id":768133,"date":"2025-01-06T08:43:21","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T08:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/?p=768133"},"modified":"2025-01-06T08:45:28","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T08:45:28","slug":"in-practice-working-with-reclaimed-steel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/specification\/in-practice-working-with-reclaimed-steel","title":{"rendered":"In practice: Working with reclaimed steel"},"content":{"rendered":"

In September 2024, the final blast furnace at South Wales\u2019 Port Talbot steelworks was closed, marking the end of virgin steel production in the UK. For over a century, its towering furnaces symbolised the country\u2019s manufacturing might and the area\u2019s economic resilience. But the imperative to decarbonise demanded the abandonment of the coal-fired steelmaking that has supported not just Port Talbot, but construction in the UK \u2013 a sector which accounts for a fifth of national carbon emissions.<\/p>\n

While this transition is a broad reckoning for the UK steel industry \u2013 with Port Talbot\u2019s very identity and 3,000 local jobs under question \u2013 it exposes vulnerabilities on our reliance on virgin steel and the sheer volume of construction this has afforded. The industry will now be reliant on either imported virgin steel, recycled steel made from scrap melted down in an electric arc furnace, or reclaimed steel from deconstructed buildings.<\/p>\n

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Steels at Cleveland Steel store<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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We are at a crossroads in UK construction regarding how or whether we build with steel. While the level of carbon emissions of reclaimed steel is near zero, dependent on transportation and fixing methods, virgin steel emits 3.19kg of carbon per kg of steel, and Ikg of recycled steel still emits 1.4kg of carbon. Our construction industry is heavily reliant on the quick and easy wins that steel provides, not least in residential extensions. In a typical loft extension, one steel beam could easily weigh 200kg, and there are often four or five. The carbon impact of these, even if recycled, would be the equivalent in carbon emissions to more than one person\u2019s annual meat consumption.<\/p>\n

Small-scale residential architecture \u2013 maintenance, renovation and extension projects \u2013 is one of the largest construction sectors in the UK, valued at \u00a334 billion annually, equal to the infrastructure sector. The idea of owning a home and making it one\u2019s own is baked into our national psyche and it\u2019s no surprise that spending in this sector is high. But, as well as fuelling our economy, this domestic consumerism produces huge amounts of waste \u2013 and carbon emissions. Buying a house often involves knocking walls down, ripping floors up and throwing appliances away. These many deeply personal endeavours are linked to global flows of materials and supply chains that have consequences far beyond a home\u2019s four walls.<\/p>\n

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Steels on site<\/p>\n\t

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\u2018Under the climate emergency, every household needs to be considering how we reduce waste and build for the long term,\u2019 says Thammy Evans, a client of our practice, Mike Tuck Studio, on a deep retrofit project in Greenwich, south-east London. The Merriman Road project, currently on site, will see a post-war semi-detached house decarbonised through external and internal natural wood fibre insulation, breathable lime plaster internally, lime render externally, an air source heat pump, PV panels and wood wool board instead of plasterboard. The existing PVC windows and single-storey extension are being retained, since, though less desirable, they\u2019re still fully functional, and the carbon emitted in creating them is already locked into the house. This rigorous preservation of existing fabric has been pushed to its limits: rather than chasing services through the wall and disturbing existing wallpaper and wall build-up, they\u2019re being boxed out with reclaimed materials. The aim is not to impact the planet and its resources. Existing building fabric is being retained and any new materials introduced are either natural or reclaimed.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span>\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The existing roof needed to be replaced, due to spray foam insulation that had caused the timber to fail. For Evans, the choice to create a room in the roof space could only be justified if the carbon impact of the new structure could be kept to a minimum. As such, reclaimed steel was the only option. Thus began a rich and educational journey into how to use reclaimed steel, for a consumer client, at a small scale.<\/p>\n

\u2018People have always re-used materials,\u2019 says Simon Armitt of Cleveland Steel in North Yorkshire. \u2018Agricultural engineers and farmers around here just do it by instinct. There\u2019s never a second thought. It\u2019s when legislation and law comes into it that people get jittery.\u2019 Cleveland Steel originally specialised in the sale of surplus steel tubes from large infrastructure projects before broadening their business to include reclaiming steel products from across infrastructure and construction industries. CE marking and compliance with BS EN 1090-1 for fabricated structural steelwork became mandatory in 2013 and since then a reclaimed piece of steel cannot be used in a construction project without test certification. \u2018When CE marking came in, our MD, Roy Fishwick, thought it could close the business, because it was telling people that re-using is bad and you must use new steel, which simply isn\u2019t the case,\u2019 explains Armitt. Cleveland Steel, he says, never set out with the intention to be part of the green building sector, but has just been seeking new ways to operate its business since the 1970s.<\/p>\n

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Installation of stair<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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Re-use should be part of the same mindset as being economical with materials and working with what already exists, and it is always the most ecologically benign option. It has been common practice for centuries at small scale in the residential and agricultural sectors. What\u2019s new now is the urgency in employing these principles.<\/p>\n

Reclaimed steel is becoming more widely used in larger-scale construction and, thanks to economies of scale and commercial decarbonisation targets, larger projects form the basis of Cleveland Steel\u2019s business. But still it finds that the demand for reclaimed steel lags behind the abundant supply, which flies in the face of decarbonisation targets. This is due to the complexity of working with reclaimed steel. And the problems multiply at the scale of a small residential project.<\/p>\n

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Roof beams being installed<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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Once SD Engineers proposed using reclaimed steel to us and Evans on the Merriman Road project, Cleveland Steel shared a long list of available stock with them, from which they identified suitable pieces to use. Things went on hold for several months while the design was completed. Cleveland Steel either purchases steel with its original documentation and verified CE mark, or puts unregistered steel through its own testing processes, enabling it to CE mark the reclaimed steel in accordance with BS EN 1090. Each piece of steel on their database has confirmed mechanical properties and a CE mark, so can continue to be re-used. Once the Stage 4 design was finalised, Cleveland Steel defabricated the steels, removing old connections, welds and cleats. The holes from previous connections stay in place, due to the risk that, if made invisible, they might impact future connection strengths.<\/p>\n

At this point we learned that Cleveland Steel, as is common with reclaimed stockholders, does not have connection design capability, unlike many steel fabricators, so we\u2019d need someone else to undertake this work and take design liability for it. In the end, SD Engineers was appointed again, to provide CAD drawings for connection manufacture. This added 20 per cent to the steel costs and delayed the start on site. This project will end up costing a lot more than your average London loft extension but, to Evans, it seemed the only option. She says: \u2018The cost argument is a red herring. It\u2019s one that\u2019s used to try and undermine the process but, at the end of the day, it\u2019s not like recycling crisp packets; it\u2019s a house, and has a huge impact.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Spliced reclaimed steels<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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Reflecting on what we could have done differently as architects, we now realise that the complexity in procuring the reclaimed steel could have been made easier by starting with a radically simpler structure. Cost and complexity arose from splicing together different lengths of steel, forming connections around the stair. But Cleveland Steel freely supplies architects with their stocklist and will then hold any selected stock for up to three months. So designing around the stock that they have available and letting this shape the design would reduce costs and carbon impact. A simpler design strategy with timber trimmers or flitches around the staircase and chimney supports could have avoided the use of higher-carbon steel-to-steel connections.<\/p>\n

This structure-first approach will start to bring into question certain forms of residential extension as just not carbon-viable any more, especially if they require complicated structures too expensive to form with reclaimed steel. This aesthetic of re-use extends, too, to the structure holding something up. For instance, an extension with lime and hemp walls is an ecologically hollow gesture if hidden virgin steel is holding the existing back wall of the house up.<\/p>\n

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New roof being installed<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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Our landscapes are increasingly littered with the carbon-heavy mistakes of irresponsible specification. The materials we specify as an industry reflect the priorities, values and future we envision and poor choices in the methods and systems giving physical form to our ideas can lock buildings into cycles of waste and inefficiency. These past mistakes, as they are deconstructed, are mines for new opportunities. Cleveland Steel\u2019s Yorkshire site spreads across 100 acres of semi-industrial land, where they hold as much as 84,000 tonnes of steel at any one time. This immense space is the new Port Talbot, in that it can fuel construction, but it is also full of the remains of bad constructional mistakes. Cleveland Steel\u2019s stock is fed from both surplus steel coming from current production \u2013 so not to be considered reclaimed \u2013 and steel products being re-used mere decades after being produced. An architecture only fed by others\u2019 carbon-heavy mistakes is not an ecological one.<\/p>\n

Construction has an obsession with the new. To remake a house that\u2019s already standing is tied to consumerist behaviours, with processes of regeneration and renewal demanding that what we have is not enough and we must create again. While the process of creating a home is a natural human endeavour, it is essential that this does not come at the planet\u2019s expense. If we return to the very fundamentals of our physical world \u2013 that matter can neither be created nor destroyed \u2013 we remind ourselves that it\u2019s our job to rearrange the materials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In September 2024, the final blast furnace at South Wales\u2019 Port Talbot steelworks was closed, marking the end of virgin steel production in the UK. For over a century, its towering furnaces symbolised the country\u2019s manufacturing might and the area\u2019s economic resilience. But the imperative to decarbonise demanded the abandonment of the coal-fired steelmaking that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59337,"featured_media":768170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[721],"tags":[1624,100789,5336,4457],"yoast_head":"\nIn practice: Working with reclaimed steel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mike Tuck and Ellen Peirson of Mike Tuck Studio reflect on construction\u2019s reliance on steel and their experience of using reclaimed steel beams on a domestic extension project\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/specification\/in-practice-working-with-reclaimed-steel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta 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