Other articles by Tom Beal:

Wildfire proves useful UA scientist sees sun power in new lightClouds raise big monsoon question: Are we there yet? Study boosts solar as an investment State in 'bull's-eye' for changeCity breeds ideal climate for virus-carrying pestsUA's goal for Biosphere 2: self-sufficient science hubBiosphere 2 seeks to answer questions about how life affects worldTwo Tucson weather records fallToday's storm brings record low, rainfall amount for Tucson

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Most demolitions and remodelings don't involve the scale of the neighborhood makeover at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Tucson's large stock of outdated housing will likely be taken down or renovated one home at a time.

Pima County has 62,800 homes that will be at least 50 years old by 2010, according to a housing market analysis done for Pima County and Tucson in 2005.

You can't hire a concrete grinder when you're tearing down a single house.

You can't justify the cost of a recycling program for a single room or a kitchen wall.

Consequently, 80 percent of remodeling waste goes to the landfill, said Greg Miedema of Dakota Builders, which specializes in remodeling.

Even with that waste stream, Miedema said, renovating is a "greener way" of doing things.

Adding value and years of life to an existing home beats tearing it down and starting over, he said. "We're recycling a house, so to speak."

Waste would more often be recycled if it were easier to do, he said.

He recently took a trailer full of aluminum window frames saved from multiple jobs over the years to a scrap dealer. The salvage fee didn't compensate for his time, let alone storage and transportation costs, Miedema said.

Miedema suggests "collection points" to aggregate reusable construction waste.

He also urges a communitywide effort to upgrade the energy-efficiency of existing homes and extend their lives.

Francis Maasland, who remodels older homes and builds new ones on in-town lots, promotes the notion of "deconstruction," not "demolition."

It takes more time and labor, he said, but when you take a home apart piece by piece, you can separate materials and take them to an "inert landfill," where materials are processed for new products.

When he has windows, fixtures and appliances, he calls the HabiStore, and its people will come and pick them up. Habitat for Humanity finds new owners for his junk and uses the resale money to build affordable homes.

For small amounts of usable building materials, he puts an ad on a free Internet site. They're gone the next day.

Jason Tankersley, chief executive officer of The Fairfax Cos., which runs Speedway Landfill, said he's gearing up to begin crushing concrete there.

Demand for places that will recycle waste is growing as builders look to score points for "green" certification of their projects, Tankersley said. He would like to eventually have a system in which trucks unloading construction debris would fill back up with cleaned fill from his grinder, saving that wasteful empty trip.

Maasland, who was born and raised in the Netherlands, said developers are getting more "green" each year.

When he moved to New York City to work in an uncle's contracting business two decades ago, he was amazed to see what went into the trash.

"Everything is reused in Europe," he said, but "we're catching up."

For smaller builders, it's mostly a question of education, Maasland said.

The next hurdle to get over is this idea that we're building for 50-year life spans, he said. "We can build 100-year homes. We just need to use different materials."