Crew turns rubble into fresh blocks

One brick at a time, dedicated workers have chipped away and cleaned up thousands of bricks that now need to be sold.

A couple of truckloads of bricks taken from the demolition of buildings at Whangarei Hospital were transported to Idea Services in Whangarei in January.

Since then eight people from Idea Services (Intellectual Disability Empowerment in Action) have turned the massive pile of bricks, covered in mortar and cement, into neatly stacked pallets of bricks.

Employment support coordinator Daniel Manning said a business arrangement had been made with Barfoote Construction to clean up the bricks and split the profits.

He said a group of eight, but a core of four people - Tom Tipene, Jeffrey Ganley, Gabrielle Augustin and Richard Trail - from Idea Services had made remarkable progress on the bricks.

They had chipped away with hammers and chisels to remove the lime mortar before they moved on to the more difficult bricks that were covered with cement.

About 3500 bricks were on pallets ready to sell.

Some had already been bought and used for building fireplaces, pizza ovens and garden paving.

The money would be split between the workers and Barfoote.

"I'm grateful we had such keen people to work on this project. I thought we had about 12 months work here but this massive pile has just about disappeared."

A few months work was estimated to be left on the remaining bricks and their sale had been by word of mouth so far.

Mr Ganley said to decrease the amount of dust and soften the lime mortar the bricks had been soaked in water.

Seeing the finished bricks ready to be re-used had given the team a sense of achievement.

"It shows we aren't just pretty faces. It's a big achievement," Mr Ganley said.

Barfoote owner Trevor Barfoote said the team had done a great job of getting the bricks back to a state where they were usable again.

"It would have been difficult to find people with such stickability for a job like this. They have done a fantastic job."

He said deciding to give the bricks to Idea Services and paying them for the work was one way to give back to the community.

The company had recycled about 80 per cent of the material it had removed from the demolition of wards 6, 7, 8 and 9 at the hospital. Some had been given to charities including Horses for Healing, Habitat for Humanity and the Maungatapere Community Church.

Anyone who would like to buy some of the bricks should contact Mr Manning at Idea Services in Cooke St, Whangarei.