At abandoned industrial sites some of the previous buildings are often left behind. If the soil at such site is polluted with heavy metals and is to be remediated by an electrochemical method, the construction refuse within the soil matrix will influence the remediation action. The influence of different sorts of construction refuse on electrodialytic soil remediation was investigated in laboratory cells. An insulator, a stone, resulted in an uneven Cu removal in the close vicinity of the stone itself. An electric conductive screw disturbed the Cu removal due to the redox reactions occurring at the surface of the screw causing pH changes in the soil. Two types of refuse with ionic conducting properties were placed within the test cell, a piece of brick and concrete. The brick did not influence the Cu removal from the soil to a high extent, but it was seen that during the remediation the Cu concentration in the brick itself increased. In the case of concrete the Cu mobilized from the soil was simply found to adsorb very strongly to the concrete and thus the Cu could not be removed from the soil and the concrete as a whole. Furthermore, the removal of Cu in the soil next to the concrete was quite poor. It is very important to be aware of the presence of construction refuse at such sites when planning an electrochemical remediation action. All the refuse types investigated here influenced the Cu removal negatively compared to the reference experiment. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved.