What Do I Do with Home Renovation Waste?
Over time, the appeal of a home can naturally fade due to natural wear and tear, as well as other instances of physical damage your home’s occupants or visitors could inadvertently inflict upon the property. Perhaps a wooden floor in your kitchen has become warped due to your kids having spilled drinks on it or paint has started peeling or cracking on some parts of your home’s walls?
Situations like these could call upon you to embark on a residential renovation project – which shouldn’t be confused with refurbishment work; however, often you might see the words ‘renovation’ and ‘refurbishment’ used seemingly interchangeably. While refurbishing is often about overhauling a space, renovating is usually more about restoring it to a good condition.
So, while – for example – some of your home’s existing roofing materials might have chipped or fallen away as a result of a treacherous storm, you might not strictly need to replace those materials with materials of a different style. If that roof had comprised, say, ceramic tiles, there might still be new ones available in the same style as your old ones.
Hence, a home renovation can – perhaps surprisingly – actually be more time consuming than a home refurbishment, as the former would likely require you to think more carefully about how the work would accommodate many of the building’s existing features and quirks. This could be especially true if the home is a period property with unique decor.
The point we are ultimately building up to here (if you will excuse the construction-related pun) is that, as far as DIY projects go, renovating a home can easily result in a larger number and range of leftover materials than refurbishing it. You might not have realised that 13% of products used for construction projects are simply sent to landfills and never actually used on site.
This certainly doesn’t bode well for the environment, as landfill sites contribute heavily to climate change. Therefore, you want to minimise how many of your waste materials end up there. You should also be careful where else you leave them – as, when hazardous waste is left in the wrong place, chemicals in this waste can potentially contaminate the soil and harm local wildlife.
One definite example of a ‘wrong place’ in this context would be land without a licence to accept waste. Dumping waste in this manner is known as ‘fly-tipping’, an illegal practice that, were you to engage in it in the process of home renovation waste clearance, could see you fined.
The bottom line is, if your home-renovating activities leave you with any unwanted waste, you should start researching local waste carriers who would be licensed to rid your home of these excess materials in a responsible and eco-friendly manner.
Our family-run business, Sheridan Skips, offers skip hire in Manchester and such surrounding areas as Trafford and Oldham. With our skip pickup service, we can help you to efficiently empty your home of various types of waste, which we can subsequently sort through so that eligible materials will be sent to a recycling centre, where they belong.
Why Hire a Skip When It Comes to Home Renovation Projects?
In scope, renovating a home is subtler than remodelling it, for example. Whereas remodelling entails changing the building’s structure or layout, renovating is more about revitalising what is already there, such as by repairing it or updating it to something more contemporary.
Renovating a kitchen, for example, could involve installing new light fixtures, updating outdated appliances and – for certain parts of the room that are beyond easy repair – replacing entire kitchen cupboards, windows, tiles and worktops.
Remodelling is more ambitious and, in a kitchen, could include installing a kitchen island or knocking down one or more of the room’s walls to make for an extended kitchen. All of these moves would change the room’s structure and layout and so constitute remodelling rather than renovating.
While all of this has (generally positive) implications for renovation costs, these can remain prohibitive – and not just in terms of money – if you fail to plan your renovation project carefully. Examples of DIY waste you could garner include unused tools, cans, brushes and materials – perhaps as a result of you having miscalculated exactly how many of each you needed.
Some types of materials and other waste items are bulkier than others, however – as you could find out for yourself if your renovation project turns out to need more extensive work than you had originally expected. You could need to strip out a particularly large kitchen unit or, in more extreme circumstances, arrange for entire walls to be demolished so that they can be fully replaced.
Certain kinds of construction waste, like whole bricks and blocks, you might easily be able to reuse yourself without needing to send them anywhere beyond your home’s boundaries. However, even when you recognise how the construction industry as a whole could repurpose some of your surplus materials, you might still need help with transferring them from your hands to tradespeople’s.
After all, as much as you might be aware of your environmental responsibilities, you might not know how you can make sure that as little of your home renovation waste as possible ends up in a tip. Besides, if you were to take your own car to a tip to dispose of waste, you may end up needing to make multiple journeys, in the process creating fuel emissions that even further damage the planet.
It’s reassuring, then, that we at Sheridan Skips offer skips of various sizes that are capable of holding any type of material – however bulky it might be. Our skips range in size from 4 to 16 cubic yards – and even our bulky waste collection service can spare you having to transport any rubbish by road. With our same-day collection and pickup service, you don’t have to be left waiting, either.
How to Manage Your Waste Correctly with a Professional Skip Provider
However much waste you might need to offload, we have a skip size to suit. While our 4-cubic-yard skips can hold the equivalent of about 30-50 full bin bags, this range increases to approximately 80-100 in the case of our 8-cubic-yard skips and roughly 100-120 for our 12-cubic-yard skips.
The largest skips you can hire from us measure 16 cubic yards each, making these vessels particularly suitable for bulk waste collection. If you are uncertain what skip you need and what to do with certain materials, just ask our friendly team, who can be utilised for advice and information.
We can even accommodate the timeline of your home renovation project; with our same-day pickup and collection service, we are able to bring an empty skip to your property before returning later that day to collect this container.
Our service here includes placing the skip in a place where it won’t provoke objections from the local council. This place could be land belonging to your own private property, such as your driveway or perhaps a private road. However, if circumstances mean the skip would need to be left on a public highway instead, you should research whether you would first need to apply for a skip permit.
Usually, the skip hire firm itself would be responsible for obtaining the skip permit – or, as it can otherwise be called, a skip licence. However, if you live in Manchester or nearby and remain unsure whether you would need to apply for this licence instead, take heart that it’s easy to use the UK Government website to research which rules your particular local council stipulates.
In consulting with you, we can also make sure the timing of our return trip will work for you. That way, you will be able to fill the skip with home renovation waste in time for us to retrieve the now-full unit. So, once we do take this skip away, what will happen to it?
We will make sure the waste contained within is sorted into appropriate categories, allowing all of it to be disposed of in as environmentally friendly a way as possible. We will make sure any hazardous or complex waste is handled safely and any recyclable waste is sent to a recycling centre, thereby helping you to lessen your adverse impact on the planet.
It’s also worth emphasising that we can handle the various types of waste that you might generate in the process of remodelling your home. So, if you will indeed be remodelling your home rather than refurbishing or renovating it, you could take comfort from how we are able to, on your request, swiftly take away such demolition waste as rubble.
Alternatively, you might want to undertake work in a commercial capacity, such as if you are a landlord or property developer and intend to let someone else live in a residential property from which you will nonetheless amass revenue. Fortunately, we are trained in processing commercial waste the local council might not be able to take off your hands.
Provided your home or workplace is in Manchester or any of the surrounding areas, like Stockport, Sale or Bury, our skips could help you to remove any kind of waste from the property. Our expertise even extends to collecting garden waste so that a new, eco-friendly purpose can be found for it. Please give us a call on 0161 647 7668to learn more about our skip hire solutions.
