On most sites everything goes in one bin because that is the path of least resistance. It is also how a few hundred dollars of metal a month ends up being paid for twice, once to buy the skip space and once in the metal you gave away.
What is in a typical site skip
- Offcuts of copper pipe from the plumbing rough-in.
- Cable offcuts from the electrical rough-in. These add up faster than anything else on a site.
- Old fixtures from a strip-out. Taps, sinks, hot water systems, baths.
- Roofing iron and flashing.
- Steel offcuts, framing, lintels, reo ends.
- Old aluminium windows and doors.
- Switchboards and meter boxes on a rewire.
How to run a site so it works
The thing that makes this fail is asking people to make a decision. The thing that makes it work is making the decision obvious.
- Two bulka bags or a marked cage, from day one. One for copper and brass, one for everything metal.
- Tell the trades once, at the start, not halfway through.
- Put them somewhere on the path between the work and the skip, not in a corner nobody walks past.
- Ring us when they are full, or set a standing frequency on a longer job.
That is the entire system. It fails when the bags go up late, because by then everyone is already in the habit of walking to the skip.
Demolition and strip-outs
These are the big ones. A full kitchen and bathroom strip-out, an old shed coming down, a shopfit being removed. Worth a conversation before anything is booked, because the metal content can be substantial and it changes what size bin you need.
Ring with a description or a photo and we will tell you what is there.
Access matters more than volume
The practical constraint on a site is whether a truck can get in and get out, and whether the material is somewhere reachable. A pile behind a locked gate at the back of a block is harder than a pile at the front.
Tell us where it is when you ring and we will work out whether we need a different vehicle.