mercredi 1 janvier 2014

Making life easier with a skip

By Geoge Linen


Although the American 'dumpster' was developed during the 1930s, the first open top skips to be seen in the UK were imported from Germany in the early 1960s. At a time when housing projects were endemic, the idea of having large containers on site became popular with construction companies. Householders, seeing these skips on the street, swiftly identified them as a useful way that they too could rid themselves of rubbish, and so the skip hire industry was born.

Skips are particularly useful if you are planning any sort of home improvement project, such as replacing your roof, putting in new windows or stripping out a central heating system. They can also be used for garden clearances, providing a solution to the question of what to do with awkward garden sheds or greenhouses.

Skips come in various sizes, but the standard ones are mini skip, midi skip and builders' skip. The mini skip holds the equivalent of around 25 full bin bags, the midi skip around 35 bin bags and the builders' skip around 50 bin bags. If in doubt, it is advisable to err on the side of caution and choose the bigger size. Larger builders' skips, such as those you would need for a house clearance, are also available from the better skip hire companies.

If there's no possibility of putting the skip on private land, then a permit from your local council will be necessary. Whilst many councils are happy for the skip company to apply on their customer's behalf, some only issue permits to the end user. It is illegal to park a skip on the public highway without a permit, and it's also illegal to park it on the pavement.

There are a number of statutory, as well as local, regulations that you need to be aware of when you park a skip on the public highway. The basic rules are that the skip should not exceed five metres in length by two metres in width, it should be guarded by at least three traffic cones and illuminated at all four corners by night. It should not cover any manholes and the name and telephone number of the hire company should always be clearly visible somewhere on the skip.

Certain household wastes are deemed hazardous, and should never be put into a skip. These include refrigeration appliances, televisions, fluorescent light tubes, tyres, vehicle batteries, gas bottles, clinical waste, asbestos, liquids and any flammable or toxic material. It is illegal to overfill your skip.

A good skip hire company should be able to tell you exactly how it intends to process your material and tell you precisely what its recycle rate is. With a normal load, the absolute maximum that should end up in landfill is 20 per cent. The company should hold a valid waste removal licence and, if it processes the waste in its own waste transfer station, an environmental permit.

The best skip hire firms will separate your waste into recyclable and non-recyclable materials, donating any reusable items to charity. Some even process the biomass into fuel so that only the minimum ends up in landfill. This is certainly an elegant solution to the problem of rapidly declining landfill space.




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