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Dispose of rubble from knocking down wall
t0m.b
Forumite 4 Posts
We are renovating our house and decided to remove a cupboard to make the living room bigger. The cupboard was made from a breeze block wall, about 4 foot long. We asked our builder who said that we could easily take it down ourselves to save money. We had a structural engineer take a look at it and he agreed there should be no problem (it is not load bearing).
We took the wall down yesterday using a sledge hammer without too much trouble. Today I loaded the car up with the lumps of breeze block and took them to the tip. Unfortunately they wouldn't take them as there was plaster still attached to the breeze block. They do take plaster, but only separated out.
Is there anywhere that will take the breeze blocks with plaster still attached? Would they go in a skip as-is?
Or do we have to chisel all the plaster off? That is going to take a huge amount of time and is never going to be completely gone.
Can't seem to find any advice about this online except that the plasterboard and gypsum regulations changed a few years ago. Any advice much appreciated!
We took the wall down yesterday using a sledge hammer without too much trouble. Today I loaded the car up with the lumps of breeze block and took them to the tip. Unfortunately they wouldn't take them as there was plaster still attached to the breeze block. They do take plaster, but only separated out.
Is there anywhere that will take the breeze blocks with plaster still attached? Would they go in a skip as-is?
Or do we have to chisel all the plaster off? That is going to take a huge amount of time and is never going to be completely gone.
Can't seem to find any advice about this online except that the plasterboard and gypsum regulations changed a few years ago. Any advice much appreciated!
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However, it depends on your conscience. My local recycling centre is so busy that little is monitored. Here you could drive in, put blocks with a plaster coating into the hardcore skip, and nobody would notice anything.
But if I was buying in recycled hardcore, and found excessive quantities of plaster, I would reject the load.
Thinking a Hippo Bag
Or convert it into an attractive garden feature.
and learn the theme tune from the Great Escape!
At my[STRIKE] tip[/STRIKE] recycling centre, no one's fussed about a bit of plaster in the rubble, but then we pay £1.10 a sack. Within my area, the different centres apply this charging policy with varying degrees of rigour.
If it's plasterboard, that's different: £2.60 a sack for that.
Each council is also a law unto itself. My daughter's council doesn't charge at all, even for plasterboard, hence quite a lot of it has made its way up the M5. At £2.60 a sack saved, it pays for the diesel.
When I lived in Bath, the centre there was full of council jobsworths, so when I visited my Dad, I'd drop in at the private tip near him in West Wilts. They were actually friendly in there and nothing was ever a problem,even if you drove a 3.5 tonne van.
So the answer might be try your luck at a different centre, or even in a different county.
Decided to try my luck at another tip a few miles away. Drove straight up to the rubble section and in it all went. My conscience was eased slightly as lo and behold, there was already a load of breeze blocks with plaster on in the container!
A Hippo bag had already been purchased for the job and I'm happy to report that it (mostly) contained the mess. A good buy from Homebase with their 15% off this past weekend.
I had previously floated the "Great Escape method" of disposal but this did not go over well with the wife!
One can make light of matters, and on the first reading it does seem ridiculous. However, if you were buying the recycled aggregate for hardcore, and more importantly concrete, the last thing you want is plaster.
Picture a twenty load tipped at your home, you have condemned it, and some unfortunate at the recycling centre is then receiving a roasting for turning a blind eye to plaster contamination. Who then disposes of the twenty tons, and how?