Wednesday, January 1, 2014

How to hire a skip - simple steps to follow

By Carol Roberts


We're all trying to improve our homes, right now. Ripping out the old bathroom or kitchen and replacing it, is a great way to add value to your home. The old one will go in the skip and you can forget about it. But before you put it in, do you know what you can put in the skip?

Your household and garden waste is great for the skip. It is designed for these. You shouldn't use the skip to get rid of anything that will pose a risk to someone's health. The Environment Agency has clear guidelines to ensure everything is disposed of safely.

After you have put the rubbish you have removed from the house and garden waste in to the skip, you can include your renovation project with the kitchen sink and anything you have torn out of the bathroom. So, yes, you can put the kitchen sink in the skip.

The guidelines state that you should not use a skip to get rid of asbestos, fluorescent lighting tubes, refrigerators, freezers, TV and computer screens, any liquids including diesel, gas, petrol, solvents and medical waste. Gas cylinders, plasterboard, batteries, tyres and paint tins even if they are empty

These hazardous materials can be safely disposed of in other places. To find out how to dispose of these, you should contact your local authority. You can find the phone number and email address for the local authority online.

When you hire a skip, you might need to get a skip licence, if you intend to put it on the public road. This will be issued by the local council and will grant you the access rights. This is normally processed by the skip hire company so you won't have to worry about it, but you should always check if you are responsible for the permit or not.

When you have hired a skip, you must not put it on the pavement. If you have managed to store the skip completely on private land, you will not need a licence. The same rules apply for hippobags, skip bags and traditional skips. When you put the skip on the road, you might be asked to use safety night-lamps and markings to aid other road users. You should also display the name, phone number and address of the hire company.

When your skip is full, it will be taken away by the hire company. They will send your waste to either a landfill or try and recycle what they can. They might send it via a large recycling centre or even recycle the waste themselves. You can ask the hire company where your waste is going and they will tell you.

When the skip hire company arrive to take away your full skip, the contents of it will be weighed to calculate the cost. The company charges for disposing the waste, not on volume but purely via the weight. Obviously throwing out paper and general household waste will be cheaper than getting rid of a garden full of heavy soil or bricks.




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