Trashed
Posted on December 3rd, 2007 – 10:23 PMBy Jason Hammond
New construction generally means that everything is new, new windows, new garage doors, etc. So imagine my surprise when I looked into the bottom of our dumpster to see the remnants of an old garage door and opener — where did those come from? Then a few days later some old casement windows appeared, stuffed underneath a pile of legitimate material. I can’t say how much this bothers me, that people see my dumpster as their opportunity to dispose of the various remnants of their home improvement projects.
We have gone to great efforts to limit our need to have a dumpster on site. Our SIPs panels greatly reduced our construction waste during framing, we utilized every scrap possible is some way shape and form and only until we absolutely had to, did our General Contractor Benedict and Associates have a dumpster on site. Even our need for a dumpster was not done taken lightly. The disposal company we selected (Shamrock) was chosen for their sort and recycle program. All the construction materials are put into the dumpster and then taken to a facility where it is hand sorted, into the appropriate recycling group. So this entry is dedicated to those people who see my dumpster as their opportunity to bury their stow away trash. You’re welcome.
7 Responses to "Trashed"
Hey, at least they didn’t put food in there. We had a nice stinky bag of regular household trash in ours that led to an early demo day and swap out to kill the smell!
We had a dumpster during our construction that became the dumping place for all of our neighbors. There was a bicycle, old lawn chairs, small appliances and paint cans. One of the issues that came up for us was that we were new to the neighborhood and didn’t want to anger the new neighbors.
When the VCR, bicycle, and toaster showed up, we emailed the townhouse association administrator and resorted to telling people it was costing us money. People understood that.
Some of the dumpster companies actually have dumpsters with lids that can be locked shut when no one is on site to monitor the area. You might want to see it they have any such thing. The only problem with these is that I thing they are about half the size of a normal construction dumpster. I know that construction companies use these thou as I recall Veridian Homes having them on their construction sights in Madison, WI.
Kind of makes you want to have a video camera monitoring the dumpster!
Hang in there, it sounds like you are definitely at the final stages, even though the punch list seems long
Nan
The deer camera I use for late night pics is very informative.
Hey, position a motion camera at
the dumpster, print the pics and post
them on a big board at a
neighborhood open house party!!!
Cheers!
No carpet yet? Surprising.
Most Minneapolis residents aren’t aware that they can get 6 free (as part of the normal waste management charge) vouchers annually to dump up to 2,000 pounds of junk per voucher. http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/solid-waste/voucher-how-to.asp
We used a large trailer and only had it on site when it needed to be. That did lead to a few temporary piles though.
That happened to my neighbor and me when we had a shared dumpster to clean up flooding debris from our two houses. He got so upset he had the dumpster picked up early, before I had finished throwing out my stuff 
I really think there is a good chance people just don’t think. I know some thought the city had put it there since there was general flooding in the area.
