Garages, engineering units and workshops across the industrial estates around Knowsley accumulate in a particular way, and when one is cleared, whether at a lease end, a retirement or a change of use, the contents present more restricted items than almost any other job. Workshop clearance is one where a phone call before booking saves a wasted delivery. Our Knowsley skip hire service supports a good deal of trade work across the borough.
The excluded list is long here
In a domestic clearance there might be two or three items that cannot go in a container. In a workshop there are usually a dozen, and most of them are in quantity.
Waste oil is the big one. Engine oil, gear oil, hydraulic fluid and cutting fluid are all hazardous waste and have to go through a registered waste oil collector, who will provide the documentation. It cannot go in a skip and it certainly cannot go down a drain. Oil filters count too, because they retain oil, and so do oily rags and absorbent granules that have been used on a spill.
Tyres cannot go in a container. This applies to a single tyre in the corner as much as to a stack of forty, and they need a registered tyre disposal route.
Lead acid batteries are hazardous waste and have a scrap value, so a merchant is the answer rather than a skip.
Then the chemicals. Antifreeze and coolant, brake and clutch fluid, degreasers, solvents, thinners, paints, adhesives and aerosols. All of it needs proper disposal and none of it goes in a general load. Our guide to hazardous waste and why it cannot go in a skip covers the category.
Gas bottles and welding cylinders go back to the supplier. Fire extinguishers need their own route. Fluorescent tubes from the lighting contain mercury and must not be broken.
Batteries in tools are the modern problem
Worth singling out because it is recent and it is serious. Every workshop now has cordless tools, and lithium battery packs that are damaged or crushed can ignite in a waste load.
That means every battery pack, every dead charger and every tool with a built in cell needs pulling out and going into the electrical stream rather than into a container. Our guide to sorting electrical waste before your skip arrives covers where they go. Old packs that no longer hold charge are no safer than working ones.
The scrap is worth organising
Once the hazardous items are out, a workshop clearance is largely metal, and metal is money rather than waste.
Steel offcuts, swarf, old benching, racking, redundant machinery, motors and cable all have a value, and on a unit of any size a merchant will collect. Non ferrous is worth separating from steel because it is worth considerably more, and copper cable from a rewire or from stripped out machinery is the most valuable thing likely to come out of the building.
Doing this properly reduces the number of containers noticeably, which is the practical argument for spending a day on it.
Drums and containers
Empty drums are only empty if they are properly clean. A drum with residue in it is still hazardous waste, and a stack of part used containers in a corner is one of the more common things we are asked about.
Where drums have been properly emptied and cleaned they can go for metal recycling. Where they have not, they go with the chemical waste. If nobody knows what was in one, treat it as unknown rather than assuming, and get advice rather than guessing.
The same caution applies to unlabelled containers generally. Workshops accumulate decanted fluids in whatever bottle was to hand, and a clear plastic bottle of something amber could be anything from cutting oil to brake fluid. Nobody should be opening and sniffing them to find out. Set them aside as a group and let the chemical collection deal with them.
The paperwork a business has to keep
Waste from a business is controlled waste and the business carries a duty of care over it that does not end at the gate. That means a registered carrier, a waste transfer note for every collection, and those notes retained.
Hazardous waste is a step further again, with its own consignment documentation that has to be kept. On a workshop clearance you will end up with several sets of paperwork from several contractors, and keeping them together is worth doing at the time rather than reconstructing later.
Our skip hire duty of care guide sets out what should be on the documentation. We are a licensed waste carrier and site operator, and the notes come as standard with every collection.
Sizing and access
What remains for the container is the general clearance. Timber, packaging, pallets, broken racking, floor coverings, office contents and general accumulation. It is bulky rather than dense, so size for volume.
An 8 tonne builders skip on a prompt exchange covers most single units. Where a unit has yard space and hardstanding, a roll on roll off container moves far more per collection, and our commercial skip hire service covers the larger arrangements.
Everything we take comes back to our own recycling centre for sorting rather than being passed on, which our environmental and recycling page explains.
We cover the borough regularly, running Aintree skip hire jobs alongside Knowsley and out across the surrounding estates.
Ring us on 0151 909 6399 and describe what is in the unit before you book. Our contact page is there if you would rather send an inventory over.
