A bathroom is the smallest room in most houses and it produces a disproportionate amount of waste when it comes out. Bathroom refit waste is dense rather than bulky, which means the skip reaches its limit while looking half used, and it comes out of an upstairs room down a staircase, which is its own problem. We deliver into a lot of these through our Southport skip hire service, particularly through the quieter months when trades have availability.
The cast iron bath problem
Southport has a great deal of older housing, and older housing means cast iron baths. If you have one, plan the whole job around it.
A full size cast iron bath is extraordinarily heavy. It is a four person lift at best and it will not go round the turn at the top of a typical staircase without a fight. People routinely underestimate this and then find themselves stuck halfway down with a bath wedged against the banister and no way back up.
The trade approach is to break it in place rather than carry it whole. A heavy hammer, an old blanket over the bath to contain the fragments, proper eye protection and a bit of patience. Cast iron is brittle and it breaks into manageable pieces. It also has a scrap value, so it is worth keeping the pieces separate from the rest of the load rather than burying them under tile rubble.
If yours is a steel or acrylic bath, none of this applies and you can carry it out whole in ten minutes.
Tiles and adhesive are the hidden weight
The second surprise is the tiling. A fully tiled bathroom carries a considerable weight of ceramic and, behind it, an equal weight of adhesive and backing.
Older bathrooms around here were often tiled onto sand and cement render rather than onto board, and taking tiles off render usually brings the render with them. What was going to be a tile strip becomes a wall strip, and the waste roughly doubles. If the tiles are coming off a solid wall, plan on that happening rather than hoping it will not.
Where tiles are on plasterboard, the board almost always comes off with them, and gypsum has to be kept separate from the general load. Our page on plasterboard disposal and building waste separation explains why that separation is not optional.
What else comes out
The suite itself is mostly ceramic, which is dense but manageable in pieces. The old floor covering, whether that is vinyl, tile or boarding, comes up. Any boxing in, the airing cupboard if it is going, and usually a section of ceiling if there is an extractor being fitted.
If the room has an old electric shower or heated towel rail coming out, those are electrical items and should not simply go in with the rubble. Our guide to sorting electrical waste before your skip arrives covers what needs pulling out.
Sizing it properly
Because the load is dense, the weight limit rather than the volume decides the size. Our page on skip size versus weight limits explains the mechanics.
For a single bathroom strip out, a 4 tonne midi skip is normally right, and it has the advantage of a smaller footprint on a street where kerb space is tight. Where a whole wall of render is coming off as well, or where the job is part of a larger refurbishment, step up to something bigger rather than risking a refused collection.
Getting it down the stairs
Every bit of this waste has to travel down a staircase and out through the house, and that is where the time goes.
Bag the rubble rather than barrowing it. Two thirds full, no more, and take them one at a time. Board and sheet the route properly, because tile dust and grit ground into a stair carpet is permanent. Take the door off the bathroom before you start, which sounds trivial and saves a great deal of catching and scraping.
Do not stockpile rubble on the landing. It is heavier than it looks and a landing is not designed to carry a concentrated load.
Work out the sequence before you start rather than partway through. Suite out first, then tiles, then floor, then any boxing in, taking each stage down to the skip as you finish it rather than letting the room fill up. A bathroom being stripped is a small space and it becomes unworkable very quickly once there is nowhere to stand.
Permits and placement
Southport sits within Sefton borough, so a skip on the road needs a permit from Sefton Council at £36 per month, and our guide to skip permits in Southport covers exactly what they ask for.
A good deal of Southport housing has driveway space, and using it saves the fee and the paperwork. On the older terraced streets nearer the centre it will usually have to be the road, and getting the skip as close to the door as possible matters on a job where you are carrying bags out repeatedly.
Local coverage and what happens after
We run this area daily, covering Birkdale skip hire and Ainsdale skip hire alongside Southport itself. Ceramic and rubble coming back to our own recycling centre gets sorted and processed rather than passed on, and our environmental and recycling page describes how.
Ring us on 01704 779345 and tell us whether the bath is cast iron and whether the tiles are on render or on board. Those two answers between them size the skip. Our contact page is there if you would rather write.
