Taking up a floor is one of those jobs that looks contained on paper and turns into something else once the first board comes off. What is underneath is rarely what anybody expected, and in the older properties around Longton it can be three or four layers deep. We supply Longton skip hire for a steady run of this work, and skip hire in Longton for a floor replacement needs sizing for weight rather than for the area of the room.
What actually comes up when a floor is replaced
The surface layer is the easy part. Carpet and underlay, laminate and its foam, vinyl, or ceramic tile with its adhesive bed. Tile is the heavy one of those and it comes up in fragments along with a good deal of the screed it was stuck to.
Below that is where it gets interesting. In a suspended timber floor there are the boards themselves, which may be original softwood or later chipboard, and beneath those the joists and any packing, insulation, old newspaper and general debris that has collected in the void over the decades. In a solid floor there is screed, and under the screed there may be a concrete slab, a bitumen damp proof layer or nothing at all.
Older cottages and farm properties in this area sometimes have something else again, with flags bedded straight onto ash, lime concrete or compacted earth. Lifting one of those is a genuine excavation rather than a floor job, and the material that comes out is heavy, dusty and voluminous. Add the skirting, which almost always has to come off, and the door thresholds that need cutting back, and the volume climbs.
The check that comes before the breaker
Thermoplastic and vinyl floor tiles laid between the nineteen fifties and the early eighties can contain asbestos, and so can the black bitumen adhesive they were bedded in. They are usually nine inches square, they come in mottled colours, and they are extremely common in hallways, kitchens and outhouses of that period. A great many are still in place under later flooring, which means people find them mid job rather than before it.
They cannot go in a skip, and they should not be broken up, sanded or lifted with a breaker. If a tile of that description turns up, the sensible move is to stop and have a sample tested rather than to guess from the colour. Our guide to asbestos and skip hire and what to do instead explains how the testing works and who handles the removal if it comes back positive.
Sizing the skip for floor waste
Floor waste is the classic case of a small volume weighing far more than it looks. Screed, tile, concrete and ash are all dense, and a skip filled to the top with any of them will be well over the limit. Timber and carpet are the opposite, taking up a great deal of room for very little weight.
For a single room with a timber floor and a carpet or laminate covering, a 4 tonne midi skip hire covers it comfortably. Where a solid floor is being broken out, or where the work runs across a whole ground floor, an 8 tonne builders skip hire is the right booking, filled no more than two thirds if the load is mostly screed and concrete. Our skip sizes comparison sets out what each one holds, and telling us the material rather than the room size gets you a far better answer.
The loading advice is to spread the heavy material across the base of the skip rather than tipping it all into one corner, then put the timber, carpet and underlay on top. Done the other way round the skip ends up above the rim, and a skip loaded above the rim cannot legally be lifted.
Living with the job while the floor is up
A floor replacement takes a room out of use completely, and on a ground floor it often takes the route between rooms with it. Plan the sequence so that there is always a way through, and do the hallway last rather than first for exactly that reason.
Dust is the other consideration, particularly with screed and tile removal. Seal doorways, take up anything soft in adjoining rooms, and ventilate outwards. If the floor is coming up because of damp, allow drying time in the programme before anything new goes down, because laying over a slab that has not dried simply repeats the problem. Our guide to skip hire for home renovations and improvements covers how the waste side lines up with a wider renovation sequence.
Access and placement around Longton
Most properties in and around Longton have off street parking, and a midi or builders skip drops onto a driveway without any need for a permit. We bring timber bearers as standard so the legs spread the load rather than marking a block paved or gravel surface.
Where the property fronts the road or sits on a narrow lane, a road placement may be the only option, and Lancashire County Council acts as the highway authority for this area under the Highways Act 1980. The permit fee is £36 per month and we make the application on your behalf, which is why placement is a question we ask at the point of booking rather than on the morning of delivery.
Booking skip hire in Longton for a floor job
The households who find this easiest are the ones who lift a corner of the existing floor before booking anything. Ten minutes with a bolster tells you whether you are dealing with boards over a void or a solid slab, and that single piece of information changes the skip size, the hire length and the price.
Everything we take away goes back to our own recycling centre, where the timber, hardcore, metal and general waste are separated rather than tipped as one load. We are family run and fully licensed, working from our own site with our own drivers, and we cover the same work across Tarleton skip hire and the surrounding villages.
Once you know what is under there, ring us on 01772 364399 or contact our team with the room sizes and the floor construction, and we will get the right skip to you for the morning the work starts.
