WASTE NOT
After all my years in the building industry, I am still amazed at the amount of waste that appears even on the smallest of projects. This is not earth shattering news I know, but I would like to show you how in some cases that some of the waste can be used and actually save you heaps of money.

Here is a prime example of this. I am currently working on a small renovation to a very old and very small house situated at one of our many glorious beach side housing estates. It has a concrete patio floor all around with a 2 meter wide roof over it. I am constructing 3 walls under the existing patio roof to form a new bathroom. A section of the concrete floor needs to be removed, 4 meters by 2 meters, to allow for the new under-slab plumbing for the toilet, shower and vanity wastes.

The room goes where the plumber is sitting.

Normally we would use an excavator with a rock breaker attachment to break the slab into small pieces and then take it to the nearest dumping facility. In this case, there is only 2 meters of clearance from the ground to the underside of the roof, so basically no room for the larger machine. So with a diamond blade concrete saw, I ran a series of cuts right through the full depth of the concrete floor so it resembled a block of chocolate like so.

Saw cuts 1 meter x1 meter.

We then used a smaller excavator (BobCat) to grab the sections and stack them neatly in one corner of the yard. With the right set out plus a few decorative stones, the owner now has an excellent pathway to her house. The cost of hiring the cutter plus my labour was far less than using the larger excavator plus the dumping fees. The budget also allowed for the placing of the blocks to form her new pathway. Needless to say she was extremely happy.

So whenever you are renovating or even just doing some needed maintenance, always take the time to see what is left over. Who knows, you might even save some money!

Cheers!
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