Rubble skip: 6m3 or 3m3?

OK, you're going to hire a rubble skip, but what size do you need? A 6m3 rubble skip, a 3m3 or a 15m3? Maybe you're replacing your garden tiles, knocking down a wall or getting a new roof. These are all types of stone, so a rubble skip is the right choice. But which skip size do you need?

You can use a simple sum to work out how much rubble you have, and so which skip you need. You probably learnt at school how to calculate the volume of something: length x width x height. The same goes for rubble. Say you have a wall that is 6 metres long, 2.5 metres high and 20 cm thick. The sum is 6m x 2.5m x 0.2m, which makes 3m3 of rubble. Even so, you need a 6m3 rubble skip, for these 3 reasons.

A rubble skip 6m3 is our most popular order, and that's no surprise. It's usually the best choice, even if you don't have all that much waste. Say you work out that you have about 3m3 of rubble to get rid of. You could order a 3m3 skip, but a 6m3 rubble skip is still the better choice, for 3 reasons.

The first reason to order a 6m3 skip for rubble rather than a 3m3 is that you usually have more waste than you expect. Once you get started, you often find more than you planned for, or the wall turns out to be thicker or longer than you thought. With a 3m3 skip you might have some waste left over. Then you'd have to order an extra Big Bag or even a second skip hire, which ends up costing you more.

Bricks, tiles, roof tiles, chunks of concrete and so on go into the skip loose. They don't stack neatly, so gaps form between the pieces and the waste takes up more space. That's why 3m3 of rubble won't fit in a 3m3 skip. As a rule of thumb, multiply your calculated amount by 1.5 to find out how many cubic metres of loose rubble you have. In this case that's 3 x 1.5 = 4.5 cubic metres. Even if you use the 20cm that waste is allowed to stick out above the skip, it still won't fit in a 3m3 skip. So you really do need a 6m3 skip.

Rubble is easy to process, which makes it cheap. It's a single waste type, so it doesn't need sorting. For the waste processor it makes little difference whether they deliver a 3m3 skip or a 6m3 one, because they use the same lorry. So with a 6m3 you only pay extra for the few additional cubic metres of rubble, which is just a few tens of euros. Even if a 3m3 skip would be enough, order a 6 cubic metre skip. It only costs a little more, and if you end up with more waste after all, you'll be glad you did.

If you have a big job that produces a lot of rubble, you might need a 15m3 rubble skip. The smaller sizes are 3 cubic metres and 6 cubic metres. There is no 10 cubic metre rubble skip. Rubble is quite heavy, and the standard lorry can't lift the weight of 10m3 of rubble. So why is a 15m3 possible? A 15m3 rubble skip is delivered by a different lorry that can handle the weight. That lorry costs the waste processor more to run, so a 15m3 is relatively a lot more expensive than a 6m3. If you have more than 6m3 of rubble but less than 15m3, it's often better to order 2 rubble skips of 6m3.