Wondering how to hire a skip without stress or hassle? Never hired a skip before? Worried about ordering the wrong size or type of skip for your needs and space?
Our beginner’s guide to hiring a skip details the basics that you need to know before you book your skip.
We’ll share the steps to take when choosing and hiring, mistakes to avoid, and tips for making the most of your skips.
Why Hire A Skip?
Hiring a skip can be one of the easiest, most cost-effective methods of getting rid of garden and household waste for the public and trade. Skips are large, sturdy metal containers with an open top and sloped sides, allowing you to fill them with unwanted items, rubbish and waste.
If you have a growing pile of rubbish that is too large or inconvenient to transport to a waste facility yourself (not to mention costly), then hiring a skip is the right move.
Many people choose to hire a skip due to waste from …
- Garden landscaping, with medium to large amounts of soil, rocks or grass cuttings.
- Home renovation with bricks, old fittings and debris from construction work.
- Decluttering or clearouts, getting rid of unwanted belongings or broken items.
- Trade work, where you cannot leave large piles of waste from works on a client’s property.
With a skip you can efficiently and easily get rid of waste that is taking up space, causing risk, inconvenience or eyesore.
5 Steps Of Booking Your Skip For Hire
Booking your skip is so simple you can do it in five steps…
- 1. Choose your skip size
Skips come in varying sizes, and each is better suited to different situations. For example, a small skip is ideal if you have only a small amount of overflowing household waste to get rid of or if you only have a small space on which to put the skip.
ATS skip sizes include… - 2-yard skip – ideal for around 15 black bags of household or garden waste and hardcore, rubble or soil.
- 3-yard skip – ideal for around 25-35 black bags worth of household or garden waste.
- 4-yard skip – ideal for around 35-45 black bags of household rubbish, hardcore and clearance items.
- 6-yard skip – ideal for 45-55 black bags of heavy waste such as hardcore, bricks and soil.
- 8-yard skip – ideal for 55-75 black bags of mixed builders and general waste.
- 10-yard skip – ideal for 75-95 black bags filled with waste such as wood and bulky items (no soil or hardcore).
- 12-yard skip – ideal for 95-115 black bags worth of bulky items and green waste (no soil or hardcore).
2. Check where you’ll put it
If you’re placing your skip on your personal private property, you should face no problems.
But it’s important to carefully assess where you wish to place your skip when it arrives, taking into account how the skip transport will get to the location and how close to your property you want it to be for easy filling.
If you can’t fit it on your own land, you need to check whether you’ll require any permits to place it on public or shared areas.
3. Know what you can put in it
You can’t put everything into a skip, and each skip size varies in what you can put in it. Skips are perfect for getting rid of household and garden waste, but you cannot put the following items in skips:
- Electrical items.
- Tyres, batteries and gas cylinders.
- Medical or hazardous waste, including asbestos, chemicals, solvents and paints.
4. Estimate how long you need it
How long will it take you to finish filling your skip? In some cases, this can be a simple question to answer – for example, if you have a small 3-yard skip, it can easily be filled in a single day for a house clearance.
But for a 12-yard skip, you may expect to need your skip for upwards of a week, depending on whether you have your waste ready to load.
Your skip hire company will need to know how long you wish to keep the skip, so they can give you an off-hire date.
5. Book it in advance
Possibly the most important step is to anticipate when you will need your skip ready and waiting. In many cases, you won’t be able to get a skip delivered on the same day you ordered it, which means you’ll need to book your skip as soon as possible.
What Happens When You’ve Filled Your Skip?
This is the question we get the most often here at ATS Skip Hire. What do you do once your skip is filled and you want it taken away?
Once you’ve carefully filled your skip, loading items strategically to pack in as much waste as possible, we will come to collect your skip on the agreed collection day if you booked this in advance. Otherwise you’ll have a simple off-hire date and collection will be soon after.
When you first book your skip with us, we’ll ask how long you need it. Our standard skip duration is seven days, but we can extend this up to three weeks without further charge. This means that after the agreed period has ended, we will turn up, load the skip onto our transport vehicle, and take it away without hassle.
You don’t need to lift a finger!
Avoiding Skip Off-Hire & Collection Problems…
It’s important to know that your skip’s off-hire date is not the same as a collection date. When you hire a skip you’ll likely be asked what duration you want to keep it for (within an allowed time frame, usually a week or two). At the end of that time your skip is off-hire, which means you’re no longer paying to keep it.
Many people get their off-hire date confused with a specific collection date, leading to frustration when their skip isn’t taken away on the date their hire period ends. It can take a few days after the off-hire for your company to collect your skip, depending on driver availability and your distance from their facility.
But you can avoid this confusion by requesting a clear collection date, usually at a small additional cost.
Ready To Hire A Skip in Colchester?
Whether you have grass cuttings, rubble, or household waste to get rid of, you need to make sure you’re getting the right skip for the job. By choosing the correct size and type of skip and filing it efficiently, you can ensure you get the most for your money and that your filled skip is taken away promptly.
Looking for skip hire in the Colchester area? We can help. Browse our skip sizes here to get started…
Have a question? Contact our expert team.
