# A Big Waste in Construction!



## Fire-Man (Apr 30, 2005)

Let me tell/show you why some homes cost so much to build-----part of the cost is thrown in the dumpster boxes. One of my renters has been raiding a job-site dumpster(he got permission) look at this stack of trusses, he has also got a stack of 16ft 2x6's and some 16ft 2x4's as well as 1/2 sheets of plywood and smaller pieces. This is Crazy and very wasteful----Someone----has to pay for this waste----Just wanted to share.


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## potatoguru (May 6, 2013)

Crazy that they would just throw that away. :shrug:


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## MushCreek (Jan 7, 2008)

I had a crew of framers that framed my barn, and they went through wood like crazy. I had bought the wood in the exact lengths needed, but they ignored that. If they needed a 10 footer, they would grab a 16 and cut it off, even though there was a stack of 10's right next to it! Their boss said they usually buy 20% extra material. It's not just the money; I hate waste!


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## fishhead (Jul 19, 2006)

It's too bad that most landfills now won't let you grab lumber out of the waste stream. In a couple of years a person could probably build a home with the scrap wood.

Maybe a person could set up a nonprofit and get bonded. Then maybe they would allow diverting good lumber out of the landfill.


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## painterswife (Jun 7, 2004)

Waste and mistakes are part of any business. The good builders have a bones pile that gets used on other jobs or the employees and other subs get to pick through.

My radiant floor tubing, the windows in the barn, my chicken house, the beautiful barn wood cupboards in my barn are all recycled from the job sites my husband has worked on. Now we are working on stockpiling the materials for a green house.


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## farmerj (Aug 20, 2011)

MushCreek said:


> I had a crew of framers that framed my barn, and they went through wood like crazy. I had bought the wood in the exact lengths needed, but they ignored that. If they needed a 10 footer, they would grab a 16 and cut it off, even though there was a stack of 10's right next to it! Their boss said they usually buy 20% extra material. It's not just the money; I hate waste!



Had a contractor do hat to me exactly once. Pulled the foreman to the side and told him directly..."let me see that again and your whole crew can leave immediately.". He thought I was joking. The next day, I told them to pack up and leave. He was shocked. The contractor owner came over pissed. I explained my reasons for it and he started having that lightbulb moment. He babysat that crew for three days until it sank in. He finally understood why he was getting poor references. Last I knew, he was one of the few that survived the 2008-9 down turn in town.

Partly because he and his crew learned material management.


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## KCFLY (Sep 19, 2013)

We used to have stuff like that around here. After the real estate market crashed in '05 I just don't see it anymore.

It's a real bummer, I built a lot of stuff with their trash. I have several projects this summer that could be built using cast-offs.


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## FarmerDavid (Jul 16, 2012)

Some of it may not be the laborers fault but we deffently have people in our culture that don't want to think. It's not their money not their problem. It's hard to find good help. I row crop with my dad and we could use another employee. It's hard to find someone that makes you more then they cost you, even among people that claim to be experienced.


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## RonM (Jan 6, 2008)

I had a friend that back in the 60's built a hunting camp in Pa. with materials he brought home from dumpsters on his jobs.......


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## where I want to (Oct 28, 2008)

I think it is not neccessarily true for small contractors. The guys who built my house ordered trusses and only when they were going up realized there was a design flaw in the plans and a section of them were not usable. After they had a "discussion" with the guy who drew up the plans - "it's easy to slap a window on a drawing"- they took down the useless trusses and cut everyone of them into lumber to be used elsewhere.
But then these guys were doing the building themselves and had a contracted price so it was their own money they were saving.


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## wharton (Oct 9, 2011)

As a small home builder I completely agree. I stay on my jobs 70-80% of the time and work with all the trades. I finish a modest sized home with a single 12 yard dumpster leaving the site, and it's only full if I have something from off-site added to it. But it takes work. I divert all household garbage ( lunch clean-up, paper, foam from packaging, etc) into my home garbage. The framing scraps get cut up and sent to an elderly local who heats with an outdoor furnace. Roofing isn't a big contributor. Next it's a few very large bags of insulation scraps, and a layer of drywall trash. The drywallers remove all usable material by my request, since they will cut up good material, full sheets, as it's paid for and easier to trash than move to the next gig. The layer cake ends up with flooring scraps, paint buckets and trim scraps. ALL cardboard gets recycled, and very little usable material ends up in the landfill.

In contrast, during the boom, I watched idiots working for competitors, who could overfill 40 yarders by the time a house was framed and roofed.


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## cindilu (Jan 27, 2008)

I need to find a dumpster to raid, or a home depot or lowes or something.


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## irondale (Oct 3, 2012)

There was a company that sold kit homes (like the sears homes) up until the 80's. One the things they advertised on how they kept the cost done was little to no waste. They designed the homes to make use of every inch of lumber. I don't remember the name of the company anymore.


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## kcarter609 (Nov 14, 2012)

I worked clean up for a company that built multi-million dollar homes once. The one job site I was at took a year between tear-down and rebuilding. It took 12 separate 40 yard dumpsters to haul away tons of scraps and trash. Had I known better back then, I would have kept all the wood.


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## whipsaw (Jan 1, 2014)

MushCreek said:


> I had a crew of framers that framed my barn, and they went through wood like crazy. I had bought the wood in the exact lengths needed, but they ignored that. If they needed a 10 footer, they would grab a 16 and cut it off, even though there was a stack of 10's right next to it! Their boss said they usually buy 20% extra material. It's not just the money; I hate waste!


I have built 3 new houses with friends over the years. They were licensed contractors, and I was just doing it for extra money. I learned immediately that you don't cut a 16 footer down to 10 feet when you have a 10 footer laying there. One of my friends would scream at somebody for doing something so stupid. You always use the piece of lumber which leaves the least amount of scrap. It's smart both financially and in terms of not wasting natural resources. 

I'd love to be able to find good scrap like that. In this greater Seattle area, it's become quite difficult to find any sort of used/reclaimed/recycled building materials. Any bargain on Craigslist is gone almost immediately.


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## MichaelZ (May 21, 2013)

Years back I used to get waste lumber free to heat my house. But never anything much longer than 3 or 4 ft. I can't believe they would just throw away the long 2x4's and 2x6's - If you gave me a pile of 30 8-ft 2x4's I would use them within a year, almost guaranteed.


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## MNMamaBear (Jul 16, 2013)

That's nuts that they would throw away perfectly good trusses -- assuming they're perfectly good trusses - maybe there was something wrong with them?
Speaking of waste, we're doing some remodeling right now and half the lumber we've had delivered is so warped it's unusable. My husband had to return it all and hand pick the rest of the boards we needed.


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## farmerj (Aug 20, 2011)

MNMamaBear said:


> That's nuts that they would throw away perfectly good trusses -- assuming they're perfectly good trusses - maybe there was something wrong with them?
> Speaking of waste, we're doing some remodeling right now and half the lumber we've had delivered is so warped it's unusable. My husband had to return it all and hand pick the rest of the boards we needed.



stop going to menard's....


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## MNMamaBear (Jul 16, 2013)

LOL how'd you know??
The only reason we're buying any materials from Menards is because we're trying to finish our current house as cheap as possible so we can sell it. It sure is a pain dealing with them though!



farmerj said:


> stop going to menard's....


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## farmerj (Aug 20, 2011)

I live in MN. Menard's is known for junk lumber. Honestly, go talk to a small town lumber yard. You'll get better stuff and cheaper in the long run. Running back and forth return junk is expensive.


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## MushCreek (Jan 7, 2008)

The local lumber yards around here are slightly cheaper than the big box stores, and the quality is better. Still, I wound up using steel studs inside because I couldn't find decent wall studs without going to engineered ($$$) wood. Believe it or not, steel studs (from a real supplier, not a big box store) were cheaper than ordinary 2X4's.


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## irondale (Oct 3, 2012)

farmerj said:


> I live in MN. Menard's is known for junk lumber. Honestly, go talk to a small town lumber yard. You'll get better stuff and cheaper in the long run. Running back and forth return junk is expensive.


Where do you think Menards gets its lumber? It gets it from the local small town lumber yard.


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## Vash (Jan 19, 2014)

This thread is making me wish (even more) that I hadn't sold my truck.


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## PlicketyCat (Jul 14, 2010)

When we built our cabin, I bought 10% extra from the lumber yard for goofs and warps. They looked at me like I was crazy, kept trying to convince me that I really needed 20%. Well, we built our cabin, and had enough lumber left over from the framing to build pantry shelves AND a shed. Anything longer than 16" got put in a reuse pile, and anything under 16" went in the wood stove. The only things that got taken to the dump was 2 buckets of asphalt felt & shingle scraps, some house wrap scraps, and all the #$%!plastic wrappers from the shingles.


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## wharton (Oct 9, 2011)

irondale said:


> Where do you think Menards gets its lumber? It gets it from the local small town lumber yard.


 having spent a long career in the business, I can assure you that a huge regional "big box" DIY center has better things to do than attempt to buy large volumes of dimensional lumber from a few hundred local mom and pop lumber yards. First, it would be a logistical nightmare. Second, there is darn close to zero profit in selling dimensional stock, and Menards, HD and Lowes get a slightly better price, on the wholesale market, as compared to your local yard, who's total annual volume wouldn't even be a rounding error in the books of the big guys.


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## wharton (Oct 9, 2011)

MNMamaBear said:


> That's nuts that they would throw away perfectly good trusses -- assuming they're perfectly good trusses - maybe there was something wrong with them?
> .


Designing, ordering and manufacturing trusses is a fairly complex task, and the truss company isn't exactly thrilled about taking defective ones back, especially if the builder screwed up. The other issue is that the ones pictured appear to be descending in size. this typically indicates an overlay, where trusses sit on top of the previous set, and climb a slope. This idea often works better on paper, than in reality, and a lot of framers will just stick frame that portion of the roof, instead of plaguing themselves with trying to make trusses work.


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## farmerj (Aug 20, 2011)

wharton said:


> Designing, ordering and manufacturing trusses is a fairly complex task, and the truss company isn't exactly thrilled about taking defective ones back, especially if the builder screwed up. The other issue is that the ones pictured appear to be descending in size. this typically indicates an overlay, where trusses sit on top of the previous set, and climb a slope. This idea often works better on paper, than in reality, and a lot of framers will just stick frame that portion of the roof, instead of plaguing themselves with trying to make trusses work.



Having HAULED lumber from the mills to lumber yards, all lumber is not the same. The box stores get cheap prices wholesale because they take the crud that other yards DON'T want.


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## wharton (Oct 9, 2011)

farmerj said:


> Having HAULED lumber from the mills to lumber yards, all lumber is not the same. The box stores get cheap prices wholesale because they take the crud that other yards DON'T want.


I think you quoted the wrong post? But I'm not sure if I agree anyway. Not only do I fail to see a huge difference in quality, the box stores end up suffering if they only buy bottom of the barrel stuff. The reason is that the average dimensional lumber customer in their store is a guy who hand selects small quantities of stock and loads them in his own vehicle. By the time you see a unit of 2x4 precuts that has dwindled down to 20% of it's original size, it's pretty much crap that has been rejected by dozens of Joe homeowners. If you have to bundle more that a few percent of the unit and sell it for pennies on the dollar, as scrap, you just moved the whole unit for free.
OTOH, if my lumber list for a new frame has 260 2x4 precuts on it. They come of the pile at the local yard with ZERO regard to how bad they suck. 
The other interesting thing I see is mills who attempt to dress up units by hiding absolute crap inside the stack. I have cracked open units of floor joists, and PT and found a really attractive lift of lumber that was chocked full of unusable material inside. 

Not saying that big boxes make any attempt to buy anything but the cheapest stuff they can, but our local yards are, at best, a tiny improvement in quality. That said, there really is no way a pro is going to waste much time doing high dollar volumes with a big box. My local yard has 5-6X as much material in stock, they deliver for free, and the are professional in every way. Any attempts I have made to do business with the big boxes proved that they were none of those things.


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## PlicketyCat (Jul 14, 2010)

irondale said:


> Where do you think Menards gets its lumber? It gets it from the local small town lumber yard.


 I don't know about other places, but I can guarantee that our Lowes & HD aren't getting their lumber from our local lumberyard... all the grade-marks on their stuff are from big mills in Georgia or Canada.


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## urban gleaner (Jan 23, 2014)

fishhead said:


> It's too bad that most landfills now won't let you grab lumber out of the waste stream. In a couple of years a person could probably build a home with the scrap wood.
> 
> Maybe a person could set up a nonprofit and get bonded. Then maybe they would allow diverting good lumber out of the landfill.


There is a guy in Texas who is doing just that. The site is

phoenixcommotion.com

Not much info, sadly, but lots of photos. He worked with local folks and got their laws changed for dumping. Now there is a section of the town dump where individuals and companies can off load still usable construction 'waste'.


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## fishhead (Jul 19, 2006)

urban gleaner said:


> There is a guy in Texas who is doing just that. The site is
> 
> phoenixcommotion.com
> 
> Not much info, sadly, but lots of photos. He worked with local folks and got their laws changed for dumping. Now there is a section of the town dump where individuals and companies can off load still usable construction 'waste'.


That sounds far more progressive than this area.


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## tarbe (Apr 7, 2007)

It is amazing what people will waste when it is someone else footing the bill.


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## I_don't_know (Sep 28, 2012)

fishhead said:


> It's too bad that most landfills now won't let you grab lumber out of the waste stream. In a couple of years a person could probably build a home with the scrap wood.
> 
> Maybe a person could set up a nonprofit and get bonded. Then maybe they would allow diverting good lumber out of the landfill.


*Habitat for Humanity* ReStores a great place to find building materials. And a good cause too.


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## urban gleaner (Jan 23, 2014)

fishhead said:


> That sounds far more progressive than this area.



They are in Huntsville TX. I wouldn't say it's all that liberal. Anyway, anything like that takes time, patience and alot of people, AND a plan.


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