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I'm having a garage built this Summer, and I'm surprised at how much good material is being thrown in the dumpster. Small cut-offs of OSB I can understand, but 2 foot by 8 foot pieces seems a bit much. I've pulled a fair amount of OSB and 2x6's out of the dumpster. I can always find a use for extra lumber. However, what gets me, is that the roofing company threw away a nearly full pack of starter shingles, along with what seems to be boxes worth of nails.
Is that common practice in the construction industry? I understand companies can't drag around extra lumber from project to project, but some of this stuff is just wasted.
yup. over order needed materials, and throw away what is not used is common practice any more.
when i had my roof done, they did not use any plywood at all. so i took 5 sheets of 3/4 plywood out of the dumpster, plus 10 packages of shingles.
Very common just about everywhere with the larger companies. The smaller guys will usually do a better with waste. Like giving the homeowner the extra shingles in case some are needed for a future repair. The large contractors could care less because YOU paid for everything they throw away. I get it to a point. No two jobs are the same and they would eventually need a massive building to store extra materials.
I still have and use some leftovers from a remodel/addition 22 years ago. At the time, the contractor told me you could take the blueprints to the lumber outfit and they would figure it out and bring you just what you needed.
I have no experience with that, but it sounds plausible.
There should be lots of examples of how all works here during the next few years as there's over 10,000 houses waiting to be replaced....
The lumber company I work for will pickup extra material \if the contractor asks, if the material is good and can be resold.
But yes I see a lot of waste on job sites.
local yard here will go by the prints, still there is always a lot of waste that is unavoidable, esp.if the prints show odd sizes, 4 and 8's being common with little waste, odd numbers bring big waste .
There's a cost to everything. In this case, the cost of trying to return, or trying to inventory for future use, or transport and warehouse usable materials probably exceeds the cost of materials. Given that the material cost is sunk, why add more labor costs to try to recover the material, which is probably worth only a fraction of the labor required.
As with nearly all "quality" issues, it's working the process that will save money on materials. Starting with the already mentioned lumber seller/blueprint plan.
Making sure the plumber is there at the right time so he doesn't come back and saw up the floor and framing would be a start. Both my brother's project and mine suffered from late to the party plumbers....
Having said all that, I may actually have to get rid of a bunch of the remaining items. Or I could add on to the garage to store them. Which would cost less???
another side to this:
if you look at materials cost, buying a draft of 2X4's or 2X6's cost a lot less than buying them individually, same goes for a bunk of plywood.
and seeing as a typical house uses multiple drafts of 2bys and bunks of plywood, contractors usually buy by the draft and bunk.
you'll
you'll be surprised at how much waste we still dealt with building these, had to install the attic flooring, piled inside, finish flooring left in boxes, boxes of siding to finish the outside, roofing bundles, base and trim molding,
late subcontractors! yes that's the truth, hung onto the contact info for 2 a great electrician and a very good always on time plumber .
I retired from the roofing industry and recently had a new roof put on my house. The contractor did a good job ordering just what was needed (I made sure of that) but I ordered roofing from another company as the price was cheaper than the company I worked for. As such, I didn't know the different names for the lines. I did specify I wanted a 3 dimensional shingle. When they got done, the supplier had shipped the wrong product. So now my new roof is flat not 3 dimensional. Still, my last roof lasted 38 years and wasn't first run shingles to begin with.
I retired from the roofing industry and recently had a new roof put on my house. The contractor did a good job ordering just what was needed (I made sure of that) but I ordered roofing from another company as the price was cheaper than the company I worked for. As such, I didn't know the different names for the lines. I did specify I wanted a 3 dimensional shingle. When they got done, the supplier had shipped the wrong product. So now my new roof is flat not 3 dimensional. Still, my last roof lasted 38 years and wasn't first run shingles to begin with.
They call them "architectural singles" got em on my home.
They call them "architectural singles" got em on my home.
We called them "Seconds". I got them for free but there was no warranty. The supervisors and office people started abusing that and were marking first run shingles as seconds. Basically stealing good roofing. When corporate found out, they stopped giving seconds out.
