Brick,Bricks and more Bricks for Skip Bins

This brick skip bin article is dedicate to my daughter who felt like she had bricks in her head after being asked too many questions about putting bricks into skip bins. The question that finished her off was "what size skip bin do I need to get rid of 600 bricks".

Now if you have quite a few bricks then it is far better to get rid of them as masonry for recycling or in a brick and concrete bin. If the bricks are being recycling which usually means they are being divert from being buried at the landfill to be re-used, but more often than not they are going to be crushed and reused as an aggregate.

So what is quite a few bricks I can hear you ask? Very good question. So really the answer comes back the size of the skips that are available. Or maybe even what is the size of the smallest skip bin for bricks that is available.

In most places across Australia the typically smallest skip bin available is a 2m skip, or a skip that is 2 cubic meters in volume. So I guess the challenge is to know how many bricks you can get in a cubic meter.  So the standard Autraliian Brick is 230 mm (long) by 110 mm (wide) by 80 mm (high). So to know the volume of the brick you just multiply these together (in meters).  So this is 0.23 x 0.11 x 0.08 which equals 0.002024 m³.  So if you could pack (or stack) them perfectly into a skip bin then you would get 1/0.002024 to the cubic meter. Right? Yes that is right 494 bricks or thereabouts. STOP. don't rush of yet, because it is very unlikely you will have the patience to stack the bricks perfectly in the bin because you are like the rest of us.  Yes you are a human being and we often find it too hard to stack the brick espeacially when it means walking further to get into the bin. Or it becomes back breaking leaning into the bin to stack them. It might just be because it is more fun tossing or throwing the into the bin and seeing them break.

So in most case, people just toss the brick into the bin and this means there is space between the bricks. And the space between the bricks can often mean that the pace required for the bricks is doubled. Or put the other way, you are only going to get half the number of bricks to the cubic meter. So instead of getting 494 bricks to the cubic meter, it is going to be more like 250 bricks to the cubic meter.

So in answer to the simple question of what size bin will I need for 600 bricks it becomes quite easy.  600/250 = 2.4 m³.  Now the temptation is to get the smaller bin thinking you will stack them to get them in.  The risk is that you get the smaller bin and you discover you have more bricks than you realised.  The most frustrating thing is that if you get a bin that is a bit too small then you end up being left with a few bricks and you still have to get a 2m bin for them or have to put them in a general waste bin where they cost far more to get rid of. I am glad that is your choice and not mine.