Concrete & Heavy Debris in Rochester

Heavy debris is the one category where the usual instinct is exactly wrong. People look at a pile of broken concrete, judge it by eye against the size of a container, and order too big. Concrete, brick, block, mortar and stone are several times denser than the mixed debris most people picture when they imagine a roll-off, so a container carrying them reaches its legal payload long before the sides fill. A 10 yard loaded flat with rubble goes out at a lawful weight. The same material in a 30 gives you a container that cannot legally leave your driveway, which costs a morning and solves nothing. The rule on this page is short: with heavy material, size down and load flat. Then keep going until you hit the fill line and stop there. The container sizes page has the dimensions, but the material decides this, not the dimensions.

Rochester produces more heavy debris than a newer city would, because of what is under the houses. This is glacial ground — till and lacustrine silt laid down by the ice and by Glacial Lake Iroquois — and the oldest housing stock here sits on stone and rubble foundations rather than poured concrete. When one of those walls is repaired, underpinned or taken out, what comes out is field stone, brick, mortar and a great deal of spoil, and it is heavy in a way that a poured wall is not, because it comes out in irregular lumps with mortar attached. The dominant soils above it are silt loams, Collamer and Niagara, which hold water. That combination is why basement work here generates both rubble and wet spoil, and why we ask at booking whether the material is dry stone or wet fill. They are two different loads.

Under all of it, in the middle of the city, is rock. Downtown Rochester sits at the crest of the Niagara Escarpment, a roughly two-hundred-foot ridge of Lockport dolostone, and the Genesee River cuts its gorge straight through it. Depth to bedrock varies sharply across Monroe County — shallow near the escarpment and the gorge, much deeper out on the till plains and the drumlins — which means an excavation in one part of the city hits rock and the same excavation two miles away does not. If your job has hit rock, tell us, because broken dolostone is dense even by the standards of this page and it wants a 10 yard loaded flat with nothing else in it. If you are not sure what you are into, describe the color and the way it breaks and we can usually tell you on the phone.

Clean loads are worth more than mixed ones, and on heavy debris the difference is real. Clean concrete, clean brick and clean block are a recyclable stream. The same material with timber, plastic, insulation, roofing felt and rebar mixed through it is not, and it costs more to move. If you can keep the masonry separate from everything else on site, do. That usually means two containers on a demolition or a driveway job: a small one for the concrete, a larger one for everything else. It is more discipline on site and it is consistently cheaper. On soil and clean fill specifically, tell us before you dig rather than after, because soil is a separate conversation from rubble and mixing the two limits where the load can go. Our construction debris guide covers the separations.

The last thing is the ground the container is standing on, which matters more here than on any other job. A 10 yard container full of concrete is several tons on four small contact points. In March and April, when frost is coming out of the ground and the silt loams under this county are at their wettest, an asphalt driveway is at its softest of the year. We lay plywood under every wheel and under the rails on every driveway placement without exception, and on a heavy job we will often ask for a set point on the apron or the street edge rather than mid-drive. Anything that breaks ground gets a locate through UDig NY first, with at least two but not more than 10 working days’ notice under 16 NYCRR § 753-3.1. Details of the ground protection are in driveway protection.

Heavy Material We Take

Why The Small Container Is The Right One

A 10 yard is the default for concrete, brick, block, stone, plaster and rubble foundation spoil, and it will usually finish looking half empty. That is not the container being too small; that is payload. A 15 yard suits a job where the masonry is mixed with a proportion of lighter material — a bathroom strip-out with tile, plaster and cabinetry, for instance, or a small retaining wall with the timber and geotextile that came off with it. A 20 yard is as far up as heavy material ever sensibly goes, and only when the dense portion is a minority of the load. Above that, do not. A 30 or a 40 full of masonry is a container that cannot lawfully move, and no amount of leftover volume makes that a good trade. If your job produces both heavy and bulky debris, run two containers and load by material rather than by whichever pile is closest to the door. Call the yard and describe what you are breaking out.

Loading Heavy Material Properly

Load flat and spread. Heavy material goes across the whole floor of the container, not heaped at the door end, because a concentrated load is harder on the container, harder on the truck and harder on your driveway. Break pieces down to a size two people can place rather than one person can drop, and keep rebar and mesh trimmed rather than sticking out past the rim. Stop at the marked fill line even if there is visible space above it. On the ground side, plywood goes under every wheel and under the rails on every driveway placement, and on heavy jobs we will often recommend the apron or the street edge over mid-drive. This county’s silt loams hold water, and a driveway in March over saturated soil takes an impression that will still be there in July. If the container has to sit in the right-of-way, that is a written permit from the City Engineer under City Code § 104-24, barricaded and lit at night under § 104-24(C). We keep every container five feet clear of combustible walls, openings and roof eave lines under 19 NYCRR Part 1225.