There is a gut renovation going on accross the street from our green show house. It is a classic renovation where a lot of money is being spent and not much thought going into how it is done. The owner is getting reamed with prices IMO.
A couple weeks ago there was a dumpster full of old bricks in front of their job site. We took a bunch of the bricks but didn’t need more and didn’t have a place to store them at that time.
So the dumpster went on it’s merry way to the landfill. Dumpster price to contractor: $700 aprox. He was a sub contractor hired to tear down some walls. Old bricks go for a premium over new bricks. They are actually MORE valuable. Value of bricks he threw out: $1200 aprox.
I didn’t loose any tears over it because this kind of waste happens all the time.
But then yesterday I saw they were hauling in NEW bricks! Lots of them. So this time I was annoyed. I went over and asked why they had bought new bricks when they had just thrown away perfectly good old bricks.
“What old bricks!?” The guy asked. He was a sub contractor hired to build the chimneys and knew nothing about the other bricks. He was annoyed to hear they were thrown out because it could have saved him a lot of money.
This is classic construction status quo. One person is doing one thing and not communicating with another part of the job.
One sub-contractor went in and tore down a wall or two and threw out the debris. He left.
Another contractor went in and built a chimney somewhere else with new bricks.
The General Contractor didn’t think.
Had the two been put in communication they could have shared resources, saved money, saved garbage from the landfill, etc.