Job Type
Care Home Clearance
Location
Doncaster
Clearing a 50 Bedroomed Care Home
The Setting:
A single storey, disused care home in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. The building was huge and comprised 50 bedrooms, 20 bathrooms, five communal living rooms, a large laundry, and several communal kitchen areas. Each area of the building was fully furnished and kitted out – there were even pictures and mirrors still on the walls!
The Brief:
Our brief was to remove all the contents in the building including fitted kitchens, bathrooms, carpets and all the white goods (kitchen appliances) and electrical equipment throughout. The main contractor had ripped out the kitchens and bathroom suites for us, but you can imagine the mess this caused. Of course, the contractor wanted the site completely clearing in the shortest time possible. And whilst the time taken for the clearance was important to keep the project on time for the main contractor, we were also asked to keep the cost as low as possible.
Our Considerations:
Access to any building is always one of the most important factors when planning a clearance. This building was on one level with multiple entrances around it and so vans could be driven right up to them. Most of these entrances had been used as fire exits when the building was occupied and so were wide openings which allowed large items to be easily removed through them. This enabled our clearance team to only travel relatively short distances with the contents – a real bonus.
We knew our vans would not be enough due to the scale of this clearance. Each of the 50 bedrooms contained an electric bed, a wardrobe, a wingback chair, a set of drawers, and a carpet. Each of the 20 bathrooms contained a bath, sink, toilet and flooring. Each kitchen contained commercial fridge freezers, commercial cookers, stainless steel units, etc. And each of the communal living rooms contained many wingback chairs. To enable us to complete the clearance in a short time frame, we had to add to our vans by using huge 40-ton row skips.
Recycling and separating the contents into the different waste streams was a real consideration for this project. Electrical goods needed to be separate to general furniture, which needed to be separate to brick a brac (pictures and mirrors), which needed to be separate to carpets, which needed to be separate to general building rubble … I could go on, but you get the idea.
Our Solution:
To clear the building completely, the project took a team of four five days.
We used skips for all the metal from the electric beds and the commercial kitchens. We also used skips for all the wood. This enabled us to recycle the wood and receive a small rebate on the metal.
All the other bulky items were taken to a transfer station by van, as were the smaller items.
We hit an unexpected issue with the carpets. They had apparently been laid some 20 years before using very heavy-duty commercial glue and they simply did not want to lift. We ended up hiring commercial carpet stripping machinery and, although this did add time to the project, we still managed to complete it within the window the contractor had given us.
The Result:
One 50 bedroomed disused care home completely cleared of all furniture, bathrooms, equipment and carpets by the Clearance and Cleanup Team in Doncaster in five days! One project delivered on time and in budget. One very happy client. One very happy business owner.
