New home construction waste planner

The direct answer

A 10m³ skip bin is the working size for a residential build. Run a 6m³ for fit-out and finishing stages, and keep rubble in its own separate bin.

Construction is the one job where the answer is not a single bin. It is a sequence, and the mistake that costs money is running one general bin across every stage.

Keep the rubble out of the general bin — this is the whole argument

A 4m³ of brick rubble and a 4m³ of timber offcuts are the same volume and a different category, and they do not cost the same.

Category probe across 33 postcodes at 4m³, 30 August 2026 — see the provenance note at the foot of this page; these are not certified live-network values throughout:

Mixed heavy waste and mixed waste with soil were never once cheaper than general waste in the 32 and 26 postcodes where both priced. A single lump of concrete thrown into a general bin can move the whole load into a dearer category — the bin is priced on what is in it, not on what you booked.

Two separate bins, each in its correct category, is routinely cheaper than one mixed heavy bin covering both. It also keeps the general load clean, which is the easiest cost control available on a site.

On our own orders, 12 of 338 paid orders (3.6%) carried an "upgraded to…" correction after booking, and 11 of those 12 were upgrades into a heavy or mixed-heavy category. Cross-loading is the most common and most expensive error on this business.

There is a practical limit on how big a rubble bin gets

Rubble bins are capped at a smaller size than general bins, and the cap varies by supplier and by area. Australian operators publish maximums of 4m³, 6m³, 8m³ and 9m³ for concrete and brick — there is no single national answer, and anyone telling you there is has not checked.

Book rubble in the smaller sizes and expect the larger sizes to be unavailable for it in many areas. Our booking engine will show you what is actually offered for your postcode and category rather than a national rule of thumb.

Consistent with that, our order data shows heavy and soil loads running at a 4m³ median with 67% at 2–4m³ — though that is only 27 paid order lines naming a size (1 July to 30 August 2026), so treat it as a direction, not a finding.

What goes in a builders waste bin

• Timber, framing, formwork and offcuts
• Plasterboard, gyprock, cornice and insulation
• Packaging — cardboard, plastic wrap, strapping, pallets
• Offcuts of pipe, conduit, cable and duct
• Roofing offcuts and sarking
• Fittings, fixtures and joinery offcuts
• Empty and fully dried paint containers where your area accepts them

What size, and what it costs

Live prices from our booking engine, general waste, 7-day hire, including delivery, collection, tipping and GST. Source: demand-ladders.json — 305 Australian postcodes captured 30 August 2026 for a 7 September 2026 delivery, live supplier-network quotes only. n is how many of those 305 postcodes were priced at that size.

This is not the same measurement as our skip bin price index. That page reports our published price list — a mean of the lowest advertised catalogue price for each size across 826 metropolitan postcodes — where the national 4m³ reads $534 (source dataset catalogue-stats.json, generated 27 August 2026; index read 31 August 2026). Those are list averages, not quotes. The figures above are medians of live supplier-network quotes across 305 postcodes, metro and regional, captured 30 August 2026, where the 4m³ median is $446 over n = 275. Mean against median, published list price against live quote, 826 metro postcodes against 305 mixed: the gap is method and population, not a price change, and neither figure supersedes the other. The index says as much itself: "A live quote for your own postcode is often lower." If you quote one, say which one.

Rubble and soil categories price higher — see the category table above. Enter the site postcode for the live figure.

Hire length is the site cost nobody budgets

Same bin, 60 postcodes, 30 August 2026:

Up to 14 days is nearly free. A month is not. A bin parked on site for the duration of a build costs a median $330 more than the same bin cycled on a short hire — and a bin that sits full for three weeks is not doing any work. Cycling bins on 7-day hires as each stage completes is both cheaper and faster.

What is NOT allowed

Asbestos. Demolition and renovation of any structure built or renovated before 1990 is an asbestos risk. It must be assessed and removed by a licensed asbestos remover, and it is never accepted in a skip bin. This is a regulated waste stream in every state and the obligations sit with the person who generates it.

Never accepted in any bin, no exceptions:

• Asbestos, fibro and fibreglass
• Chemicals, liquids, oils, fuels — including form oil, solvents and fuel cans
• Paints and solvents; wet paint is never accepted
• Gas bottles and aerosols, full or empty
• Batteries
• Clinical or medical waste
• Wet concrete and slurry — it must be cured before it goes anywhere

If prohibited items are found after collection, contamination and disposal fees are charged and the load may be rejected.

Practical notes

• We arrange the bin; your site loads it. We do not do manual removal, loading, carrying or sorting on site.
• Access. A 10m³ bin needs a truck with room to tilt and lift. Confirm the standing area, the overhead clearance and the delivery window before the bin is scheduled, not on the day.
• Permits. A bin on the road reserve needs council approval in most areas, and the fee and lead time vary widely by council. On a build with fixed trade dates, this is worth starting early.
• Label the bins if you are running two categories at once. The signage is cheaper than the re-categorisation.

Where the waste-category figures on this page come from

Source: waste-categories-live-probe-20260830.json — nine categories priced at 4m³ across 33 Australian postcodes on 30 August 2026 for a 7 September delivery.

That file records prices only; it carries no per-quote source flag. Cross-matched against waste-type-prices.json (1,485 quotes captured the same day, every one flagged LIVE_NETWORK), 149 of its 264 values are independently confirmed as live supplier prices, agreeing to the dollar with zero disagreements. The other 115 — 16 postcodes, including all 8 Western Australian, the 1 South Australian and 7 of the 8 Queensland postcodes — cannot be certified either way, and are not presented here as live supplier prices. Every direction reported above survives a cut to the confirmed-live values only; the magnitudes on mixed rubble and light building waste do not, and should be read as approximate. The full split and the sensitivity table are on what waste category do I need.