Projects And The Dump Go Hand-In-Hand

Human beings encompass many broad divisions.

You know what I mean. Each category is preceded by the bold statement: There are two kinds of people…

Morning people and grumps.

Coffee drinkers and sane people.

People who like sushi and people who don’t know what they are missing.

There’s another demarcation line of humanity: Dump people and non-dump people.

Actually, nobody calls them dumps anymore. They’re called landfills or transfer stations or, worst of all, waste-to-energy plants.

When I was a kid, they were dumps, and taking a trip to the city dump with my dad was something akin to a treasure hunt. My uncle’s wife forbade him from going to the dump because he inevitably came home with more stuff than he took.

You could do that back then. Pick through everybody’s discards and find all sorts of things that would enrich your life, at least until you hauled them back to the dump. Now they probably have laws against that sort of thing.

But to this day, I never take a trip to the dump — even in sterile (relatively speaking) and non-dumplike atmosphere as the Spokane Waste-to-Energy Plant — without looking at the heaps and piles on the concrete floor and spying at least one object that makes me wonder, “How in the world could somebody throw that out?”

Even without the added bonus of actually escaping with some of those artifacts, a trip to the dump still provides a deep sort of satisfaction that speaks of male competence.

Think about it. You confront some source of major disorder in your life. You throw it in the back of an old pickup and take it to a smelly place where they have bulldozers and other big pieces of equipment. You fling it out of the back of the pickup with no regard to being careful or quiet. You do it in the company of a long row of comrades all likewise engaged.

You are a dump person.

Or, you’re not.

If you are embarking on a significant home-remodeling project, you’re faced with a choice, which should largely be based on a careful self-examination of your personality as it relates to dumps.

Home-remodeling projects inevitably start with demolition. Before you put something up, you must tear something down. The hope, the aspiration, the best intention is that you will tear this thing down today, put up that other thing tomorrow, and be done with it.

The reality, however, is that you will start tearing it down today — but it will drag into several weekends. And you have to do something with all that debris.

There’s a couple of choices. The first: pile it somewhere, then load it up and carry it to the dump. The second: rent a Dumpster and let the garbage professionals handle the dump duties for you.

Either way, the best way to approach your project is to get all the demolition out of the way at the start. Tearing down a little and building a little invites chaos and much higher dumping costs.

If you’re a dump person, load the debris directly into your pickup as you complete demolition, and at the end of each day, regardless if the demolition is done, take that load to the dump. It costs $97 a ton to dump debris.

If you’re not a dump person, rent a Dumpster. If you live inside the city limits, you will deal with the city’s solid waste management department.

There’s a delivery charge of $22, and a fee ranging from $1.67 to $2.23 for each day you have the container. Each time you dump it, you’ll be charged between $65.73 and $131.46. It must be dumped at least once a month. The city has Dumpsters that hold from 3 cubic yards to 30 cubic yards. With the largest containers, you pay a haul fee of $102.72 each time it’s dumped, plus the $97 per ton dump fee.

If there’s not a convenient place to put the Dumpster on your property, get an obstruction permit allowing you to put it in the street. This costs a refundable bond of $100, and $25 for a 15-day period.

But you won’t have to set foot in the dump.