By room: a bathroom is a 10 yard, a kitchen a 20, a single floor of a house a 20, and a whole house with furniture a 30. A single-car garage is about half a 14 yard bin.
By roof: about 140 bundles fit a 10 yard and 180 a 14. A 20 yard takes the shingles off a 1,600 to 2,000 square foot roof at one layer. Two layers roughly doubles the weight.
By pickup load: a 10 yard is about three loads, a 15 about six, a 20 about eight, a 30 about twelve and a 40 about fifteen. Any of the three methods lands in the same place, so use whichever you can estimate. Bin sizes has the dimensions.
10 ydBathroom
20 ydKitchen
30 ydWhole house
The Method
Four steps to the right bin size
Name the material
If it is concrete, soil, brick or tile, stop here and take a small bin.
Estimate the volume
Rooms, roof squares or pickup loads. Whichever you can picture.
Check the access
A 40 yard needs 25 feet of clear length. A 10 fits nearly any driveway.
Round up, not down
A second delivery costs a full delivery. One size up costs far less.
The Override
Heavy material ignores every sizing rule above
Concrete, brick, soil, asphalt, stone and old tile beds weigh about a tonne a cubic yard. A large bin filled with any of them would be over its allowance and too heavy to lift long before it looked full.
So when the load is heavy, size down rather than up: a 6, 10 or 14 yard, loaded on its own at the fill rate. Two small bins cost far less than one large bin well over its tonnage.
This is the single most common sizing mistake, and it is expensive in both directions: an overweight bin costs overage, and an overfilled one cannot be collected at all. Heavy debris rules covers it and weight limits the arithmetic.
