Scraping Out

borat_borat1950

Say 5000 sf house, what do you think is an exceptable ammout of scrap. Let me define a little further, Irregular down walls, floor system,fairly cut up roof. Framing only.

reveivl

Define a little further. As in wtf are you asking?

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SNC

I think he is talking about waste.

K2

30 yards, give or take.

NorthstarNC

JumboJack

'Bout treefidy...+/-

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in texas with framing and cornish people will do it for 3.00 a foot. What do yall think about that? Just laber

borat_borat1950

Sorry didn't mean to get techinical? The amount of stuff that is not usable and goes in the dumpster.

DrewD

Depends; does your cut man know how to think ahead 2-3 cuts to minimize waste? I framed an 1800 sf house subfloor and had a pile of waste you could put in a 5 gallon bucket with peices no thicker than 2". Its all how you plan your cuts.

seifconst

The size of the project is not indicative to amount of scrap left over. As mentioned, whoever is running the saws controls the waste.

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Deadhead Derek

Exactly. I framed an 8 unit commercial, and had 80% of the second floor up with what the Owner/GC spec'd with the lumber yahhd for just the first floor pack, figuring on average waste. If you stack your off cuts, you can save a buttload, negating all of the helper-monkey's time stacking , saving on material, and hell, you can say it's a "green " building practice.

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K2

The op stated that this house is not a square box. I'm thinking 30 or 40 outside corners, half of them angles , and 40 to 60 unique roof planes. That would be about 30 yards of waste on 5000 ft.
Cut up/chopped up = waste. i don't care how good your cut man is.

DrewD

Does your cut man cut a fresh 2x for blocking or doe he pick up a cutoff? That defines a smart cut man. Whats the point of having a bunch of 16" cutoffs laying around and no more lumber left for studs?

SelfContract

Maybe the question shoudl be re-phrased : At what lumber waste rate do I need to fire our framer?

1. One 5-gallon bucket, or

2. One 10 yard dumspter, or...

3. Else? ... keep him j/k

Bodger

Framed a couple of decks recently. Had a stack of 2 X 10 X 10's for joists, and a smaller stack of 2 X 10 X 16's for rim joists.
Which pile do you think one of my boneheads pulled from first to start rolling in the joists? Even after specific instructions as to which was to be used for what.
Nice long offcuts for blocking though.
I read somewhere a while back that something like 20% of the lumber delivered to construction sites ends up as waste. Hauled away waste.
Could that be a true average?

DrewD

I'm not saying that every job is like that, there are extremes for every situation. Sometimes we walk away with a pile of waste that fits in a 5 gallon bucket, other times it seems like a never ending run with the dump truck. My point is it is hard to nail down an exact figure for waste based simply on sf estimates. A more realistic theory might be to make a conservative estimate on how much waste there could potentially be by have employees who are smart enough to manage cutoffs to maximize usage. I have needed a specific lenght only to find the nearest cut off is about an inch to short, sucks but what can you do? I'm not trying to be critical but I have seen a lot of guys go a hundred miles an hour wailing off lenghts only to burn up all the lumber and still come up short and a pile of cutoffs which could have been blocking, etc.

javatom

Lazy cutting drives me nuts. The waste is not the criteria to look for in firing your framer. I will give you the method I use. Does the cut man have several neatly stacked piles ready to go of varying sizes or does he grab a new board every time and throw the cut end in a loose stacked pile that appears ready for burning?

thegreek

15-20% my guys are idiots at times and other times use there brains. If they were smarter they wouldn't be working for someone.

borat_borat1950

We do right at 30 yd's. Mostly osb. I am not a big fan of Boise Cascade because of the waste problems, for some reason they will send 34' or 36' I-joists when I order 28', granted they only charge for 28', but the dumpster fills quickly with the scrap going in, and makes us look really bad. You all have a good point about the cutman, and I have a good one, but not even he can control these kind of things. Same with the lumber yard, if they don't have what I order they go to the next dim. up, more waste.

thom

most of our scrap is sheathing/decking.

Maybe you misers nail up all those little pieces of sheathing, I've seen it done. I think that makes a crappy job. I'll continue paying the extra for additional OSB and dumpsters.

Hey, if you misers want you can come scrap out my osb cuts and put them on your jobs.

K2

Yeah, and it's hard to use the flip/slick side of the osb if you have a bunch of angles. I've seen guys put an occasional slick side up on a roof and it could kill somebody.