Muck Away in Surrey

A grab lorry carries its own hydraulic arm and bucket, so it loads itself straight from the heap. The arm can reach over a front wall, a hedge or a fence, which means spoil piled on a drive or just inside the garden can be lifted out without a wheelbarrow in sight.

There is no skip standing on the drive for days while it fills. The lorry arrives when the heap is ready, loads and leaves, and the heap can then build up again as the dig carries on. Whether the arm can reach your heap depends on where the lorry can stand, so we check the access and the overhead cables on the site visit.

On bulk digs, such as a basement or a reduced level dig, one lorry is not enough. We source and book tippers and extra grab lorries to match the output of the excavator, so the machine can load directly and the spoil leaves at the rate it comes out of the ground.

Most loads are the natural ground from a dig: topsoil, subsoil, clay and chalk. Close behind come rubble, brick, concrete and old paving from demolitions and breakouts, and green waste from site and garden clearances. We once cleared a load of fly tipped hardcore dumped on a scout group's path.

Clean loads are easier to recycle and reuse than mixed ones, so we keep soil, hardcore and green waste apart where the job allows. Asbestos is hazardous waste and is never mixed into a muck away load. If it turns up, it is left alone and handled by a specialist.

• Topsoil and subsoil from footings, bases and drives
• Clay and chalk from bulk excavations
• Rubble, brick and concrete from demolitions
• Old paving, slabs and hardcore from breakouts
• Roots, stumps and undergrowth from clearances

Ground swells once it is dug, because the soil loosens and traps air. Using typical figures, a cubic metre of clay weighs about 1.9 tonnes in the ground and fills about 1.35 cubic metres once it is dug. Chalk weighs about the same and bulks to about 1.45 cubic metres.

Topsoil is lighter, at about 1.6 tonnes a cubic metre, and bulks to about 1.25. Sand and gravel weigh about 1.8 tonnes and bulk the least, to about 1.15. Mixed spoil and rubble weigh about 1.8 tonnes and bulk to about 1.4 cubic metres.

As a rough example, a footing trench 10 metres long, 600mm wide and 1 metre deep holds 6 cubic metres of ground. In clay, that is about 11.4 tonnes, and about 8.1 cubic metres once dug. These are typical figures only, and we confirm the real quantity on the site visit.

Government guidance on the waste duty of care says a householder must take all reasonable measures to pass household waste only to an authorised person. When a tradesperson works on your property, they are responsible for the waste they produce, including its transport and disposal.

That matters because waste handed to someone unregistered often ends up fly tipped, and councils can issue a fixed penalty notice to the householder it is traced back to. Our registration, CBDU416264, is on the Environment Agency's public register, where anyone can check it by name or number before a load leaves.

Business waste moves with a waste transfer note, agreed and signed by both sides. It describes the waste and its List of Wastes code, the quantity and how it is held, the producer's SIC code, the names and addresses of both parties, the time and place of transfer, and a statement that the waste hierarchy has been applied.

Notes for non hazardous waste are kept for 2 years, and hazardous waste consignment notes for three. When we take muck away for a builder, a developer or a commercial client, the paperwork goes with every load. A householder dealing with their own household waste does not need to keep a transfer note.

The easiest load to deal with is the one that never leaves. Before anything leaves, we look at what can be reused on site: topsoil kept for the new lawn or beds, and suitable spoil used to make up levels. Only what cannot be used goes on the lorry.

On a domestic dig, the heap usually sits on the drive or a protected corner of the garden, and the grab lorry collects it as the job goes. On a clearance or demolition, loads are sorted as they are made, so the plot is cleared in step with the work and nothing is left behind at the end.