The four numbers a debris line needs
- Weight, in tons. It decides whether a bag is full and whether a roll-off goes over its included tons.
- Volume, in loose cubic yards: debris as it sits in a bag or bin, not as it stood in the wall.
- The haul plan: how many bags and pickups, or which roll-off and for how long.
- The price, with the unit prices written out so the line can be checked and repriced.
The remodel debris budget calculator does all four for a kitchen, bathroom, flooring tear-out, roof tear-off, interior demo, landscape clean-up or whole house, and prints the arithmetic. The rest of this guide is what it's doing, so you can check it or do it by hand.
Step 1: list what's coming out, by the unit
Estimate from quantities you already have in the takeoff: square feet of flooring, drywall and tile, feet of cabinets, squares of roofing. These are the published weights our tools use, converted to loose volume.
| Unit of work | Loose yd³ | lb | Units per bag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ceramic or porcelain tile, 100 sq ft | 0.25 | 350 | 5.7 (weight limit) |
| Carpet and pad, 100 sq ft | 1.08 | 125 | 3.7 (volume limit) |
| Drywall 1/2 in, standard (older homes), 100 sq ft | 0.34 | 160 | 11.7 (volume limit) |
| Kitchen cabinets, base + wall, 10 ft of run | 3.06 | 819 | 1.3 (volume limit) |
| Architectural (laminated) asphalt shingles, 1 square, 1 layer | 0.35 | 256 | 7.8 (weight limit) |
| Clay tile, 1 square, 1 layer | 1.25 | 1,075 | 1.9 (weight limit) |
Sources: City of San Diego C&D conversion table (tile 3.5 lb/sq ft, carpet, 1/2-in drywall 1.6 lb/sq ft), U.S. EPA loose volume factors, CertainTeed and Ludowici weights per square (midpoint of each range). The cabinet row is a working estimate: no published figure exists. The full table is on the calculator page.
Two things stand out. Tile, stone and tile roofing hit a bag's 1-ton limit long before its 4 cubic yards: one bag takes about 571 sq ft of ceramic tile or 1.9 squares of clay roof tile. Carpet and cabinets are the opposite: bulky and light, so they fill a bag by volume.
Step 2: turn the debris into bags or a bin
Bags needed = the larger of (cubic yards ÷ 4) and (tons ÷ 1), each rounded up. For a roll-off, the cheapest size that holds the volume, with 3 tons included on the 12 to 25-yard (5 on the 40) and $135 for each ton over, rounded to the nearest ton.
| Project (example size) | yd³ | Tons | Bags | Bags, batched | Cheapest roll-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kitchen remodel | 6.7 | 1.3 | 2 | $516, 1 pickup | 12-yard $650 |
| Bathroom remodel | 2.1 | 0.58 | 1 | $308, 1 pickup | 12-yard $650 |
| Flooring tear-out | 5.4 | 0.31 | 2 | $516, 1 pickup | 12-yard $650 |
| Roof tear-off | 7.3 | 2.67 | 3 | $724, 1 pickup | 12-yard $650 |
| Interior demo (drywall + flooring) | 8.8 | 1.11 | 3 | $724, 1 pickup | 12-yard $650 |
| Landscape clean-up (green waste) | 14.2 | 1.78 | 4 | $1,032, 2 pickups | 15-yard $650 |
| Whole-house remodel (built from its rooms) | 19.6 | 3.57 | 5 | $1,240, 2 pickups | 20-yard $785 |
Example sizes, not averages: they're the calculator's starting values. Batched means pickups of up to 3 bags, the most one pickup takes.
The pattern: one or two bags' worth of debris is cheaper in bags; from about three bags' worth of light debris, a $650 roll-off is cheaper if the site has room for an 8-ft-wide bin for up to 14 days. The whole-house example (19.6 yd³, 3.57 tons) is a roll-off job at $785, versus $1,240 in bags.
Step 3: plan the pickups
The first bag on a pickup is $279 to pick up; every extra bag on that same pickup is $179. With the $29 bags, one pickup of n bags costs 208n + 100 dollars: $308, $516 and $724 for one, two and three. One pickup takes up to 3 bags; a 4th starts another pickup at $279, so n bags on k pickups cost 208n + 100k.
So the plan matters as much as the count. Five bags in two pickups (3 + 2) cost $1,240; the same five picked up one at a time as they fill cost $1,540. On a job that fills bags over several weeks, schedule the pickups for when you have two or three full ones. Each job site is its own pickup, so the batching happens at each address.
Rule of thumb for the schedule
Every bag you add to a pickup that's already coming (up to 3 on it) saves $100 against a pickup of its own. On a multi-week job, the job-site hauling cost tool turns bags a week into a monthly bill.
Step 4: write the line
A debris line that survives a change order states the estimate, the plan and the unit prices. The calculator writes one; for the example kitchen it reads:
Debris removal, kitchen remodel: about 6.7 yd³ / 1.3 tons (estimate). 2 Eco Waste dumpster bags (4 yd³, 1 ton each) on 1 crane pickup: $516. Terms: $29 a bag, $279 for the first bag on each pickup, $179 for each additional bag on the same pickup, $135 per ton past 1 ton a bag from the on-site scale reading.
Markup is your call, and the calculator adds it if you enter one: at 15% the example becomes $516 + $77.40 = $593.40. Because the unit prices are in the line, adding a bag later is arithmetic, not a new quote: one more bag on an existing pickup is $208.
Where debris budgets go wrong
- A second layer. Two layers of roofing or flooring double the weight. The calculator takes layers for roofs; for floors, add the second layer's square footage.
- Heavy material mixed into light debris. On a roll-off, "Any debris/trash combined in a dumpster with dirt, concrete, brick or green waste will be weighed and billed at debris/trash rates." Keep concrete, dirt and brick separate: they have flat fill-line prices.
- A roll-off that outstays the job plan. The rental includes 14 days, then $15 a day. A bin on site for twelve weeks is 70 extra days, $1,050 in rental alone.
- Bags picked up one at a time. Three bags on three pickups are $924; on one, $724.
- The city's C&D deposit. It's refundable, but it's cash out until the final report is accepted: Laguna Beach holds $500 on a remodel, Irvine $1.00 per square foot (capped at $50,000), Laguna Hills $0.30 per square foot on residential work ($100 minimum, $3,750 maximum).
Deposits and diversion targets for each city are in the CALGreen guide for Orange County contractors.