Case Study – Hoarder’s House Rubbish Clearance Took 8 Team Members & Three Days Total to Clear Over 10 Tonnes of Rubbish
A customer, who had inherited a house from a distant relative was left in horror after discovering a ‘hoarder’ house, which was so swamped in trash that it took a team of eight-strong men to clear out 10 tonnes of rubbish, which included thousands of beer bottles (many of which filled with urine) over three days.
Initially, the new owner of the property had hoped to sell a home, but instead, he was left with a mountain of rubbish to remove and a lot of work to get it fit to sell. With rubbish piled up to chest height in many of the rooms (even up to the ceiling in one of the rooms), the customer was close to losing all hope of selling the property.
Despite being a relatively small terraced property, with only two bedrooms and one bathroom, there was so much waste and rubbish that it took three days to clear, with eight men on the job. Typically, the amount of waste removed equated to a four or five-bedroom house.
Operations manager Richard Walsh, one of the eight workers on the site to clear up the mammoth job, commented that over 10 tonnes of waste were removed.
Footage from the big clear-out clearly shows the mounds of waste, covering every inch of the flooring and piling up filthy walls, with waste extending over armchairs and mattresses in two rooms.
“When we got up to the second floor, each bedroom was full to chest height with rubbish – beer bottles, beer cans, food, all sorts. The entire floor, even the stairs, was full of rubbish. Then there was a third floor where the loft space was, absolutely floor to ceiling.”
“You had to duck down to enter the doorways because it was piled high. A lot of the bedrooms, you couldn’t even get in them. I believe it was one man who lived there who, unfortunately, was an alcoholic, and over the years, he had been accumulating waste and mess – all the beer cans and bottles.
To top it all off, a lot of the bottles were not empty but filled with urine, which was the most significant issue on the job, which made it the hardest to cope with. The team estimates that the rubbish would have been built up over some years, taking around 10 to 15 years to accumulate to such a level.
“It was shocking, and the smell was quite bad. That’s something we get used to, but this one was particularly bad. When you’ve got ten years of rubbish piled on top of each other, and you start disturbing the pile, the food waste comes up, then the smell of the old beer, which obviously isn’t great and then the urine.
The team went on to mention that as they were moving some of the bottles of urine, they started to break, and the smell was very bad, not to mention hazardous. Multiple tarps and bin bags were loaded onto vehicles and removed, with the large mass of cans and bottles being taken to a recycling centre, leaving the house empty and revealing very filthy and damaged walls and floors.
The team knew what to expect beforehand, however, they admit that it was one of the toughest jobs they have had yet to tackle due to the sheer amount of waste packed into the room.
“But when we got in there, it was a bit of a shock. He must have just stopped using the bin, and the rubbish piled up inside the house instead. Unfortunately, we do find that with older single me, and it’s more common than you’d think.”
Richard reminds us that when carrying out jobs like this, it’s easy to judge and berate, but we must remember to be kind, compassionate and non-judgemental, as it’s often due to poor mental health that leads to homes getting out of hand like this.
The story was originally published in getsurrey.co.uk.