# Ways to ease the pain in doing tear offs?



## Gorniak (May 31, 2014)

For a small crew doing residential work, what methods have any of you found that can ease the pain in doing tear-offs?

It seems all our labor comes down to getting the tear off material into a dump truck or trailer. Mind you, not removing the old roofing (we use Shing-Gos and Shingle Eaters, which are great), but rather, it's getting that pile of crap either off the roof into the truck or off the ground and into the truck.

As it is now, we have one or two laborers who lug a trash can back and forth, hand-loading it with tear off and dumping it off the side of the roof into a truck, whenever we have a walkable roof. All the slick tools I've ever seen, none ever really came close to being worth a damn when it came to making the life of the laborer easier whose job is hauling the tear off to the dump truck... any suggestions?


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## dDubya (Dec 21, 2012)

Did somebody call for the scoop shovel brigade?


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## Renegade (May 30, 2014)

Don't know how long you've been doing this but, trust me, there aren't many really effective shortcuts. It's just hard work, plain and simple.

Only one thing I ever came up with that was very effective in efficiency and keeping the ground clean was scaffolding. Worked very well on many jobs and the setup time is well worth it in overall success. 
Wish I had some pics but basically a continuous run all the way down one side of the house to the truck. solid deck and guard-rails. Lay down 7/16 osb on the deck and then just lean it up against the rails lapped all the way to the end. set planks from the end of the scaffold to the truck rack. Tear off just goes down into the "chute" and one guy with a scoop continually pushes it down the chute and into the truck. Don't let the chute fill up or you can't push it. 

Started using it for jobs with difficult access. One of the nice things is you don't have to worry about destroying the landscaping. Customers really liked it. Of course if you don't have much scaffolding I don't know why I'm typing all this.:laughing: I just own a lot of scaffolding so it's no big deal for me. 

One of my golden rules was "Never let it hit the ground!!!!" That is such a huge waste of labor.


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