Replacing wheels on wheelie bin

[Graham.]

We dont have a standard UK wide refuse collection procedure.

Not yet.

[Michael Chare]

I have a baby wheelie bin which is only about 2' 6" high. I use it to prevent birds and other animals breaking into the kitchen waste black bag which I have to leave near the corner of my property for the refuse collection.

Like other wheelie bins my bin has two plastic wheels with solid tyres. Recently one of the tyres failed by breaking up and the other looks to going to do the same so I now need two new wheels.

I would have expected that removing the old wheels would be quite easy but it is quite difficult and I don't think that it can be done without doing some damage to the wheel. I was able to find out how to do it on youtube.

So in an age where there is a desire to reduce plastic waste do we need a law to ensure tha such repairs can be accomplished easily?

[Animal]

It's an ongoing area of argument, eg the right to repair bill in the US. Is it worth posting a pic or 2 in case anyone sees a solution?

[GB]

There's often a trade off between ease of repair, ease of assembly, cost, and longevity of the original version. Without any information about how long wheelie bins last and their modes of failure, you may be making things worse, not better.

For example, it's obviously important that the wheels don't come off in normal use. Consequently, the likelihood is that they will be difficult to remove for repair.

[alan_m]

Looking on youtube it seems very easy to remove a BROKEN wheel and even easier to install a new one once the old wheel is off (around 5 seconds to install a new wheel). If the wheel is already broken then using some very basic DIY tools would get you to the sprung pin that needs to be pushed up. Using a junior hacksaw and flat bladed screwdriver would take you few minutes to get the wheel off.

What you seem to be complaining about is that it wasn't obvious to you how to do it. You went to Youtube to perform the RTFM operation.

Even with a right to repair you would still need the knowledge or skill level in order to accomplish the repair, and perhaps some specialised tools or even commonly available expensive tools.

For instance, replacing a flushing mechanism in a toilet is a piss easy for some but way beyond the capability of many. How easy should the law make it?

[John Rumm]

I would expect the tyre to me moulded onto the wheel as a non removable part. So you replace the whole wheel if either part fails.

[GB]

The wheel axles are simply pushed into a housing, and in normal use they need to stay in despite having quite large loads applied.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh FFS, My wheely bin split after 36 years. I asked the council and they shipped in a new one and pulled the pod one out. It's their bin and their responsibility

Their ought to be a law against people like you

[Joe]

He didn't say it was a council-provided one.

[Michael Chare]

You are correct. The local council refuse collection lorry does not have the facility to lift wheelie bins and empty the contents into the lorry. We dont have a standard UK wide refuse collection procedure.

[alan_m]

That doesn't mean everyone gets wheelie bins, just that re-cyling will be "standardise", and not necessarily how re-cycling will be implemented.

Typical big government interfering in local affairs where they don't need to.

The waste collection in my area is via sacks and a few small bins. one coloured sack for general waste, a different coloured sack for general (mixed) recycling, a small bin the size of a couple of gallon bucket for food recycling and a box for paper/card. Large broken down boxes can just be left on the pavement (or just inside your property boundary) on collection day. Green (garden) waste is a extra at £x.xx per sack.

I have friends in other parts of the country that have 5 wheelie bins plus big canvas type bags and have to separate most of their recycling into different categories - and at one time had to remove packing tape etc. from cardboard waste. Many properties around my way have no sensible place to store that number of bins except in the miniscule area between the pavement and the front wall of their house. The nature of many of the roads/housing dating back to the first half of the 20th century and modern day car parking would make collection of wheelie bin difficult.

My local council seem very concerned that so few people are putting out food waste. An observation alone my road on collection day shows this to be true. Personally I don't have any to put out. It either gets composted or eaten by the local wild life.

[Brian Gaff]

I seem to recall, a bit like the old el cheapo office chairs, the wheels just push over a raised piece using brute force. As you say, tryiing to reverse this process is likely to break the bit wok holds the wheels. I doubt if these were designed to be replaced, and I'd imagine nobody has given it much thought. I guess you could destroy the wheels and buy some others, which no doubt would cost at least as much of the bin in the first place and drill and attach those. Why not put casters on it while you are at it and then you would have it easier to move. On the other hand if its just there to block access, put some kind of slide on the bottom with a padlock. Brian

[Tim Streater]

Where is it you live, again? On an unused oil-drilling platform, was it?

[Tim Streater]

Added angle-brackets to that URL, for you.

Yeah they do. There are too many councils and many need to be merged with their neighbour, or become unitaries. Having different bin collection systems is part of the excuse they use to avoid rationalisation and consequent savings for the taxpayer.

Round here it's wheelie bins and for those living in the areas such as you describe, sacks.

You don't have any to put out? No meat bones or cooked fish skin or uneaten cooked food? What d'ye do with it? Throw it out onto the street from an upstairs window shouting "Gardez grub!" as you do so?

Most stuff is recyclable. Our black bin, for landfill waste, gets put out once a month here. Pretty much everything else is either composted, or goes into a red bin (paper and card) or blue (glass/plastic /metal/tin cans).

This sort of discussion always amuses me. Back in the early 1980s, we had kerbside recycling where I lived in the US of A. When I returned to the UK some 30 years ago, I described this to people and they all said Oh no, we'll never have that here.

[GB]

Curiously, the Ham and High website coped very well with the broken link.

[Tim Lamb]

In message <uhil9o$2qo41$ [e-mail], Brian Gaff [e-mail] writes

For various reasons, not to be explained here, I have become the possessor of 3 sets of supermarket swivelling trolley wheels. A suitable use has yet to arise.

[alan_m]

The axle is a round iron bar with a groove each end and the end are also tapered. The wheels have a sprung loaded plunger and when pushed on to the axle mates into the groove. Fitting a new wheel takes approx 5 seconds. The plastic wheel also has a round long inner shoulder that almost reaches the moulding on the bin that holds the axle bar. This limits the wheels moving sideways.

Typical axle

If the wheel is broken it needs to be replaced. Hacksaw around the inner plastic shoulder to give enough clearance to get a thin flat bladed screwdriver in to lift the spring loaded plunger, or just saw through the plastic wheel one side of the axle. The wheel can then be pulled off.

A pair of replacement wheels cost around £8 whereas a local seller has bins from £30 to £50, depending on size.

The fact that there are many sellers of wheels suggests otherwise. Also readily available axles, lids and replacement lid hinge pins.

In some respects designed well for their purpose with all parts needing no skilled assembly or screws etc.

Why would you want to replace the wheels unless they were broken in the first place? It's not as though they are expected to have 20,000+ mile life. The wheel is a small replaceable part and no modification to the existing axle or new wheel is required. Yes, you may have to destroy the broken wheel a bit more but a law on making something easily repairable wouldn't include the need glue the pieces of a broken part together again.

[John Rumm]

In some cases things like collection systems can be standardised across neighbourhoods - but there can be cases were one system might be far better suited to the area it serves than another might be.

Southend on Sea borough switched to private refuse collectors a very long time ago, and they have always stuck with black bin bags, and then added on extra bag types for other waste types later. In more densely populated areas where many large houses have been converted into multiple dwellings or HMOs, this is far more manageable than having say three or four complete sets of wheelie bins. It also has the advantage that you can stick out 20 black bags if you want one week, and they will collect them.

Surrounding areas refuse systems come under the control of Rochford district council, and they went for a three wheelie bin system. To be fair it is probably one of the better conceived systems and it works well for most users (one bin general waste, one recycleables, one garden / food) no need to sort into too many separate categories. The garden food collected every week, the others in alternation.

However there are probably fewer converted HMOs and many more rural properties with more land. They do run into problems in the main Rochford town centre itself since being very old, has a number of properties that front directly onto the street with no front garden, and no access to the rear of the property other than through the house. e.g:

[Tim Streater]

Canterbury has some amount of housing like that; those folk use bags.

But, perhaps a little surprisingly, these folk have bins:

<https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.2722984,1.0742086,3a,75y,49.34h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1slVMieYcMV6mPn6NVItZdkQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DlVMieYcMV6mPn6NVItZdkQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D36.06672%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu>

I wouldn't even attempt to drive down that road, never mind take a wheelie-bin lorry down it.

[alan_m]

There are many roads around my way like that, or worse.