What is involved in building a bin store or waste enclosure?

A bin store is a simple structure that is frequently built in the wrong place, because the location is chosen for what is left over rather than for what the enclosure has to do.

The collection vehicle decides the position

A waste enclosure is only useful if the collection vehicle can reach it, turn, and leave without reversing across a pedestrian route.

Which means the swept path of the actual vehicle, at the actual access point, checked before the position is fixed. On a school or a health site with controlled access and pedestrian traffic, that is the constraint that determines everything else.

Bin movement matters too. Somebody has to wheel a loaded bin from the store to the collection point, and a loaded bin up a ramp or over a lip is a manual handling problem for a staff member.

The floor

**Graded to a drain,** because the enclosure gets washed out.

**Connected correctly,** which usually means to sewer with the appropriate approval rather than to stormwater. Washdown water from a waste enclosure is not clean water.

**Durable,** because bins are heavy, dragged, and dropped.

**No lip at the entry,** so bins roll in and out without being lifted.

Washdown and water

A hose point at the enclosure, with a backflow prevention device.

An enclosure with no water supply does not get cleaned, and an uncleaned waste enclosure is an odour and pest complaint within weeks.

Ventilation and odour

Enclosed and unventilated is worse than open. The design needs air movement through it, which usually means gaps at high and low level rather than a sealed structure.

On a site where the enclosure is close to occupied spaces, the position relative to prevailing wind and to windows matters more than the enclosure itself.

Pests

The gaps that ventilate are also the gaps that admit vermin, which is a detailing problem rather than a contradiction.

Vermin-proof mesh at openings, a sealed junction between the floor and the walls, self-closing gates, and no gap under the door. Doing that at construction is straightforward and retrofitting it is not.

Accessibility

The approach to the enclosure is part of the site's accessible path if staff who use it may have a disability, and the gate has to be operable with limited hand strength.

This gets missed because a bin store reads as a service item rather than a building. It sits on the same [accessible routes](/answers/pathways-and-accessible-routes-across-a-site) as everything else on the site.

Security and appearance

On public sites, enclosures get used for things other than waste, and they attract graffiti.

Which argues for a lockable gate, lighting, and a finish that can be cleaned rather than one that has to be repainted.

Planning and approval

Depending on the site and the council, a waste enclosure can require approval in its own right, particularly where it affects a boundary, a setback or a heritage item.

Establishing that early is cheaper than building it twice.

Delivery on a live site

The construction is short and it affects vehicle access and waste collection while it happens, which means an interim arrangement for the bins during the works.

That interim arrangement is the part most often forgotten, and it is the part the building's staff notice immediately.

Monument builds waste enclosures and external structures on live education, health and public sites, with the collection and interim arrangements planned alongside the construction.