Old plaster disposal?

mammabooh · #1 03/14/14, 07:31 PM

Hubby and I are tearing the ceiling down in our dining room. He is doing his best to catch most of it and is putting it in 5-gallon buckets...looks like we're going to have about 20 buckets of the stuff. Do any of you have ideas how we can get rid of it? We won't dump it in the woods, so that's out!

bja105 · #2 03/14/14, 08:02 PM

Is it plaster and lathe, or is it drywall?

Drywall, I put in the garden, its gypsum and makes clay better. I don't know what all is in plaster, I figure its mostly sand and clay.

If you think a landfill is better than the woods, those bagster products are taylor made for that situation. When I redid our kitchen, I got a rolloff dumpster. I was amazed how fast it filled up.

mammabooh · #3 03/14/14, 08:03 PM

Yep, plaster. House was built in 1902.

rags57078 · #4 03/14/14, 08:07 PM

I put mine and my gravel driveway , just make sure there is no nails

littlebitfarm · #5 03/14/14, 08:49 PM

Visit 20 of your closest friends and dump a bucket in each of their trash cans.

DaleK · #6 03/14/14, 10:24 PM

Grind it up and mix it in your compost, there's nothing harmful in it unless it was put in when they occasionally mixed asbestos into it, in which case you already inhaled it anyway.

sammyd · #7 03/15/14, 04:45 AM

We put a lot of ours on the gravel driveway as well.

mossywyatt · #8 03/15/14, 06:40 AM

lead paint? They sell testers at most hardware stores pretty cheap.

MO_cows · #9 03/15/14, 08:12 AM

Another caution for lead paint. Test it, then decide on best disposal depending what you find.

ronbre · #10 03/15/14, 09:44 AM

it would supply calcium buried in your garden, lawn, woods, etc.

**clovis** · #11 03/15/14, 08:23 PM

There are different types of plaster used in old homes.

The base coat is sand, hydrated lime, and often horse hair to act as a binder.

The top coat, generally speaking, doesn't have sand or horse hair.

I would be worried about the lead based paint used on the plaster. I certainly would not put it on my garden.

Most people blow off and mock the warnings about lead based paints, but if you ever pick up a 120 year old book and study exactly how much lead was used in paint, you'd be cautious too. A good quality outdoor paint had as much as 9 pounds of lead oxide per gallon.

From what I understand, garden plants can absorb lead from the soil. Do you want your kids eating veggies laced with lead?

Oldcountryboy · #12 03/15/14, 08:33 PM

You might put it in a seperate compost pile that would be used for flowers and shrub only.

JoePa · #13 03/16/14, 11:21 AM

Get it to a land fill - if you have regular trash pickup - or have to take it there yourself - never put anything in your garden that you aren't sure of it's composition -