Alaska News

Enclosing Dumpster creates higher costs than you'd think

The editors are welcome to shovel out our Dumpster enclosure. Remember, it has to go over the fence. While you are at it, explain to me how a three-sided fence with the open side facing the street is going to look any better or keep ravens out? Have you ever looked in a Dumpster enclosure? When there is a fence, many people think in the fence is good enough, leading to a stinking layer of mess on the ground around the Dumpster.

And $3,500 dollars is less than the real cost of an enclosure. A 5- by 3-foot Dumpster is 15 square feet. If you put a 2-foot-wide path around the Dumpster within the enclosure for shoveling snow, you need at least 9 by 7 feet, or 63 square feet. That is a difference of 48 square feet. That loss of usable real estate is worth more than $3,500. That's before you build the fence and pay extra or work harder to get the snow out every time it falls.

-- Todd Dalton

Anchorage

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