Appliance Removal in Austin

How much does appliance removal cost in Austin?

Flat, per unit, quoted from a photo before anyone drives out. The two-person carry, the dolly work, the drive, the refrigerant recovery and the disposal are all inside the number — appliances are the category where hidden fees usually appear, and this is where they don't.

Does Austin pick up appliances?

For the appliance most people are actually trying to get rid of — the old refrigerator in the garage — the answer is no, and it isn't close. Anything containing refrigerant is a regulated item: a refrigerator, a freezer, a window or portable air conditioner, a dehumidifier, all of them must have the refrigerant recovered by an EPA-certified technician before the unit can be scrapped or landfilled. That is federal law under EPA Section 608, not a local preference. A municipal bulk truck is not equipped to do it, so a fridge is not something you can simply set out, and an HOA curb won't tolerate it sitting there while you figure it out.

The rest of the city's program has its own limits. Austin Resource Recovery moved residential bulk to an on-demand request system at austintexas.gov/service/ondemand: a limited number of free pickups per year, a volume cap on each, curbside only, and open only to city-of-Austin residential curbside-trash customers. If you rent an apartment anywhere from Riverside to The Domain, your property is on private hauling and you are not in the program at all. And even a qualifying homeowner still has to get a 250-pound washer out of a utility closet and down to the street unaided.

So the practical shape of it: the non-refrigerant units are theoretically collectible but only if you can move them and only within your annual allowance; the refrigerant units are outside the program entirely. That's the whole gap. We come to the garage, take the fridge and the washer together, recover and document the refrigerant, and send the steel to scrap.

What happens to your appliance after pickup

An old appliance is mostly recoverable material, which is why we don't just drive it to a gate. The first step on any refrigerant unit is recovery by an EPA-certified technician, documented — that is the line item budget haulers quietly skip, and it is the reason a fridge costs more to retire than a dresser of the same size. After recovery, the steel does most of the work: the shell, the drum, the compressor and the motor go to scrap-metal recovery, where white goods have genuine value and a real second life as feedstock.

The electronic guts are routed separately. Control boards, touch panels and microwaves go to Austin e-waste recyclers or a retailer take-back channel rather than into general waste. What is left over — plastics, insulation, glass — is the only part that ends up landfilled, at Texas Disposal Systems in Creedmoor or, on north-belt jobs, the WM Austin Community Landfill near Pflugerville and Manor. All of it is inside the flat price you were quoted from the photo.

When Austin calls us for appliance removal

• Kitchen remodel. The dishwasher, range, hood and old fridge all leaving in one trip, timed to the day the new units land.
• A water heater that died on a slab. No basement means the failure is in the garage or a hall closet, and the plumber's new unit is already in the driveway. We take the old one the same day.
• Rental turnover. Landlords and property managers across Pflugerville and South Austin swapping a tired washer or fridge between tenants, on the clock before the next lease starts.
• Tech-relocation move-outs. Arriving and departing households across the Domain, Round Rock and Cedar Park clearing garage fridges and freezers that aren't worth moving.
• The garage second fridge. Bought for a party in 2014, running up the summer power bill ever since, and too heavy for two neighbors to lift.
• Estate and downsizing clears. Georgetown's Sun City belt and Tarrytown, where the whole laundry room and a chest freezer go at once.

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