Five things bulk pickup won't take in Seattle

Check your own city first

One caveat before the list. This metro is not one jurisdiction — Seattle, Shoreline, Burien, Renton, Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond and the rest each run their own collection rules, and those rules change.

So treat what follows as the categories that are commonly excluded, and confirm your own on your city's current bulky-item page. What you are looking for is the accepted-items list, the set-out window, and whether you need to book ahead.

Everything below has a flat price if it turns out yours is excluded, with carry-out from any floor included and a $95 minimum visit.

1. Appliances with refrigerant

Fridges, freezers, air conditioners and dehumidifiers contain refrigerant that must be recovered by someone qualified before the shell can be scrapped. That is why they are handled separately from general bulky waste almost everywhere.

If yours is excluded, the prices are: standard fridge $164, side-by-side or French door $183, built-in or Sub-Zero $238, mini fridge $115, chest freezer $146, upright freezer $149, window AC $87 for a small unit and $109 for a large one, portable AC $85, dehumidifier $77.

There is no refrigerant fee added to any of those. The handling is inside the price.

One Seattle note: the second fridge in the garage is close to a regional institution, and it is usually the one that has been quietly failing for two years. If it is going, take the chest freezer next to it at the same time — $164 + $146 = $310 on one visit rather than two.

2. Televisions and electronics

Electronics are handled through their own channel rather than general waste throughout this state, so they are routinely off the bulky-item list.

Washington runs a well-established statewide household electronics recycling program with drop-off locations, and if you have a single old television and an afternoon, looking up the current participating sites is worth doing.

If it is going on a truck: TV under 42 inches $62, 42 to 65 inches $68, over 65 inches $73, computer monitor $58, desktop tower $62, home printer $58, and a mixed box of electronics $77.

The clear-out that turns up constantly in this city is the home-office layer — a monitor, a tower and a box of cables from a job or a company that changed. A monitor and a tower together are $58 + $62 = $120.

3. Renovation and construction debris

Bulky-item collection is for household goods, not for the results of a building project. Drywall, timber, tile, flooring, cabinets, windows and doors are almost always excluded, and a contractor's debris generally is too regardless of what it consists of.

Prices if you need it taken: construction debris $120, drywall $37 per sheet or small bundle, lumber or wood scrap $41 per bundle, tile or flooring $33 per box or bundle, hardwood or laminate flooring $41 per bundle, roofing shingles $48 per bundle, carpet rolled $68, carpet removal $71 per room, interior door $41, window $33, concrete or masonry debris $219 per quarter truck.

This comes up a lot here because of what Seattle is building: basement and garage ADU conversions, kitchen refits in hundred-year-old houses, and the strip-out that starts every one of them. A full kitchen cabinet set rip-out is $293.

4. Paint, chemicals and anything hazardous

Household hazardous material is excluded everywhere, and for good reason — it cannot go to a transfer station with everything else.

Paint is the one that stops most Seattle basement clearouts dead. Every old house here has a shelf of half-used tins, and in a damp basement they rust and become harder to identify, not easier.

Paint is $30 for a one-gallon can and $52 for a five-gallon bucket. Propane tanks at 20 lb are $33. Tell whoever is collecting what you have before the day rather than putting it in a box and hoping — it changes how the load is handled.

Anything genuinely hazardous — solvents, pesticides, automotive chemicals, asbestos-containing material — goes through a dedicated channel. Ask rather than guess.

5. Tires, and the heavy oddments

Tires are excluded from general collection nearly everywhere, because they are handled through their own recycling stream. A single tire is $22 and a set of four is $87.

The same category catches a group of heavy items that municipal programs tend to decline on weight or handling grounds, and which this city has in quantity:

• Hot tubs — $322, or $390 for a six-to-eight person. Seattle back gardens are full of them, and a decade of rain does not improve the cabinet.
• Pianos — upright $290, baby grand $438. Common in the older houses, and never a DIY removal down a stair with a turn in it.
• Exercise equipment — treadmill $115, home gym $241, weight set $93.
• Oil tanks — $461 empty, $847 full. Buried and basement oil tanks are a genuine feature of pre-war Seattle houses, and they surface during a sale.

What to do with the excluded pile

The practical approach: use municipal collection for whatever it genuinely accepts, and put everything on the exclusion list onto a single booked visit.

Splitting it costs more, because every visit carries the $95 minimum. And for a mixed pile — some debris, a fridge, a few boxes, the paint shelf — volume pricing is usually the cleaner buy: quarter truck $241, half $431, three quarters $587, full $732, disposal included.

One last Seattle-specific point. Do not stage the excluded pile outside while you work out what to do with it. Two weeks on a porch or under a carport in this climate turns a manageable job into a heavier, moldier one, and anything that might have been rehomed will not be.

Frequently asked questions