How to get rid of a refrigerator in Seattle

The prices

Refrigerant recovery is included. There is no refrigerant fee, no appliance surcharge and no disposal fee at the end. Carry-out from any floor is included and there is no stair charge. Minimum visit $95.

The very common Seattle double: the kitchen fridge and the garage chest freezer on one visit is $164 + $146 = $310.

Prep, the day before

1. Empty it completely — door shelves, crisper, ice drawer.
2. Turn it off and defrost it with towels down. A freezer compartment that is still frozen drips the entire way out, and in a Seattle house that route runs across a hall floor and down a wooden basement stair.
3. Disconnect the water line if it has an ice maker or a water dispenser, and shut the supply off. Old shut-off valves in hundred-year-old houses here are routinely seized — find out before the fridge is half out, not after.
4. Tape the doors shut for the move.
5. Clear the route: rugs up, doors wedged, anything loose off the landing.

The Seattle doorway problem

A modern fridge is wider than fridges used to be. A 1920s Seattle kitchen doorway is not.

In the Craftsman stock across Wallingford, Phinney Ridge, Mount Baker, Columbia City and Beacon Hill, the kitchen is a separate room with its own door, and that door frame is frequently narrower than the fridge standing in front of it. The fridge got in because somebody took the doors off it, or because the frame has since been rebuilt, or because it went in before a wall did.

So the first question is not how heavy it is. It is whether it comes out of the room. The usual answer is that the fridge doors come off, which buys a few inches and is a normal part of the job.

The second question is the stair. A side-by-side at $183 coming down a narrow stair with a turn at the landing is a genuine two-person technical problem, and it is the point where door frames and plaster get damaged by people improvising.

The garage fridge

Close to universal in this city, and a slightly different job.

The second fridge — or the chest freezer beside it — lives in a detached, unheated, uninsulated garage that sits at ambient humidity for nine months a year. Three consequences:

• It has usually been failing for a while. Compressors work harder in a cold damp garage, and these units are generally older to begin with.
• The feet have rusted to the concrete. Expect it to be stuck rather than simply heavy.
• The access is its own problem. Alley-facing garages in Ballard and Wallingford are easy. Garages cut into a slope below the house on Queen Anne, Magnolia or West Seattle mean the unit comes up a steep short driveway by hand.

There is no long-carry fee for any of that. If the garage is being cleared anyway, put the fridge on the same booking: a half truck plus the fridge is $431 + $164 = $595.

What not to do with it

• Do not leave it on the parking strip. It rusts quickly in this climate, and if nobody collects it, it becomes a code-enforcement matter with your address on it.
• Do not leave it anywhere with the doors on. A fridge or freezer standing outside with a working door latch is a genuine danger to children. Remove the doors or, better, do not leave it out at all.
• Do not strip it for scrap yourself. Refrigerant has to be recovered properly by someone qualified, and that handling is already inside the price.
• Do not put it on a dolly at the top of a wet exterior stair run and hope. Downhill momentum with a 100 kg appliance is how people get seriously hurt in this city specifically.

The free routes, and when they actually apply

Two are worth checking before you book anything.

Retailer haul-away. If a replacement is being delivered, many retailers will take the old unit. Ask when you order, and ask specifically about your access — haul-away is usually limited to the same position on the ground floor with a clear route. That works in a Northgate rambler with a kitchen off the driveway. It does not cover a basement, a second-floor flat, or a house fifteen steps above the sidewalk.

Scrap collectors. Fridges are worth something as metal, and a collector may take one free from a driveway, an alley or an open garage. They will not come into the house for it.

Also worth a look: some utilities run appliance recycling programs. Check what yours currently offers, since terms and eligibility change.

If none of those reach where your fridge actually is — which is the common Seattle outcome — the flat price covers the part that is hard.

Booking it

Tell us four things and the job takes twenty minutes: which unit it is, which floor or building it is in, whether there are exterior steps, and whether anything else is going at the same time.

That last one matters financially. Every visit carries the $95 minimum, so the kitchen fridge, the garage freezer and the old washer on one truck — $164 + $146 + $133 = $443 — is better than three separate afternoons.

Frequently asked questions