How to get rid of a refrigerator in Washington DC

The short answer

Carry-out from any floor, transport and refrigerant-stream handling are inside those numbers. Nothing is added for the stoop, the stair, the alley or the refrigerant.

Why delivery haul-away keeps failing in DC

Retail haul-away is designed for a house with a garage and a driveway. It works in Bethesda, Falls Church, Vienna and Annandale. It works badly in the District.

A Capitol Hill or Shaw rowhouse puts the kitchen at the back of a narrow house. The refrigerator has to travel the full length of the ground floor, through a front door that is often 30 to 34 inches, across a landing, and down eight to twelve stoop steps to a sidewalk on a permit-parked block where the delivery truck is double-parked with hazards on.

Delivery crews run routes with schedules. When the job is not what the paperwork said, they leave it, and you end up with the new unit in the hallway and the old one still in the kitchen. That is the most common reason people book a separate removal here.

Before the crew arrives

• Empty it. Completely. Food left in a unit that has been off for a day in a DC summer is genuinely unpleasant by the time it reaches the truck.
• Defrost it. Unplug at least 24 hours ahead and put towels down. Meltwater on a rowhouse stair is the avoidable mess in this category.
• Disconnect the water line if it has an ice maker. Shut the valve, disconnect, and catch what comes out.
• Take the doors off if it is close. Measure the narrowest point on the route -- usually the front door or the turn at the bottom of the stoop -- against the unit's depth. If it is within an inch, the doors come off, and the crew will do that.
• Clear the path. Rowhouse halls are narrow. The console table in the hall is the thing that costs ten minutes.

The built-in kitchens

Upper Northwest, Kalorama, Georgetown, Bethesda, Potomac and McLean have a lot of built-in refrigeration -- cabinet-depth, panelled to match the joinery, fitted into a surround. That is the $238 line.

It is a different removal. The decorative panels come off first, the unit unbolts from the surround, and the case is heavier than a freestanding equivalent because cabinet-depth units carry more steel. The surround stays, which matters if the kitchen is being kept and only the appliance is being replaced.

Have the water line shut and disconnected and any hardwired connection isolated by a tradesperson before the visit.

Refrigerant, and why regular collection refuses it

Every unit in the list contains refrigerant in a sealed circuit and goes through a separate recovery stream. That is why your building's trash room refuses it, why scrap collectors on a rowhouse block will not take it, and why municipal bulky programs handle it under different terms than furniture.

Two things not to do. Do not let anyone cut the lines on your property to strip the compressor -- a vented circuit is a problem with your address on it. And do not leave a working-looking unit accessible on the frontage with the doors on; it is both a hazard and, in most of this metro, a violation on public space.

There is no refrigerant surcharge on the published price.

Where it lives in a DC property

• Rear kitchen, rowhouse. The long route through the house and down the stoop. Capitol Hill, Shaw, Petworth, Bloomingdale, Brookland.
• English basement. Full-size units live in these rental kitchens and come out up the exterior stair under the stoop. No below-grade charge.
• Walk-up apartment. Three and four floors in Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant, Columbia Heights, with no elevator. No stair charge.
• High-rise. Navy Yard, NoMa, the Wharf, Rosslyn, Ballston, Bethesda, Tysons. A certificate of insurance naming the association and management, plus a reserved freight elevator. Certificate produced at no charge.
• Suburban house. Bethesda, Silver Spring, Falls Church, Annandale. Kitchen to garage to driveway. Straightforward.

The mini fridge season

The $115 mini fridge is a May item in this city. Georgetown, GW, Howard, American, Catholic, UDC and UMD College Park all release students in the same few weeks, and the Foggy Bottom, Langley Park and College Park corridors fill with them.

If you are a landlord or a group-house tenant handling several, book them together on one visit. Two mini fridges and a twin mattress is $115 + $115 + $82 = $312.

If it still works

A refrigerator that is only a few years old and still cooling properly has a genuine reuse path, and some charities and reuse programs in this region will take one in good condition. It is worth a call before you book, especially for a full-size unit from a kitchen renovation rather than a failure.

What is not worth the call: a unit that stopped cooling, one with a failed compressor, one with door seals gone, or one that has been sitting unpowered in a humid DC cellar. Those are disposal, and $164 is what it costs to have one carried out of a rowhouse on a date you choose.

Frequently asked questions