Air conditioner disposal in Boston

The short answer

Every one of those is a sealed refrigerant system except the space heater, and handling that properly is inside the price. Nothing is added for it. There is no refrigerant fee.

The visit minimum is $75, so a single window unit stands on its own.

Why Boston has so many window units

Most of the housing in this city was built before anybody was thinking about central air, and a great deal of it still has none. Triple-deckers, two-families, brownstones in the Back Bay and the South End, and the older triple-window apartment blocks in Allston and Brighton all solve summer the same way: a box in the window from May, out again in October.

Which produces a very specific local pattern. Every fall, several hundred thousand air conditioners come out of Boston windows and go somewhere. That somewhere is usually a back porch, a hallway landing or a basement. They sit there through a New England winter, they collect damp, the coils corrode, and by the third or fourth spring the unit either does not start or runs but does not get cold.

Then it stays in the basement, because it is heavy and awkward and nobody quite knows what to do with it. That is the unit we usually come and get.

Taking a window unit out is the dangerous part

A large window air conditioner weighs enough to matter, and it is held in place by a sash, two flimsy accordion panels and optimism. Getting one out of a third-floor triple-decker window while leaning over it is genuinely how people get hurt, and it is how units end up in the alley below.

• Two people, always. One takes the weight from inside while the other handles the sash.
• Pull the plug first, and unscrew the brackets before you lift, not after.
• Tilt it back into the room, not out. There is condensate in the base pan and it will run.
• Never work it out over a Back Bay or South End stoop. Anything dropped from a brownstone window lands on a public sidewalk.

If it is already out and sitting on the porch, great. If it is still in the window, say so when you book — the crew takes it out. That is not an extra.

Why you cannot just put it on the curb

A window AC is a sealed system with refrigerant in it and a compressor full of oil. That is not household bulky waste anywhere in this metro, and a unit dumped on a sidewalk is a unit whose refrigerant circuit gets cracked open by the first thing that crushes it.

Handled properly, the refrigerant is recovered by someone set up to do it, the compressor and the copper go to metal recovery, and the casing is scrapped. That process is inside the price you see. What your own municipality will or will not accept at the curb is a separate question and it differs across Boston, Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline — check their current page if you want to try that route.

October is the month to do this

There is a natural window in Boston, and it is the few weeks between the last warm day and the first hard frost.

That is when the units come out anyway. It is when the porch furniture goes in, when the storm windows go up, and when you are already looking at the corner of the basement where three dead air conditioners are stacked. Doing all of it in one visit is cheaper than doing it in three.

A realistic October booking from a Brighton two-family: two large window units, a dehumidifier and a small junk pile of everything else off the porch. That is $147 + $147 + $104 + $110 = $508.

A simpler one from a Dorchester third floor: one large unit and one small. $147 + $117 = $264.

Mini-splits, heat pumps and the outdoor box

A lot of Boston housing is converting — mini-split heads inside, a condenser unit bolted to a pad or a bracket outside. That changes what people need removed.

The outdoor condenser or heat pump unit is $155. It is heavier than a window unit, it is usually on a concrete pad in a side yard or strapped to a wall bracket, and its refrigerant lines must be disconnected by an HVAC technician before it comes off. That is not a hauling job. Have it professionally disconnected first, then the removal is straightforward.

The indoor wall heads and line sets that come out of the same conversion are ordinary construction debris at $162 if there is a real pile of them, or they go in with the rest of the job.

Once the mini-splits are in, the old window units become surplus all at once. That is the other common Boston booking: four or five of them out of a basement in a single visit.

Dehumidifiers, and the Boston basement

Nearly every house in this city has a real basement, and nearly every real basement in New England has a dehumidifier in it running from April to October. They are refrigerant systems too, they work hard, and they die. $104.

If yours has stopped pulling water, it is generally finished rather than fixable. The practical move is to take the old one out in the same visit as the air conditioners — they are usually in the same corner of the same basement — and put the new one in on a dry floor.

Getting it out is a bulkhead carry: four stone steps, a low header, and a door that only opens so far. That is standard here and it does not change the price.

Booking it

Say how many units, roughly what size, and whether they are still in the windows. The total shows before you book. Flat price, carried from any floor, refrigerant handled, disposal included — no stair charge, no walk-up fee, no same-day surcharge.

If you have a basement full of them, compare the item total against the truck ladder. A quarter truck is $325 and covers a lot of air conditioners.

Frequently asked questions