What hot tub removal costs in Boston

The short answer

That is the flat price. It includes the labor of cutting the shell down if the tub cannot leave your yard whole, loading it, and disposing of it. There is no extra for a difficult yard, a deck, or a narrow gap between two houses.

You drain it and disconnect the power. Those two jobs are yours, and they are explained below.

Why a Boston hot tub is almost always a cut-up job

Elsewhere in the country a crew rolls a hot tub across a lawn on furniture dollies and lifts it onto a trailer whole. That happens here occasionally — a Needham or Weston backyard with a gate wide enough — but it is the exception.

The Boston default is the opposite. The tub is on a deck behind a two-family. The only route out is a side yard about three feet wide, between your house and the neighbor's, with a gas meter sticking out halfway along. Or it is on a raised deck off the second floor of a triple-decker, reached by a wooden staircase that turns.

So the shell gets cut into sections in place and carried out in pieces. That is normal, it is planned for, and it is inside the $434. A hot tub shell is an acrylic skin over foam over a wooden or composite frame; it comes apart in a predictable way and it does not take all day.

Drain it first — properly, and not in January

The one thing that genuinely derails a booking is arriving to find a tub still full. Four hundred gallons of water is well over a ton and nothing is moving until it is gone.

• Open the drain valve the day before. Most tubs gravity-drain slowly. Give it overnight, not an hour.
• Then get the rest out. Gravity leaves several inches sitting in the footwell. A submersible pump or a shop vac clears it. So does a bucket and twenty minutes of resentment.
• Watch where it goes. Send it down a slope or to a storm drain rather than across the neighbor's foundation. In a dense Boston block those foundations are very close together.
• In winter, do it on a mild day. Draining onto a Somerville side yard when it is below freezing gives you a sheet of ice on the exact path the crew needs to walk. If a hard freeze is coming, book for after it.

The electrical disconnect

A hot tub runs off a dedicated circuit with its own disconnect box, usually mounted on the house wall within sight of the tub. The power has to be off and the tub disconnected before removal. That is an electrician's job, not a hauling job, and it should be done and signed off before the removal slot.

Small saunas and some plug-in cold plunge tubs are simpler — if it runs off an ordinary outlet, unplug it and you are done. Infrared saunas and barrel saunas are usually in that category.

If you are not sure which you have, look at what comes out of the back of the unit. A thick armored cable disappearing into a gray box on the wall means get an electrician. A regular plug on a regular lead means unplug it.

Access, fences and where the truck sits

Three things worth checking before the day:

The narrowest point. Usually a gate, a gap between the house and the property line, or the turn at the bottom of a deck staircase. Measure it. It decides how small the sections need to be, and it is the single most useful thing you can tell us in advance.

Whether a fence panel comes off. In tight Dorchester, Southie and Somerville yards, popping two screws out of a fence panel turns a forty-minute carry into a ten-minute one. If the fence is yours, say so and it can go back afterwards.

Where a truck can legally sit. Resident permit parking on most of these streets, and sections of hot tub shell are bulky rather than heavy, so a long carry out to a legal spot is slow. If you have a driveway, that is the answer. If a neighbor will lend theirs for an hour, even better.

None of it changes the price. All of it changes how long the crew is there.

Decks, frost heave and what is underneath

Once the tub is gone you find out what it was sitting on, and in New England it is usually one of three things: a concrete pad, a bed of gravel, or a section of deck that was built specifically to hold it.

A pad that has been through twenty Boston winters will have moved — frost heave lifts and cracks concrete every year, and a slab under a tub never gets looked at. Decking under a tub is often the darkest, dampest part of the whole deck and sometimes soft. Neither is a surprise, but plan for the fact that the spot will need attention rather than a patio set dropped straight onto it.

The tub itself takes its own frame and skirt with it. If the deck section around it needs to come out as well, that is ordinary construction debris at $162.

Saunas, cold plunges and above-ground pools

Saunas at $395 have become common in Boston backyards and basements over the last few years, largely because they can be used in February. A barrel sauna comes apart into staves and hoops; an indoor infrared cabin unbolts into flat panels and usually comes up out of a basement easily.

Cold plunge tubs at $365 are the same story in reverse. Smaller than a hot tub, often with a chiller unit that goes with it. Drain it the same way.

Above-ground pools at $195 are a Quincy, Medford and Revere staple. Drain it well before the day — an above-ground pool holds far more water than a hot tub, and it needs somewhere sensible to go. The frame, the liner and the ring all leave together.

Booking it

Tell us which of the five things you have, how wide the narrowest point on the route out is, and whether the electrical disconnect has been done. The price shows before you book and does not move afterwards — no surcharge for a cut-up job, a deck, a second-floor carry or a permit-parking street.

The best months in Boston are April through November. It can be done in winter, and is, but a frozen shell is more brittle and an icy side yard slows everything down. If the tub has been sitting dead since last summer, the sensible move is to deal with it before the ground freezes rather than after.

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