How to get rid of a refrigerator in Boston

The short answer

Flat price, from wherever it is standing. Third floor of a triple-decker, up out of a basement, out of a Back Bay brownstone with a stoop — same number. No stair charge, no walk-up fee, no refrigerant fee.

Why the curb is not an option for this one

A refrigerator is a sealed refrigerant system with a compressor full of oil, and it is not household bulky waste. Everywhere in this metro it goes down a separate route, and a fridge left on a sidewalk is a fridge whose refrigerant circuit is going to get cracked open by whatever eventually crushes it.

There is a second reason, older than the environmental one: an abandoned refrigerator with the door still on is a genuine hazard to children. If a fridge is going to sit anywhere for even a day — a back porch in Dorchester, an alley in Somerville — take the doors off first. Two hinges and ten minutes.

What your own municipality offers for appliances differs across Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline and Quincy, and it changes. If you want to go that route, read their current page rather than a neighbor's account of how it went in 2019.

Getting a fridge out of a Boston building

This is the actual difficulty, and it is entirely local.

The triple-decker back stairs. Narrow, enclosed, a turn at every landing, and a wooden handrail that a fridge corner will find. A standard refrigerator is about thirty inches wide and rigid. It goes down on a strap and an appliance dolly with someone below it calling the turns, and on the third floor it is a two-person job that takes a while.

The brownstone galley kitchen. In the South End and Back Bay the kitchen doorway is frequently narrower than the fridge. The doors come off the fridge, sometimes the door comes off its hinges too, and it goes through sideways. Then there is the stoop.

The basement. Boston has real basements and Boston basements have second refrigerators in them. Getting one back up a set of stone bulkhead steps, under a low header, is harder than getting it down there was — because when it went down, it was new and somebody was being careful.

All of that is inside the flat price. It is the job, not a surcharge.

What to do before the crew arrives

• Empty it. Completely. Food, shelves, the drawer of condiments from a previous tenancy.
• Unplug it 24 hours ahead and prop the door open so it defrosts and dries. A fridge unplugged an hour before still has a freezer full of ice and a base pan of water that will run down the stairs behind it.
• Put towels down under the base while it defrosts. There is always more water than you expect.
• Turn off the water line if it has an ice maker or a water dispenser, and disconnect it. That is a shut-off valve behind the unit or under the sink.
• Tape the doors shut for the carry, or let the crew take them off.
• Clear the route. Rugs up, shoes off the stairs, and unlatch the back door if that is the way out.

The Boston second fridge

A specific local institution: the extra refrigerator in the basement of a two-family or triple-decker. It came out of the kitchen in 1998 when the kitchen got redone, it went downstairs to hold drinks, and it has been running ever since, badly, on a circuit that also feeds the washing machine.

It is worth knowing that a refrigerator from the nineties running in a damp Massachusetts basement uses a genuinely silly amount of electricity for the job of chilling a case of beer. When one of those goes, people usually do not replace it.

Getting it out is $221 and the carry is up the bulkhead. If the basement is also holding an upright freezer ($201) and a dehumidifier ($104) that has quit, do the lot in one visit: $221 + $201 + $104 = $526.

Landlords, September 1, and appliance swaps

Boston's lease calendar puts an enormous amount of appliance turnover into one week. Landlords replace tired fridges and ranges between tenants, which means between August 31 and September 1, which means the old one needs to be out of the apartment before the new one can go in and before the new tenant's sofa is on the sidewalk.

The sequence that works: book the removal for the morning of the changeover, have the old fridge already unplugged and defrosted from the day before, and have the delivery scheduled for the afternoon. The sequence that does not work is both trucks arriving at once on a permit-parking street in Allston where there is one legal space.

A common turnover booking: refrigerator $221 plus an electric range $180 plus a dishwasher $147, which is $221 + $180 + $147 = $548.

Built-ins, Sub-Zeros and wine fridges

Beacon Hill, Back Bay and the brownstone South End produce a steady stream of built-in refrigerators coming out of kitchen renovations. Those are $320, and they are a different animal: heavier, paneled to match the cabinetry, and fixed into a surround with brackets at the top.

Say it is a built-in when you book. It needs unbolting rather than pulling out, the cabinet panel usually comes off first, and there is no route where you simply walk it forward. Wine coolers from the same renovations are $210 for a floor unit and $150 for a countertop one.

If a whole kitchen is coming out, the cabinets go too — a full kitchen cabinet rip-out is $395, and stone countertop sections are $150 each.

Booking it

Say which kind of fridge, which floor, and whether the route out is the front stairs, the back stairs or a bulkhead. The price appears before you book and does not change afterwards. Refrigerant handling, the carry and disposal are all in it.

Same-day and next-day slots are usually open, at the same price as any other slot. The two weeks to book early for are the end of August into September, and May graduation.

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