Five things Baltimore bulk pickup will not take

First, the thing everyone gets wrong

Before the list: bulk collection is curbside and it is scheduled. It does not come inside your house, and an item set out on a day that is not your window is not a set-out, it is an abandoned item.

That matters more in Baltimore than in a metro of driveways and garages, because in a rowhouse the difficult half of the job is getting the thing from a third-floor bedroom or a dug-out cellar to the pavement. That half is never included.

Also: Baltimore City and Baltimore County run different programs. A rowhouse in Hampden and a house in Towson follow different instructions. Look up the one that covers your address, because everything below varies by program and changes over time.

1. Household hazardous waste

Paint, stain, solvents, thinners, motor oil, gas, pesticides, weedkiller, pool chemicals, car batteries, fluorescent tubes. Every one of these is routinely excluded from general bulk collection and routed to a separate hazardous waste program instead.

Every garage and cellar in this city has a shelf of exactly this, usually inherited from whoever owned the house before. Check your city or county's current household hazardous waste drop-off information for dates and locations, and plan it early, because those programs run on fixed dates rather than on demand.

We cannot take these either, and no legitimate hauler can. Anyone who offers to is telling you something about where your junk is going to end up.

2. Electronics and televisions

Handled separately from household waste across Maryland, with TVs and monitors the strictest category because of what is inside them.

The Baltimore-specific consequence: a TV left in a rear alley just stays there. The scrap trucks that work the alleys take steel and leave televisions, so it rains on, and the pile around it grows.

Flat prices instead:

3. Anything containing refrigerant

Refrigerators, freezers, window and portable air conditioners, dehumidifiers and outdoor condenser units. These are commonly excluded from general bulk or handled under separate appliance rules, because federal requirements mean the refrigerant has to be recovered by someone qualified rather than released.

There is no refrigerant surcharge on any of those. Proper handling is inside the price.

4. Construction and renovation debris

Plaster, lath, drywall, tile, brick, concrete, cabinets, old countertops, framing timber and the general output of a gut job. Bulk programs are designed for household bulky items, not for the results of a contractor's week, and this is one of the most consistent exclusions anywhere.

It comes up constantly in Baltimore, because rowhouse renovation is the city's default home improvement and plaster-and-lath demolition produces an astonishing volume of heavy, dusty material.

5. Tires, and the near-misses

Tires are excluded from general collection essentially everywhere and go through a separate route, usually a tire retailer or a dedicated drop-off. Check yours.

Three more that trip people up, though they are less absolute:

• Propane tanks. The grill is fine, at $59 charcoal or $71 propane. The full cylinder is not, and most propane retailers take it on exchange.
• Anything over the item count. Bulk programs typically cap how many items you can set out per collection, which is the constraint that quietly defeats a whole-house clear-out.
• Anything still inside the house. The permanent exclusion, and the one that matters most here.

What to do with the exclusion list

The efficient plan for a Baltimore rowhouse is to split it in two.

• Hazardous waste goes to the county or city drop-off. Fixed dates, so do it first.
• Everything else goes in one visit. Appliances, electronics, furniture, renovation debris and the general contents can all travel together, which means you pay one visit minimum rather than several.

The minimum is $75 per visit, so consolidating genuinely saves money. And if the list gets long, compare it against the truck-fill tiers: a quarter truck is $241, a half is $431, a full is $732.

One last Baltimore note

When an item is excluded from bulk collection, the temptation is to put it out anyway and see what happens. On a rowhouse block with a rear alley, what happens is that it stays, it attracts more, and the whole pile becomes associated with the nearest address, which is yours.

The city has pursued illegal dumping seriously for years, including camera surveillance at persistent sites, and neighbors report it. It is not a gap worth testing.

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