Air conditioner disposal in Baltimore

The short answer

Visit minimum $75, so a single small window unit at $87 clears it on its own and a portable at $85 clears it too. Two window units together are $87 + $87 = $174.

Refrigerant handling, removal from the window, carry-out from any floor and disposal are all included. There is no environmental fee and no refrigerant surcharge.

Why an AC unit is not ordinary scrap

Every one of these contains refrigerant in a sealed circuit. Federal rules require refrigerant to be recovered by someone equipped and qualified to do it, rather than released when the unit is crushed. That is the whole reason air conditioners are treated differently from a steel filing cabinet.

It is also why the pickup trucks that work Baltimore's alleys collecting scrap metal are not the right answer for an AC. A dryer is steel and a window unit is a sealed refrigerant system, and informal scrapping of the second one generally skips the part that matters.

We route these so the refrigerant is recovered properly and the metal is recycled after. You arrange nothing and pay nothing extra: a large window unit is $109 and that is the entire cost.

Baltimore runs on window units

This city's housing stock is why. A huge share of Baltimore's rowhouses were built long before central air was a consideration, and retrofitting ductwork into a fourteen-foot-wide house with plaster walls and a stair running through the middle is expensive and intrusive.

So window units it is, across Canton, Highlandtown, Patterson Park, Pigtown, Charles Village, Waverly and most of the rowhouse city. A three-bedroom rowhome frequently has three or four of them, and they come out of second and third floor windows.

In subdivided rowhouse apartments in Charles Village and Mount Vernon there is often one per room, all of them of different ages, and a landlord replaces them in batches. Four small units is $87 + $87 + $87 + $87 = $348, though at that point the quarter-truck tier at $241 is usually cheaper.

The seasonal pattern

Two spikes a year, both predictable.

Late spring. Somebody goes to install last year's unit, discovers it will not start, and now there is a dead window AC in the hallway on a ninety-degree day in June. This is the most common AC removal call in Baltimore.

October. Units come out of windows for the winter, and the ones that struggled all summer do not go back in the closet. This is the sensible time to deal with it, because a crew is not carrying it down three flights in August humidity.

The dehumidifier follows the same cycle for a different reason. Baltimore summers are humid and harbor-adjacent rowhouse cellars in Canton, Locust Point and Federal Hill run a dehumidifier constantly from May to September. They do not last forever, and a dead one is $77.

Getting it out of the window safely

Do not do this alone from an upper floor. A large window unit is heavy, the weight sits outside the sill, and the moment it comes free it wants to go out rather than in.

What to do before the crew arrives:

• Unplug it and leave it in place. Do not half-remove it and leave it balanced.
• Drain it. Units hold water, and a tilted unit brought through a bedroom empties onto the floor.
• Clear the sill and the route, including anything on the stairs.
• Say which floor. A unit in a third-floor front window in a Bolton Hill rowhouse is a two-person job, and the crew brings the people.

If the unit is already out and sitting in a hallway, say that too. It does not change the $109, it changes how fast the visit goes.

Condensers, heat pumps and mini-splits

An outdoor condenser or heat pump unit is $115, once it has been properly disconnected. That disconnection is a job for an HVAC technician, not a removal crew, and for a good reason: the refrigerant in a residential system must be recovered by a qualified technician before the unit is opened or cut loose. Electrical disconnection needs doing correctly too.

The usual Baltimore sequence is that an HVAC contractor installs the replacement, evacuates and disconnects the old unit, and leaves it in the back yard or on the pad. That is the point where we take it, at $115.

If the old concrete pad is going too, concrete and masonry debris is $219 per quarter truck.

Getting it to the truck

In a rowhouse the question is front or back. Out through the vestibule and over the marble steps, or through the yard to the rear alley.

For a heavy condenser the alley is usually better, if it is passable. Many Baltimore alleys are one vehicle wide with parking pads and poles narrowing them, so tell us in the notes whether yours is usable and whether there is a rear gate.

If nothing can get behind the house, the crew carries to the nearest legal stop. There is no long-carry fee, no stair fee and no access charge.

Booking it

Select the units, see the total, pick a window. Say how many, roughly what size, which floor, and whether they are still in the windows. October and April windows are easy to get. The last week of June is the week everyone in Baltimore discovers their AC is dead at once.

Frequently asked questions