Air conditioner disposal in Columbus

The short answer

Visit minimum is $75. Two large window units is $109 + $109 = $218. A window unit and a dehumidifier out of the same basement is $109 + $77 = $186.

All of these contain refrigerant. Recovery by a certified technician is required before scrapping, it is handled as part of the removal, and it is inside the price. There is no refrigerant fee and no environmental surcharge.

Why Columbus has so many window units

Because a large share of the housing here predates central air and never got it retrofitted.

The century doubles and half-doubles in the University District, Old North, Weinland Park, Merion Village and parts of German Village were built for steam or gravity heat. Adding ductwork to a house like that means either soffits through the living space or a high-velocity system, both of which cost money a landlord may not spend. So a window unit goes in the front room, a second one goes in a bedroom, and they stay in the windows for years.

Central Ohio summers make them non-optional. It is genuinely humid here from June through August, and a third-floor conversion in a Victorian Village double is unliveable without something in the window.

The result is a very consistent local disposal item: a heavy old sleeve unit, rusted at the base, that stopped cooling two summers ago and has been sitting in a hallway or a basement ever since.

The October pattern

Window units come out in October. They go into the garage, the basement or the back of a closet, and about a third of them never go back in, because they stopped working and nobody wanted to deal with it in the cold.

That is the single best time to book. It is a cheap add-on to a garage cleanout you were doing anyway, and it is far better than the alternative, which is discovering in June that the unit does not work and having to get rid of it during the one week you want it.

The same seasonality applies to portable units at $85, which people buy for exactly the rooms a window unit will not fit and then store on a landing.

Outdoor condensers and heat pumps

The suburban version of this article. Across Dublin, Westerville, Hilliard, Gahanna, Reynoldsburg and Grove City, the outdoor unit beside the house is the thing that fails, usually in the first hot week of the year or the first hard cold snap if it is a heat pump.

When an HVAC contractor replaces it, they will often take the old one. When they do not, or when the old unit has already been disconnected and left on the pad, it is $115.

Two practical points. The line set and the electrical disconnect are the contractor's work, not ours; the unit should be properly disconnected before we come. And if the old condenser has been sitting on its pad through a couple of Ohio winters, expect the pad itself to be the next conversation. Broken concrete is priced as masonry debris at $219 per quarter truck.

Why you cannot just put it at the curb

Because of the sealed system. Refrigerant is a regulated substance and federal rules require it to be recovered by a certified technician before a unit is destroyed or scrapped. That is why anything with a compressor in it is treated differently from ordinary metal.

In practice that means three routes close off:

• Regular bulky set-out. Assume a unit with refrigerant is not an ordinary tree-lawn item, and check the city's refuse collection page for your address rather than guessing.
• The free scrap collector. Plenty of people take clean steel off a driveway in Hilliard. Most will not take a sealed system.
• Driving it to a disposal site yourself. It will not go in as-is.

Booking it handles the recovery and the recycling in one price.

Getting it out of the window

A word on the actual removal, because it is the part that hurts people every year.

Window units are heavier than they look and their weight is all in the back half, which is the half hanging over a drop. Taking one out of a second-floor window in a University District double, on your own, leaning over a sill, is how people end up dropping a compressor onto a porch roof or into a hedge.

Two people, one on each side, pull it straight in before either of you tries to carry it. Or leave it, and it comes out as part of the pickup at the flat price.

Also expect the window and the sill to look bad underneath. A unit that has been in place for five seasons in Ohio leaves rust staining, warped side panels and sometimes rot in an old wooden sill. That is worth seeing before you list the house.

Landlords near campus

If you own units in the University District, Old North or Weinland Park, window air conditioners are a recurring turnover item. Tenants leave them, they are too heavy to carry out casually, and they accumulate in basements and on porches across the August changeover.

Book them with the rest of the turnover rather than separately. Three large units at $109 each comes to $327, and if the house is also producing mattresses and furniture the truck ladder is likely the cheaper route: half $431, three-quarters $587, full $732.

Booking

Add the units, see the total, pick a window. If a single small unit at $87 is all you have, you are under the $75 minimum on the visit either way, so it is worth adding whatever else is sitting near it: a box of electronics is $77, a countertop microwave is $30, a bicycle is $37.

Same prices across Franklin County and the surrounding suburbs. Same-day is often available, which is useful in July when the unit dies and the replacement arrives tomorrow.

Frequently asked questions