Five things bulk pickup will not take in Miami

First, whose rules are you under?

Before anything else: Miami-Dade is not one waste program. The City of Miami, Miami Beach, Hialeah, Coral Gables, Doral, North Miami, Aventura, Homestead, Miami Gardens and unincorporated Miami-Dade all run their own arrangements, with their own exclusions, their own set-out windows and their own scheduling rules.

Plenty of addresses with a Miami postal address are not in the City of Miami at all — large parts of Kendall, Westchester and Fontainebleau are unincorporated county. Check your own municipality's bulky-item page rather than a neighbor's experience.

And if you live in a condo or a managed rental complex, the building's rules apply on top of all of it and are usually stricter. Nearly every building waste contract in the county excludes bulky items entirely, so the compactor room is not an option regardless of what the city does.

With that said, five categories are commonly excluded almost everywhere in the metro. These are the ones that get left.

1. Electronics

Televisions, monitors, computers, printers and stereo equipment are electronic waste, and e-waste is generally kept out of ordinary bulky collection.

This is the number one item left standing at a Miami curb. It is also the number one item carried down to a building trash room, where it gets removed by management and billed back to the unit, usually for more than removal would have cost.

Prices if you want it gone on a date you choose: a television under 42 inches is $62, a 42-to-65-inch set $68, anything over 65 inches $73. A computer monitor is $58, a desktop tower $62, and the drawer of cables, remotes and routers goes as a box of electronics at $77.

Wipe anything with an account signed into it before the day. Factory reset a smart television and sign out from another device afterwards.

2. Appliances, especially anything with refrigerant

Refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners and dehumidifiers are handled differently from furniture nearly everywhere, because of the refrigerant and the insulating foam. Some programs take them by separate appointment, some not at all, and many will not take a unit left out without arrangement.

In Miami this category is unusually large. Air conditioning runs most of the year here, salt air eats outdoor condensers near the water, and the garage second fridge — a Florida institution, since there are no basements to put one in — eventually dies in the heat.

Flat prices: a standard refrigerator $164, a side-by-side or French door $183, a built-in $238, a mini fridge $115, a chest freezer $146. A window AC unit is $87 or $109 by size, a portable $85, and an outdoor condenser or heat pump $115. There is no refrigerant fee on any of them.

One condition on the condenser: the refrigerant has to be recovered by a licensed technician and the power disconnected first. That is normally part of the HVAC changeout — ask your installer whether hauling the old unit is included in their quote, because it frequently is not.

3. Renovation and construction debris

Bulky collection is for household items. It is not for the output of a job site, and drywall, tile, cabinets, countertops, concrete, doors and windows are routinely excluded.

This metro generates an enormous amount of it. Impact-window replacement, balcony and structural work across the older beachfront and Biscayne Boulevard buildings, kitchen and bathroom gut-outs in Coral Gables and the Grove, and the steady churn of condo interiors in Brickell and Edgewater all produce loads that a residential curbside program was never designed for.

Prices: construction debris is $120, concrete or masonry debris is $219 per quarter truck, drywall is $37 a sheet or small bundle, tile or flooring $33 a box or bundle, a base kitchen cabinet $67 and an upper $48, a full kitchen cabinet set rip-out $293, a bathroom vanity $69, a detached toilet $64, a stone or granite countertop section $111, a glass sliding or patio door $82.

In a building, the service elevator window and the certificate of insurance matter more than the debris does. Sort that with management first.

4. Household hazardous waste

Never a bulky pickup item anywhere, and never a junk truck item either. This is its own disposal stream and it needs your county or municipality's household chemical arrangements.

What falls in it, and what a Miami garage reliably contains: liquid paint, solvents, gas and fuel cans, motor oil, pesticides, pool chemicals, fluorescent tubes and car batteries. Pool chemicals are the distinctly local entry — a huge share of houses in Kendall, Pinecrest, Coral Gables and the Gables-adjacent neighborhoods have a pool, and the shelf above the pump has years of accumulated chlorine and acid on it.

Two things that are not hazardous waste and can go on a truck: dried or solidified paint, at $30 a gallon can and $52 a five-gallon bucket, and an empty 20 lb propane tank at $33. A full propane tank is an exchange, not a disposal. A car battery goes back to the retailer that sells them.

Set all of this aside before the crew arrives so it does not hold up the visit.

5. Tires

Tires are excluded from ordinary collection almost universally, for a practical reason that is more acute here than in most of the country: a tire left outdoors holds water, and standing water in this climate breeds mosquitoes within days.

They accumulate anyway — along the side of the house, behind the shed, in the carport — and they are one of the few things people genuinely cannot work out what to do with.

A single tire is $22 and a set of four is $87. Tire retailers will normally take the old ones when they fit new ones, so the ones that end up as a disposal problem are usually the spare set from a car sold years ago.

The near-misses

Three more that are conditional rather than excluded, and catch people out for that reason.

Mattresses. Often accepted, often with conditions — bagging, scheduling, a separate count from other bulky items. And regardless of the rule, a mattress that has sat at a Miami curb through two afternoon storms is soaked, far heavier, and likely to be refused on the day. A queen is $103 removed from the bedroom instead.

Yard waste. Usually a separate stream from bulky items, not part of it. Mixing palm fronds and hedge trimmings into a furniture pile is a common way to have the whole pile skipped. Yard waste is $88.

Anything set out at the wrong time. Not a category, but the most frequent failure of all. Outside the allowed window it stops being a collection item and becomes a code enforcement matter addressed to you — and in the HOA neighborhoods out in Doral, Weston, Parkland and the newer Kendall subdivisions, the association will get there before the city does.

The simpler route

If your pile contains any of the five, the sorting exercise is usually worth more of your attention than the saving is.

A single visit takes all of it: electronics, appliances, renovation debris, tires and furniture together, from inside the house rather than the curb, on a date you pick. Named items price individually from a $75 minimum, and unsortable loads price on the truck ladder — a quarter truck $241, a half $431, three-quarters $587, a full truck $732.

Nothing waits outside overnight, which between June and November is the part that actually matters. Bookings and crews work in Spanish across the county.

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