Refrigerators, freezers, washers, dryers, stoves, dishwashers, water heaters and air conditioners removed from Santa Monica homes and businesses.
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Santa Monica sends large appliances out on a separate truck that cannot be combined with other bulky items, and crews stop at the curb or alley. Appliance removal here means disconnecting the refrigerator, washer or water heater where it stands, carrying it out, and keeping the sealed refrigerant circuit intact for certified recovery.
Santa Monica treats appliances as their own category, and says so in print. The city's Resource Recovery and Recycling Division collects bulky items Monday through Friday with a maximum of five items per pickup and three free pickups a year, and its published guidance states that large appliances such as refrigerators and freezers are picked up by a separate truck and may not be removed with other items. So an appliance cannot simply be added to a furniture collection, it is a distinct dispatch. The rest of the program's rules still apply: the item must already be at the front curb or in the alley behind the property and labeled for city pick-up before you email 311@santamonica.gov or call (866) 311-7266, you should allow 7 to 10 days, and city crews do not come onto private property. That last line is the important one, because a refrigerator in a kitchen, a water heater in a garage alcove or a stack washer in a second-floor closet is on the wrong side of it. Los Angeles Junk Removal & Hauling disconnects, carries and routes the unit so the sealed refrigerant circuit stays intact, and quotes free upfront.
An appliance is the one household object that is heavy, awkward, plumbed or wired, and legally regulated all at once. A refrigerator is not a large metal box: it is a sealed pressure circuit, a compressor full of oil, a foam insulation layer, a control board and a hundred-odd kilograms of steel, and several of those have their own destination.
Santa Monica's system handles that better than most, and this page is about where it helps and where it stops. What we clear across the city is on junk removal in Santa Monica, and the county-wide service is on appliance removal.
Santa Monica is an independent city with its own waste system, so nothing here works the way it does across the boundary in Los Angeles. Its Resource Recovery and Recycling Division runs from the City Yard at 2500 Michigan Avenue, and the bulky item collection it operates Monday through Friday is available to both residential and commercial customers. Large appliances including refrigerators and freezers are explicitly named among the accepted examples — with the qualification that they are picked up by a separate truck and may not be removed with other items.
That is a more meaningful detail than it sounds. It means an appliance does not share a collection with your sofa, so planning a move-out around a single pickup does not work if a refrigerator is part of it. It also means the appliance is being handled by a crew and a vehicle set up for it, which is the right way to move a sealed unit.
The surrounding parameters are the same as for any bulky item. A maximum of five items per pickup. Three free pickups per year, with additional items collected at the rate effective July 1, 2025 of $253.37 per hour with a one-hour minimum. Allow 7 to 10 days. Request it by emailing 311@santamonica.gov with your address, unit number, phone number and a description, or by calling (866) 311-7266. And crucially, move the item to the front curb or the alley behind the property and label it clearly for city pick-up before you make the request, because city crews do not come onto private property.
Santa Monica also does something for its residents that almost no neighboring city does, and it is relevant to appliances even though it does not cover them. Instead of sending people to a weekend hazardous waste center, the city contracts a free residential door-to-door household hazardous waste collection, booked on (877) 443-2371, with a maximum of 125 pounds per pickup. It accepts motor oils and filters, fuels, fertilizers, paints, solvents, fluorescent tubes, batteries, electronic waste, art supplies, pool and photo chemicals, household cleaning chemicals and sharps. So the small electrical items, the batteries and the tubes from a garage or a laundry room have a genuinely easy free route here. The large sealed appliance does not — that is the bulky truck or a hauler.
Sources: City of Santa Monica bulky collection and hazardous materials pages. Both cited in full below.
| Who collects | the City of Santa Monica's own Resource Recovery and Recycling Division |
|---|---|
| Appliances | large appliances such as refrigerators and freezers are picked up by a separate truck and may not be removed with other items |
| Collection days | Monday through Friday, residential and commercial customers |
| Item ceiling | a maximum of five items per pickup |
| Free allowance | three free pickups per year |
| Above the allowance | the rate effective July 1, 2025 of $253.37 per hour, one-hour minimum |
| Lead time | allow 7 to 10 days, handled in the order received |
| Placement | front curb or the alley behind the property, labeled for city pick-up, before you request it |
| Private property | city crews do not come onto private property |
| Free door-to-door HHW | contracted residential collection on (877) 443-2371, maximum 125 pounds per pickup |
| HHW accepts | motor oils and filters, fuels, fertilizers, paints, solvents, fluorescent tubes, batteries, electronic waste, art supplies, pool and photo chemicals, household cleaning chemicals, sharps |
| Small business HHW | qualifying businesses may drop off the second Wednesday of each month, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the City Yard, 2500 Michigan Avenue, by appointment |
Sources: City of Santa Monica, how to request bulky and abandoned item collection · City of Santa Monica, how to dispose of hazardous materials · City of Santa Monica Public Works, Resource Recovery and Recycling
The first question on an appliance job is never weight, it is connection. A gas stove and a gas dryer need the supply shut and capped properly rather than pulled and left. A dishwasher is plumbed and hard-wired under a counter, usually with the countertop fixed above it. A water heater is strapped for seismic compliance, plumbed, vented, and often still full, and a full fifty-gallon tank is a completely different lift from a drained one. Telling us the connections on the phone is what decides whether the job needs one visit or two.
The second is the route, and Santa Monica's building stock makes that specific. In the walk-up apartment stock the laundry is often a closet off a hallway with a door narrower than the machine, reached by an external stair with a landing barely deeper than the door swing. In the condominium midrise the route is corridor, elevator and loading door, which is easy provided the elevator is working and the building allows it. In the small-lot single family stock north of Montana and through Ocean Park the appliance is frequently in a tuck-under garage with a low posted clearance, which is the easiest carry of all as long as the truck meets it at the alley mouth rather than trying to enter.
Third, the alley. Santa Monica's residential grid is alley-served and that is where the city asks bulky items to go, which makes it the natural loading position. It is also narrow, shared, and the sole vehicular access to a row of garages, so an appliance staged there for the length of a 7 to 10 day collection queue blocks a neighbor. We stage only as long as it takes to load.
Fourth, the coast. Santa Monica appliances corrode faster than their age suggests, particularly anything kept in a carport, a balcony closet or an unheated garage within a mile of the water. A twelve-year-old washer that has spent three years in a Santa Monica garage is frequently worse inside than out, with a rusted base pan or a seized drum. That does not change whether the unit can be moved, but it changes how, because a corroded base pan will not take the weight of a strap.
Fifth, the building rules. Managed buildings and condominium associations commonly require notice, elevator padding, a designated loading door and a certificate of insurance. All of it is routine with a day's warning. If the appliance is one item in a wider clearance see estate cleanouts in Santa Monica.
Tell us what the unit is, whether it is still connected and where it sits. That is the quote.
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Our own crews on Los Angeles County jobs. The appliance removal we run in Santa Monica looks like this too: side yards, narrow walkways and the back of the property is where the work actually is.
An appliance is dismantled in a fixed order and none of it happens at your address. First, refrigerant. Any unit with a sealed circuit — refrigerator, freezer, window or portable air conditioner, dehumidifier, wine cooler — holds a charge that has to be recovered by a certified technician with recovery equipment before the shell can be shredded. That is why the single most useful thing a hauler does with a refrigerator is keep the circuit intact in transit. A unit dragged on its side with the line set snagged has already vented, and nothing downstream undoes that.
Second, compressor oil, drained and handled separately. Third, the metal, which is most of the weight and most of the value: steel cabinet, aluminum and copper in the coil and the motor windings. Fourth, plastics and the foam insulation layer, which is why a refrigerator cannot simply be baled with scrap.
Fifth is the fraction that makes an appliance universal waste rather than scrap: control boards, displays, mercury switches in older chest freezers and dryer doors, and batteries in anything with a memory. California ended the household exemption for universal waste on February 9, 2006, banning household batteries, cell phones, computers, fluorescent lamps, mercury switches and thermostats, printers, microwaves, televisions and monitors from the trash. A microwave is not a borderline case, it is named on the list.
Santa Monica gives its residents an unusually good route for that small-electrical fraction. The city's free door-to-door household hazardous waste collection accepts electronic waste alongside paints, solvents, fuels, tubes and batteries, up to 125 pounds per pickup, booked on (877) 443-2371. For a microwave, a toaster oven and a bag of batteries that is a genuinely excellent free answer and we will tell you so. For a refrigerator, a stack laundry and a water heater it is not the route, and the choice is the city's separate appliance truck with its queue and its property-line rule, or us.
Sources: Californians Against Waste, background on universal waste and DTSC regulations · City of Santa Monica, how to dispose of hazardous materials
Same rule in Santa Monica as anywhere else in Los Angeles County. The local part is the program above, not the disposal law. Full detail on appliance removal.
This page is appliance removal in Santa Monica specifically. The wider service is on appliance removal across Los Angeles, and everything we haul in this city is on junk removal in Santa Monica. Same crew, different job: Furniture removal in Santa Monica, Mattress removal in Santa Monica, Estate cleanouts in Santa Monica. Pricing works the same way everywhere: how our pricing works, and the full map is on areas we serve.
We are already next door most days. The whole list is on areas we serve.
Same crew, same trucks, same free upfront quote.
TVs, CRT monitors and computers. Banned from the trash in California.
Couches, sectionals, mattresses in the same trip, beds, desks and wardrobes carried down rather than dragged.
A full property cleared with care, on probate or move-out timelines.
The whole garage in one visit. We sort, donate what is usable and sweep the slab.
COIs, after-hours dock slots and property-manager invoicing.
Booked and cleared the same day, most days, across LA County.
The separate truck, the property line, refrigerant and the free door-to-door route.
Yes, but on its own truck. Santa Monica's published guidance says large appliances such as refrigerators and freezers are picked up by a separate truck and may not be removed with other items, so it is a distinct dispatch rather than part of a mixed collection. The usual rules still apply: three free pickups a year, five items each, allow 7 to 10 days, and the unit must already be at the curb or in the alley and labeled for city pick-up before you call (866) 311-7266.
No. Santa Monica states that city crews do not come onto private property and that all items must be moved to the alley or curbside to be collected. A refrigerator in a kitchen, a water heater strapped into a garage alcove or a stack washer in an upstairs closet is on the wrong side of that line. Moving it is the work, not the disposal, and it is exactly what we do. Tell us what it is and where it sits and the quote is free and upfront.
Yes, and we would rather do it than find it half done. A gas stove or gas dryer needs the supply shut and capped properly. A dishwasher is plumbed and hard-wired under a fixed counter. A water heater is strapped, plumbed, vented and often still full, and a full fifty-gallon tank is a different lift from a drained one. Tell us the connections when you book so the right crew and tools arrive the first time rather than the second.
You do not need to for us, and we would rather you left it whole. A refrigerator that travels intact keeps its sealed refrigerant circuit intact, and that charge is recovered by a certified technician at the processor rather than vented in a driveway. If the unit is going to stand outside for days waiting on a city collection that is a genuine child-safety question worth thinking about, but for a same-visit removal the right answer is to leave it as it is and let us carry it.
Those have a better free route here than almost anywhere in the region. Santa Monica contracts a free residential door-to-door household hazardous waste collection on (877) 443-2371, which takes electronic waste along with paints, solvents, fuels, fluorescent tubes, batteries, pool and photo chemicals, cleaning chemicals and sharps, up to 125 pounds per pickup. A microwave is universal waste under California law and cannot go in the trash, so use that service. It is free, it comes to your door and it is genuinely good.
Partly. The city's bulky item collection covers commercial as well as residential customers, so the appliance truck is available to you on the same terms. For hazardous material, qualifying small businesses can drop off on the second Wednesday of each month between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the City Yard on Michigan Avenue, by appointment and with a business license shown on arrival. That is a monthly window rather than an on-demand service, so for a commercial kitchen strip-out it usually needs planning around, and we will do that with you.
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Collection rules, transfer stations and permit counters change at the city line, so each of these is written for that city rather than for Santa Monica. A job that straddles two of them is still one visit and one number.
Everything we haul in the cities next door: Mar Vista, West Los Angeles, Westwood. The whole list is on areas we serve.
Send a photo, get a flat number back. Free, no obligation, no pressure and no call-out fee — and if your city will haul it free instead, we will tell you that too. Most requests are answered within the hour during working hours.
