How to get rid of a refrigerator in Philadelphia

The short answer

The classic Philadelphia pairing — the kitchen fridge and the chest freezer in the basement — is $164 + $146 = $310 in one visit. A side-by-side plus the mini fridge from a student room is $183 + $115 = $298.

The minimum is $75 per visit, and every line above sits well beyond it. Nothing is added for stairs, for bringing it up out of a basement, or for refrigerant handling.

The second fridge is a Philadelphia institution

Ask anyone who has cleared a row home in Mayfair, Olney, Port Richmond or Girard Estate. When the kitchen fridge gets replaced, the old one does not leave. It goes down the basement stairs, gets plugged into whatever socket is nearest the workbench, and spends the next fifteen years holding drinks, a turkey in November and not much else.

Two consequences worth knowing. First, it is still running, which means it is still on your bill — an old unit in a damp basement works hard. Second, when it finally does have to go, it has to come back up a staircase that is steeper and narrower than the one it went down, because it went down empty and fifteen years of nobody thinking about it have not made the stairs wider.

Getting it up is the work, and it is what the $164 covers.

Refrigerant: handled, and never a line on your bill

Refrigerators and freezers contain refrigerant. Federal environmental rules require it to be recovered by a certified technician before the unit is scrapped or destroyed — it cannot be vented and the unit cannot simply be crushed with the charge in it. Older units can also have insulating foam that needs proper handling.

That is the reason a fridge is not ordinary bulk, and why municipal programs commonly treat refrigerant appliances separately.

For you it means one thing: it is handled, it is inside the $164, and there is no recovery fee, environmental fee or refrigerant surcharge appearing at the end of your invoice.

It also means you should think twice about the man offering to take it for fifteen dollars cash. Nothing about that price includes certified recovery, and you have no idea where the unit ends up — which in this city is often a vacant lot in somebody else's neighborhood.

Getting it out of a row-home kitchen

Philadelphia kitchens in older row homes are usually at the back of the house, in the narrowest part, often in a rear addition with a step down into it and a door that opens the wrong way.

What that means in practice:

• The doors come off. On a standard fridge, removing the doors buys the several inches that decide whether it fits through the kitchen doorway.
• Side-by-side and French door units are worse. They are wider, heavier and were frequently delivered before a kitchen was refitted around them. At $183 they are the ones most likely to need a route planned rather than just walked.
• The route is through the whole house. Kitchen, dining room, front room, vestibule, two doors, a step down to the pavement. There is no back door to an alley in most of this city.
• Then the street. No driveway, one lane, cars both sides. That part is ours.

Retailer haul-away: useful, but only on delivery day

If you are buying a replacement, take the retailer's haul-away. It is usually free and it is the right answer.

Where it fails, reliably:

• It only works from the delivery point. New fridge into the kitchen means old fridge out of the kitchen. The one in the basement is not part of the deal.
• It is one-for-one. One old unit per new unit. The chest freezer and the mini fridge stay.
• Not if the old one already left the kitchen. If you moved it out last month, the offer is gone.
• Stairs. Delivery crews on a schedule will often decline a basement or a third-floor carry.
• Plumbed ice makers. Frequently outside a delivery crew's scope.

So the pattern we see constantly in Philadelphia is: the kitchen fridge goes with the delivery, and the basement one, the garage one and the dead mini fridge from the spare room become their own job.

What to do before the crew arrives

• Empty it completely. Including the freezer drawer and the door shelves.
• Defrost it the day before. A basement chest freezer that has run for twenty years holds a surprising amount of ice, and melting it on the stairs mid-carry is not the plan.
• Put towels down. Even a defrosted unit weeps on the way out.
• Unplug it and coil the lead. Twelve hours ahead is ideal.
• Disconnect a plumbed water line at the valve.
• Clear the route. Kitchen, hallway, vestibule, and the top of the basement stairs.
• Leave the doors on. Crews remove them as part of the job if needed, and a fridge with the doors already off is more awkward to strap and move, not less.

One safety point: never leave a fridge standing on a pavement or in a yard with the doors attached and a working latch. It is the one genuinely dangerous thing on this list.

The other routes

• Utility recycling programs. There are periodic schemes in the region for old refrigerant appliances, sometimes with a rebate. Worth checking — eligibility and availability change year to year, so look at the current details. They generally require the unit at an accessible ground-floor location, which puts the basement staircase back in your court.
• Scrap collectors. A fridge on a Kensington or Frankford pavement disappears quickly. No record of refrigerant recovery, no accountability.
• Curbside set-out. Check your collection day guidance on the city's bulk-pickup page — refrigerant appliances are commonly not ordinary bulk. An uncollected fridge blocks a narrow pavement for days.
• Flat-price removal. $164, from the kitchen or the basement, on a date you pick.

Frequently asked questions