Renovation debris removal in Nashville

The short answer

The per-visit minimum is $75, and the truck-fill ladder still applies: quarter $241, half $431, full $732.

Why masonry prices separately

Because weight, not volume, is what a disposal facility charges for on this material.

A quarter truck of concrete, brick, tile or plaster weighs many times what a quarter truck of furniture weighs. That is why masonry has its own line at $219 per quarter truck, and it is why a truck full of it is never a realistic booking. A small pile of broken concrete goes much further into a load than it looks like it should.

This matters in Nashville because of what the older housing is made of. Plaster and lath in the pre-war bungalows and duplexes across East Nashville, Sylvan Park, Belmont-Hillsboro and Woodbine is dense, dusty and heavy, and a single room stripped back to studs produces far more weight than the same room in a newer drywall house out in Nolensville.

The Nashville renovation types

Four recurring jobs, each with its own debris profile.

Bungalow kitchen gut. East Nashville, Sylvan Park, 12 South, Lockeland Springs. Cabinets, laminate or stone countertop, flooring, plaster, and the appliances. Laminate countertop is $56 a section, stone is $111, and appliances price individually: electric range $134, dishwasher $109, fridge $164.

Bathroom rip-out. The cast iron tub is the item that defines this job. $185 for cast iron against $90 for fiberglass, and the difference is entirely weight. Add toilet $64 and vanity $69.

Basement finishing. Green Hills, Belmont-Hillsboro, Woodmont, the minority of Nashville houses with a real lower floor. Old carpet, panelling, framing, and often a cast iron radiator at $123 from a converted heating system.

Tall-skinny build-out and punch list. The Nations, Cleveland Park, Salemtown. Packaging, offcuts, flat-pack waste. High volume, low weight, so the truck bracket wins easily here.

Access, and the tandem driveway problem

Renovation debris means repeat visits or a staged pile, and on Nashville infill lots that is a logistics question.

The HPR duplexes across The Nations and Salemtown share one driveway between two households. Staging a debris pile there for two weeks is a neighbor dispute waiting to happen, and so is parking a container in it. On the narrow bungalow streets in Sylvan Park and 12 South there is often nowhere on the lot at all, so the debris has to leave as it is generated rather than accumulate.

That is the case where scheduled removals beat a container: the debris goes out at the end of each phase and nothing sits.

What we cannot take

Be straight about this before you book.

• Asbestos. Older Nashville houses may contain it in floor tile, pipe insulation, siding and some plaster. Anything suspected needs testing and licensed abatement, not a junk truck. If your house predates the eighties and you are disturbing original material, find out first.
• Lead paint debris. Same era, same caution, and it has its own handling requirements.
• Hazardous material. Paint, solvents, adhesives, fuels. Household hazardous waste collection, and check your county's current guidance.
• Anything still attached. We remove debris and detached fixtures. We do not do demolition, plumbing or electrical disconnection, so the tub needs to be out and the range needs to be capped by a professional before we arrive.

Bag it or pile it

For mixed light debris, bagging is usually the cheaper and faster route, and it makes the volume predictable for both sides.

10 bags $132, 20 bags $259, 30 bags $385, 40 bags $449. Use proper contractor bags, do not overfill them past what two people can lift, and keep masonry out of them. A bag of tile is not a bag of drywall offcuts, and it will tear.

Stage them somewhere the crew can reach without going through finished rooms if you can. In a bungalow that usually means the back door or the carport rather than the front hall.

A worked bathroom job

A Belmont-Hillsboro bathroom stripped to studs.

Cast iron bathtub $185 + toilet $64 + vanity $69 + 10 bags of debris $132 = $450.

Against the ladder, half a truck is $431 and five-eighths is $513. The half truck is lower, but a cast iron tub and ten bags of plaster is a heavy half truck, so the item pricing at $450 is the safer booking. That weight-versus-volume judgement is exactly what makes renovation debris different from a furniture load.

For contractors

If you are running jobs across the metro, the useful thing is that the prices do not move. The same numbers apply in Belle Meade, Antioch, The Nations and out in Franklin, so they can go into a bid rather than being estimated per site.

Schedule removals against your phases: demo out, rough-in out, finish out. It keeps the site clear, it avoids a staged pile sitting through a Middle Tennessee spring storm and doubling in weight, and on infill lots it avoids the driveway argument entirely.

Tell us what the debris actually is when you book. Plaster and tile are a different job from packaging and offcuts, and knowing which one is coming is how we bring the right truck.

Frequently asked questions