Air conditioner disposal in Colorado Springs

The short answer

Flat, disposal included, carried out from wherever it is. There is no refrigerant fee, no stair charge, no walk-up fee and no same-day surcharge. The minimum for a visit is $75.

Hail is why most of these calls happen here

In a lot of cities air conditioners die of age. Along the Front Range they die of weather.

An outdoor condenser is a box of thin aluminum fins wrapped around a coil, and hail flattens fins. Once enough of them are folded over, airflow across the coil collapses, the unit runs hot, head pressure climbs and the compressor starts working itself to death. A technician can comb fins to a point. Past that point, and especially after two or three storm seasons stacked on each other, the recommendation is replacement — and then there is a dead condenser sitting on a pad at the side of your house.

The neighborhoods that generate the most of these calls are the ones with the most open exposure and the most units at grade: Briargate, Village Seven, Stetson Hills, Wolf Ranch, Cimarron Hills and the Falcon corridor. West-side houses in Rockrimmon and Mountain Shadows get it too, with the added complication that the pad is often on a slope behind the house rather than beside a driveway.

We take the old unit whether it was replaced last week or has been sitting on its pad since a previous owner. $115 either way.

Window units and the storage-that-is-not-storage problem

Window air conditioners have a specific lifecycle in Colorado Springs. A lot of the older housing stock on the Westside, in Old Colorado City, Ivywild and Patty Jewett was built without central cooling, so window units go in for the warm months and come out in the autumn. Then they live in a detached garage or a basement through the winter.

That is where they die. This climate puts anything in an unconditioned space through a very large daily temperature swing in very dry air, and the things that fail are the soft parts: the foam seal strip goes brittle and crumbles, the gasket around the chassis hardens and cracks, plastic louvres lose their flex. The unit comes out the following June, rattles, does not cool properly, and joins the stack of two others already in the garage.

A large window unit is $109 and a small one is $87. Two large ones out of the same garage is $109 + $109 = $218. Because of the $75 minimum, it is generally worth clearing the whole stack in one visit rather than one a summer.

The PCS version

Window and portable units are classic leave-behinds. They are bulky, they are not worth shipping, and they are not on the household goods inventory, so the packing crew works around them and they are still there on walkthrough day.

Off-post rentals around Fountain, Security-Widefield and Cimarron Hills get held to a broom-clean standard, and a landlord who finds two dead window units in the garage will usually take it out of the deposit at a rate you would rather not pay. A portable AC is $85 and a large window unit is $109; a portable and a large window unit together is $85 + $109 = $194.

Book it for the day after the packers finish and before the final walkthrough. Summer is the compressed window for every household attached to Fort Carson, Peterson and the Academy, so pick a slot early — the price is the same either way, there is simply less choice of time later on.

Refrigerant, handled and not charged for

Sealed-system appliances contain refrigerant, and there are rules about how it is recovered before the metal is processed. Some haulers treat that as an opportunity to add a line at the door. We do not. There is no refrigerant fee. Whatever the compliant handling costs at the far end is already inside the $115 for a condenser, the $109 for a large window unit, the $164 for a standard refrigerator.

What we ask of you is simple: do not attempt to vent or drain a sealed unit yourself before we come. It is not necessary, it is not legal, and it makes the unit harder rather than easier to handle. Leave it as it is.

If your outdoor unit was disconnected by an installer, it is usually already sitting free on its pad and we just pick it up. If it is still connected, have your HVAC contractor disconnect it — we remove units, we do not cut into live refrigerant lines or electrical.

Where the unit actually is, and why that does not change the price

Air conditioning equipment in this city is rarely somewhere convenient.

• Condensers on slope. Rockrimmon, Mountain Shadows, Cheyenne Cañon and the Broadmoor have units on pads behind the house, above or below grade, reached by a narrow side path with a gate on it.
• Behind a long drive. Black Forest and Falcon lots put the unit a long way from where a truck can stand, often on unpaved ground that is soft in spring.
• Basements and utility rooms. Furnaces and water heaters — both $131 — come out of finished basements with a turn in the stairs.
• Roof-mounted evaporative coolers. Common on older houses here. If you have one coming down, send a photo and we will put a written price on it before we come rather than guessing on the day.

None of the first three change the number. The listed price covers getting it from where it is to the truck.

Clearing the whole mechanical swap at once

Most replacements happen in clusters, because the contractor is already there. If the condenser is going, ask whether the furnace, the water heater or an old dehumidifier is going with it and price them together in one visit.

• Condenser and furnace: $115 + $131 = $246.
• Condenser, furnace and tank water heater: $115 + $131 + $131 = $377.
• Two window units and a portable: $109 + $87 + $85 = $281.

If a mechanical swap also produced a pile of packaging, old ductwork and general debris, compare the item total against volume pricing — a quarter truck is $241, three-eighths is $338, a half is $431. We run both and quote the lower. Either way you have the number in writing before anyone drives out.

Frequently asked questions