Who Pays to Clean a Florida Condo Trash Room, and What Does It Cost?

The condominium association is responsible for cleaning a condo trash room in Florida, unless the declaration says otherwise. A trash room, a chute room or a dumpster enclosure is part of the common elements, and the statute assigns their upkeep to the association.

The exact wording of s. 718.113(1), Florida Statutes: "Maintenance of the common elements is the responsibility of the association, except for any maintenance responsibility for limited common elements assigned to the unit owner by the declaration." Chapter 718 defines common elements as "the portions of the condominium property not included in the units", and s. 718.115 counts the expenses of operating and maintaining them as common expenses.

Your declaration can assign some limited common elements differently, so read it. This is a summary of the statute, not legal advice; the association's attorney has the last word.

For a homeowners' association, the answer usually comes from the governing documents rather than one maintenance sentence in the statute. Under s. 720.303(1), the association's powers and duties include those set out in chapter 720 and, except where the chapter limits them, those in the governing documents.

In practice, a shared corral or cart bank on common ground is usually the association's to maintain. We wrote a separate piece on who cleans an HOA cart bank or corral if that is your building's setup.

Often not. A janitorial contract covers what its scope of work names, and many scopes stop at the trash room floor. If yours does not name the inside walls, base and lids of the carts or dumpsters, that cleaning is not included.

There are practical reasons it stays out. A porter has a mop, a hose and a bucket, which moves loose debris and leaves the bonded residue on the container walls. The right moment is straight after collection, when the containers are empty, and that rarely matches a cleaning shift. And rinse water with nowhere to go ends up on the floor drain or the loading area. The hauler does not fill the gap either: a truck empties the container and sets it back down, and nothing in that washes it.

A professional clean covers the containers and the room around them as one job, because a clean cart standing on a dirty floor draws flies again within days. The BinFather handles:

• Front-load dumpsters and roll carts, inside and out, including lids and rims
• Shared cart banks and corrals
• In a chute room: the carts, the chute opening area and the room itself

We do not clean inside the chute shaft or the compactor machinery, and we do not do pest control. Work is scheduled after collection and outside resident hours. We bring our own water, and the dirty water goes into a collection tank on our truck or trailer — nothing is left on your property.

Commercial dumpster cleaning with The BinFather starts at $99 for a single container. The price changes with how many containers there are, their size and how often they need cleaning.

One dumpster behind a small building and several cart banks plus a chute room in a tower along Collins Avenue are different jobs. The quote counts the containers and sets a frequency, so the board votes on a real number. See how the service works on our commercial dumpster cleaning page.

A board or property manager requests a quote online, through the form on the commercial page:

1. 01Fill in the request with the building's address and a contact.
2. 02Say what you have: dumpsters, carts, a chute room, a corral, roughly how many.
3. 03Add the collection days, so the visit can be timed after pickup.
4. 04We send back a price.

The process is the same for a tower in Aventura or a mid-rise in Palm Beach County.

A board decision on trash room cleaning should record who is responsible, what is being cleaned, how often, and where the money comes from.

1. 01Responsibility. Note that the trash room is a common element maintained by the association under s. 718.113, or cite the HOA governing documents.
2. 02Scope. List the containers and areas: dumpsters, carts, cart banks, the chute room. State what is excluded, such as the chute shaft and compactor.
3. 03Frequency. Monthly, or another agreed interval, timed after collection.
4. 04Budget line. Record it as a common expense in the maintenance budget.
5. 05The quote. Attach it to the minutes.
6. 06Residents. Send a short notice to bag waste and close lids between visits.