Fort Lauderdale Condo Trash Room and Apartment Dumpster Cleaning: What the City Code Says

A private hauler collects it, hired by the building. The city's Collection Programs page says the city collects curbside only from single-family homes and multifamily properties of three or fewer units, and that apartments, condominiums and commercial buildings must contract directly with a hauler authorised to operate in the city.

The code says the same thing. Sec. 24-26 states that multifamily accounts of four or more units receive collection from a company licensed by the city. The building picks the hauler, and that contract is about pickup.

The owner or user of the dumpster is. Sec. 24-28(a) requires multifamily residences of four or more units to keep adequate bulk containers, and says those containers must be "kept clean, with covers on, and maintained in good working condition by the owner or user." The area around the container must be kept in "a good, clean and sanitary condition."

The same section lets city enforcement personnel inspect containers and condemn them as unfit, unsightly or unsanitary, and a condemned container has to be repaired, replaced or put right immediately. Sec. 24-28(f) adds that containers must be kept free of water and other excessive liquids.

A collection truck lifts the dumpster, tips it and sets it down. Nothing in that washes it. In a condominium, the cleaning usually falls to the association through its manager; our post on who pays for condo trash room cleaning explains how boards usually settle it.

Fort Lauderdale requires every residential property of three or more units that uses bulk containers to keep them in an on-site enclosure, with opaque gates kept closed except while the container is being serviced. The rules are in Sec. 47-19.4 of the city's Unified Land Development Regulations.

The maintenance part, subsection D.8, is the one boards and managers should read:

• Enclosures kept in good condition and appearance at all times.
• Gates and latches fully working and closed except during collection.
• "Enclosures and containers shall be cleaned periodically to prevent noxious odors and unsanitary conditions from occurring."
• Pads and access drives repaired or rebuilt when the paving deteriorates.

The code requires the cleaning; how and how often is the building's call.

A beach tower's trash room smells because its containers are never empty for long and the room has little moving air. Bags dropped down a chute split on the way, the cart underneath catches the drips, and the residue never dries between pickups. In Fort Lauderdale's heat, that organic layer is what reaches the lobby and the garage.

Containers kept indoors, in a trash room or a corner of the parking garage, get no sun and no breeze, so the smell collects instead of drifting off. Our guide to trash chute room cleaning covers that room in detail.

In older mid-rise and garden-apartment buildings, the smell usually comes from the dumpster pad as much as the dumpster. Liquid runs out of the container, dries on the concrete inside the enclosure and is topped up every week. A clean dumpster standing on a dirty pad still draws flies by evening.

That is why the code covers the area around the container too: the dumpster, the walls and the pad are one job.

Condo and apartment dumpster cleaning by The BinFather covers front-load dumpsters, roll carts, shared cart banks and the corral or enclosure they stand in. In a chute room we clean the carts, the chute opening area and the room itself. We do not work inside the chute shaft or on compactor machinery, and we do not do pest control.

How a visit runs:

1. 01We come after collection, when the containers are as empty as they get, and outside resident hours.
2. 02We bring our own water and our own equipment, so nothing is drawn from the building.
3. 03We clean the containers inside and out, then the floor, pad or enclosure they sit in.
4. 04The dirty water goes into a collection tank on our truck or trailer — nothing is left on your property.

Townhomes and small buildings of three units or fewer are on the city's curbside carts instead; the Fort Lauderdale bin cleaning page covers those.

Apartment and condo dumpster cleaning in Fort Lauderdale starts from $99 for a single container. The price changes with how many containers there are, their size and how often they need doing.

A garden-apartment building with one front-load dumpster in a block enclosure is not the same job as a Galt Ocean Mile tower with a chute room and a bank of carts in the garage, which is why the price moves with the job.