Why Does the Garbage Room Smell in a Sunny Isles Beach Condo?

The garbage room in a Sunny Isles Beach condo smells because organic residue builds up on surfaces nobody washes: the inside of the carts, the floor under them and the area around the chute opening.

Bags drop down the chute day and night, and some split on landing, running liquid down the cart walls and onto the floor. Emptying is not washing, so the film stays and the next day's waste lands on top of it. Mop the floor without washing the carts and the smell is back within days.

Salt air and humidity make an oceanfront trash room worse because they stop the residue from ever drying.

Next to the ocean, salt settles on every surface and holds moisture there, so the floor and the cart walls stay faintly damp, and damp organic residue keeps breaking down. Add a closed room and a South Florida summer, and the smell has everything it needs. What salt does to the carts and lids themselves is on our Sunny Isles Beach page.

A high-rise chute room is harder to keep clean because it is indoors, it never closes, and the whole tower feeds one spot.

An outdoor enclosure at least gets wind and sun. A chute room sits inside the building, every floor feeds the same opening, and the carts fill too fast for the room to dry. When the door opens, the air goes straight into the building, which is why residents notice it in a corridor or an elevator first.

Yes. In buildings where many owners live only part of the year, the garbage room swings between two problems.

A full building fills the carts quickly. An emptier building in the hot months sends less waste down, but it sits in heat and humidity, and a quiet room is easy to neglect. Set the schedule by the weather and the cart count, not by how full the building feels.

Chapter 231 of the Sunny Isles Beach Code of Ordinances sets rules for dumpsters and their enclosures. Those standards are a fair benchmark for any trash room, although that article exempts containers kept out of public view.

Section 231-29 says dumpster lids stay closed when not in use, overfilling so a lid cannot close is a violation, and the property owner must keep the enclosure and the area around it free of litter, garbage and trash. Section 231-30 requires enclosures to be maintained "so as to allow for collection of materials and to eliminate odors". The same section exempts receptacles not visible from the public's view, which covers most garbage rooms inside a building, so for an indoor room the duty comes mainly from the association's own documents and contracts.

The code also requires anyone collecting waste from a multifamily building, multi-story condominiums included, to hold a city franchise (Section 231-2). Nothing in that article makes the hauler wash a building's carts.

The association is responsible for cleaning the trash room. The hauler collects and the porter keeps the room tidy, but deep cleaning the carts is part of neither job unless a contract says so in writing.

A porter sweeps, mops and moves carts, but a mop and a hose do not lift residue bonded to a cart wall. The room is common property, so the job sits with the board and the manager. The same question for outdoor enclosures is covered in whose job it is to clean a shared cart bank.

Trash room cleaning from The BinFather covers the carts, the area around the chute opening and the room itself, with heated water at high pressure.

1. 01The carts. Inside walls, base, lids and rims.
2. 02The chute opening area. The surfaces around where bags land.
3. 03The room. The floor, the walls at splash height and the corners where liquid settles.

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

Condo trash room cleaning, like oceanfront condo dumpster cleaning, starts from $99 for a single container. The price changes with how many containers there are, their size and how often they need doing.

Commercial and condo cleaning is billed to the association, not to owners.