You spent a Saturday with a reciprocating saw and now there's a pile of spa shell, wet foam, and cabinet panels sitting in the driveway. Your trash cart isn't going to solve this.

Curbside service in Boise and the surrounding cities won't take a hot tub, whole or in pieces. Bulk pickup days have size and material limits, and a foam-backed acrylic shell fails all of them.

So it either goes on a trailer or it sits there. Here's what's actually involved.

A cut-up spa is bulkier than you think

Sectioned into four or six pieces, an average six-person tub will fill a 6x12 utility trailer and then some. The pieces don't nest, because a curved shell doesn't stack flat against another curved shell.

Weight is the other issue. Dry, you might be looking at 500 to 700 pounds of shell and frame. Wet foam can push that a good bit higher, and half-ton pickups run out of payload faster than most people expect once you add the cover and the cabinet.

Tarp the load. Debris blowing out of an open trailer on Chinden or the Connector is both a ticket and a genuinely bad day for whoever's behind you.

What gets recycled and what doesn't

We pull the metal out of every tub before anything heads to the landfill. It's worth doing and it takes maybe fifteen minutes.

Goes to metal recycling:

Pump motors and the blower housing
The heater assembly and its stainless element
Copper from the whip and any bonding wire
Steel frame rails and hardware on newer tubs
Aluminum trim on older units

Goes to the landfill, unfortunately:

The acrylic and fiberglass shell
Closed-cell spray foam insulation
The vinyl cover and its waterlogged foam cores
PVC plumbing and jet bodies
Synthetic cabinet panels

Nobody has a good recycling stream for a foam-bonded acrylic shell yet. Anyone who tells you the whole tub gets recycled is stretching it.

The trip to Seaman's Gulch

Our loads go to the Ada County Landfill on Seaman's Gulch Road, northwest of town off Highway 55. You get weighed in, dump, and get weighed out, and you pay by the ton.

That's the part DIY estimates usually miss. Between the fuel, the trailer rental, the disposal fee, and the two hours of driving and waiting, hauling it yourself is rarely the bargain it looks like on paper.

Canyon County jobs out of Nampa and Caldwell go to the facility that serves that side of the valley, so we don't drag a Caldwell load all the way across the metro.

Leftover chemicals need their own plan

Almost every tub we open has a shelf or a bin nearby with half-used chlorine granules, bromine tabs, pH down, and sometimes a jug of muriatic acid.

Don't throw those in the trash and definitely don't combine them into one container. Chlorine and acid together make chlorine gas, and it does not take much.

Ada County runs a household hazardous waste drop-off out at the landfill site. Check the current hours before you drive out, since it doesn't keep the same schedule as the main scale house. Leave the products in their original containers.

Haul-off only, if you already did the demo

Plenty of people call us after the hard part is done. That's fine, and it's cheaper than a full removal since we're just loading and driving.

A few things make the pickup go faster:

Stack the pieces in one spot near the driveway rather than spread across the yard
Keep loose foam contained in contractor bags so it doesn't blow around
Set the chemicals aside separately and point them out to us
Make sure a truck and trailer can get within about 50 feet of the pile

We also run a magnet over the work area before we go. Spa cabinets shed a lot of small screws, and those find bare feet and lawn mower tires eventually.

One call, one trip

We cover Boise, Meridian, Nampa, Caldwell, Eagle, Star, Kuna, and Garden City. Whether it's a whole tub still sitting on the pad or a pile of pieces from last weekend, send a photo and we'll tell you what it takes to make it disappear.

Disposal Services