Cleanouts
A Whole-House Cleanout Checklist for Hall County Homes
A 96 gallon cart, a 39 gallon bag limit and no county curbside collection. None of the existing systems are built for the contents of a basement, and that is where a cleanout plan starts.
A whole-house cleanout is not a big version of trash day. It is a different problem, and in Hall County it is a different problem for a specific reason: there is no route for that volume through the systems that already exist.
The city cart holds 96 gallons a week. The county does not come to your curb at all. The compactor sites take bagged household garbage in bags of 39 gallons or less. None of that is built for the contents of a basement, and understanding why is the fastest way to decide what to order.
Know which system you are actually in
Hall County has two completely different answers depending on which side of the city limit line your driveway sits on. People get this wrong constantly, including people who have lived here their whole lives.
Inside the City of Gainesville, the city provides sanitation service to single-family and multifamily dwellings. Collection is once weekly under Sec. 4-3-5, and operationally that means one city-supplied 96 gallon rolling cart, out by 7 a.m., at the curb or within ten feet of the house. A second cart is available for a monthly charge, as published. Solid waste charges ride on the water bill under Sec. 4-3-11.
In unincorporated Hall County, there is no residential curbside collection at all. None. What exists instead is 12 compactor sites plus the landfill on Oakbrook Drive, funded through a fee assessed on the ad valorem tax bill for residential parcels without municipal collection.
The compactor sites are narrower than people think
County Code Sec. 8.60.290 sets the terms. County residents may bring household garbage and recyclables. The garbage has to be in sturdy paper or plastic bags of maximum 39 gallon capacity, securely closed. Non-residents may bring recyclables only. And commercial haulers who charge for garbage disposal are excluded from the sites entirely.
Prohibited at the compactor sites: hazardous waste, liquid waste, septic pumpings, tires, yard trimmings, boats, foam, pressurized tanks and mobile homes. No scavenging, no fires, no out-of-county waste.
Read that list against a house you are emptying. A sofa is not a 39 gallon bag. Neither is a mattress, a workbench, a dozen sheets of paneling or a chest freezer. The compactor system is a household garbage system, and it does that job well. It is not a cleanout system.
The four routes, side by side
| Route | Who can use it | What it takes | Where a cleanout fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| City weekly cart | City residents | 96 gallons per pickup, once weekly | Volume, and Sec. 4-3-9 exclusions |
| Compactor site | County residents only | Bagged garbage, bags 39 gallons or less | Bulk items, and haulers are excluded |
| Hall County landfill | Public, at published rates | Self-haul by the load | No yard debris, no bulk concrete or asphalt |
| Roll-off container | Anyone, on private property | One delivery, one pull | Chemicals, tires, cylinders, yard debris |
The landfill column is where do-it-yourself math usually goes sideways. Published tipping is a $20 minimum covering up to 665 pounds, then $60 per ton, as published. That is reasonable for one pickup load. Now price twelve pickup loads across three Saturdays, add fuel, add your own time, add the trips where you arrive to find that what you brought is on the refused list. Yard debris, trees, stumps, leaves and grass clippings are refused there. So is bulk construction debris in the form of concrete and asphalt. There is a fuller cost breakdown in our article on what drives dumpster rental cost in Gainesville.
Sizing a whole-house clear-out
Houses here have levels. Deep, well drained ground on rolling terrain means basements and crawlspaces are normal in this county, not an upgrade, so a whole-house cleanout usually has two or three floors of accumulation in it. That is the number that sets the size.
- 15 yard. One floor, or one room done thoroughly, or a tight driveway that will not take anything longer.
- 20 yard. The common answer. Main floor plus basement plus attic, no swap, and sides two people can throw over.
- 30 yard. A full house where furniture is going too, or a cleanout that has turned into a gut.
- 10 yard. Not a small cleanout box. It is the weight box, for masonry, tile, plaster and dirt.
Two things reliably push a cleanout up a size. One is a finished basement that is coming apart, because paneling, ceiling tile, carpet and pad are bulky and they arrive all at once. The other is furniture. A house being emptied of its furniture produces far more volume than the same house emptied of its contents, and people rarely account for that when they picture the pile.
The mistake worth avoiding is ordering by house square footage. Order by carry distance and by how much of the load is dense. A 1,400 square foot house with a packed basement out-produces a 2,600 square foot house that has been kept clear, every time.
Sequence the work so the container fills fast
A container that sits half full for nine days is costing you rental time for nothing. The fix is staging.
- Sort before the box arrives. Keep, sell, donate, haul. Get the first three out of the house.
- Stage the haul pile in the garage, the carport or near the walkout door. Not scattered through eight rooms.
- Pull the exclusions out first. Chemicals, cylinders, tires, medications and electronics go to their own corner, away from the pile.
- Separate yard debris. It cannot ride in the same load. That is state law, not a house rule.
- Then order the container, and load it in one or two hard sessions.
- Book the pull a few days before you think you will finish.
Load it so it can legally leave
Heavy and flat on the bottom, bulky and light on top, nothing above the fill line. A heaped container cannot be tarped and cannot legally move, so the last armload over the rim can cost you a wasted trip. Break down what breaks down. A dismantled bookcase takes a fifth of the room an assembled one does, and that difference is the difference between one container and two.
What the city will not take, in its own words
If your cleanout crosses into remodeling, the City has already written the list for you. Gainesville Code Sec. 4-3-9 names, as items the city will not collect: discarded building materials, dirt, broken concrete, brick, rock and debris; sinks, tubs, shower stalls and toilets; cabinets, doors, windows, roofing debris, lumber and siding; landscape timbers, crossties, carpet and floor coverings. It puts those on the contractor, tenant or property owner.
It also names tires, wheels, automotive parts, acids, explosives and flammable liquids, and it excludes trees, bushes and vegetation brought by commercial tree trimmers, landscapers, grading contractors or building contractors. Sec. 4-3-8 makes appliances and oversized refuse a special pickup subject to a service charge rather than a normal collection.
That ordinance is the clearest statement anywhere of what a container is for. Everything on the list is a line item in a roll-off.
The exclusions, one list
These do not go in the container, and every one of them is refused further down the chain as well.
- Paint, stain, solvent, pesticide, pool chemicals and any liquid waste
- Fuel, motor oil, antifreeze
- Propane cylinders and any pressurized tank
- Tires and wheels, regulated separately under O.C.G.A. Section 12-8-40.1
- Sealed refrigerant appliances until the refrigerant is recovered
- Asbestos material, which is Georgia EPD's program under Chapter 391-3-14
- Brush, limbs, leaves and grass clippings. Georgia bans yard trimmings from lined municipal landfills under O.C.G.A. Section 12-8-40.2, effective 1 September 1996, definition at Section 12-8-22(42)
The county landfill refuses chemical, liquid and hazardous waste and pressurized tanks, and it will not take yard debris. The compactor sites prohibit the same categories. There is nowhere for those items to go inside a mixed load, which is why we ask before delivery rather than after. Details on how we sort and route are on our junk removal page.
Placement, because it is a driveway question here
Two rules cover almost every residential placement in this county.
First, five feet. Georgia is on the 2024 International Fire Code, adopted at Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 120-3-3-.04, and Section 304.3.4 says a container of 1.0 cubic yard or more must not be placed within five feet of combustible walls, openings or combustible roof eave lines. Every roll-off we run exceeds that. It applies on your driveway.
Second, keep it on private property. Inside the city, occupying a public street requires permission from the governing body under Sec. 4-4-2(a), and each day without it is a separate offense. Sec. 4-4-2(b) separately makes it a violation to allow dirt, silt, sediment or debris to be tracked into a city street, which on red clay is easier to do than it sounds. In unincorporated Hall County, call the County before anything goes into a road right-of-way.
We put boards under the rails on driveways as a matter of course, and we would rather add carry distance than set a loaded box on a wet lawn.
When to put it on the calendar
North Georgia does not hand you a dry season to plan around. Rain here runs about 53 inches a year and it is spread across the calendar, so the ground is often just wet enough to matter. That affects placement more than it affects the work, but it is worth knowing before you pick a weekend.
A few seasonal notes that actually change a cleanout schedule.
- Winter. Freeze and thaw cycles, ice events and about 1.9 inches of snow in an average year. Ground that is a hard crust at nine in the morning can be soft by mid afternoon. Placement gets conservative.
- Late spring and summer. An uninsulated attic in July is a genuine hazard. Work attics early in the day, and put the basement work in the afternoon since it stays cool.
- The first of May. If any part of your plan involved burning brush, it stops. Georgia EPD's summer open burn ban runs 1 May through 30 September and covers Hall County, at Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 391-3-1-.02(5). It is not a factor for household goods, and it is a hard stop for yard debris.
- Storm weeks. After a widespread ice or wind event everybody in the county wants a container in the same seven days. Book earlier than you think you need to.
What to have ready when you call
Tell us the address and whether it is inside the city limits, how many levels are being emptied, whether there is a basement and whether it has a walkout, what the driveway is made of and how tight it is, and whether there is yard debris in the mix. That is a two minute conversation and it decides the size, the placement and the number of swaps.
Our whole service area is listed on the service areas page, and the county's own solid waste information is published by Hall County. When you are ready, call (470) 691-8287. Have the driveway description handy. That is the part we cannot guess.
Questions this guide did not answer? Call (470) 691-8287. We would rather spend two minutes on the phone than have you order the wrong container.