You've been looking at it for a year. Maybe two. The cover sagged in, the water went green, something in the pump died, and now it just sits there on the deck taking up the best corner of your backyard. Every spring you think about dealing with it, and every spring you don't — because nobody knows where to even start with a hot tub.
That's fair. Hot tubs are genuinely one of the hardest things to get rid of. Here's what's actually involved, and how our hot tub removal service handles it.
Why hot tubs are so hard to get rid of
A dry hot tub runs several hundred pounds, and a big one pushes past half a ton before you add a drop of water. That's before you account for how it's built.
The shell is one piece of molded acrylic with a fiberglass backing. It doesn't fold. It doesn't come apart. It's wide, it's slippery, and there's nothing good to grab. Two people can't carry it — not because they aren't strong enough, but because there's no way to hold it that doesn't put the whole weight on a bad angle.
Then there's everything around it. Most tubs in Delaware were dropped in place first and had the deck built around them afterward. The railing goes up, the skirting boards go on, and now the tub is inside a wooden box. Even if you could lift it, it can't come out the way it went in.
The fasteners are usually shot. Ten years of chlorine, steam, and Delaware humidity rusts every screw in the frame. Half of them strip the second you touch them.
And there's no curbside option. Your trash hauler isn't taking it. It doesn't fit in a standard dumpster without being cut down first. It's not a bulk pickup item.
You can't just put it out with the trash
This is the part people find out the hard way. Most disposal facilities won't take a hot tub whole — it's oversized, it's mixed material, and it's got components that have to be separated out first. A tub is acrylic, fiberglass, wood framing, foam insulation, PVC plumbing, a motor, a heater, and copper wiring, all bonded together. Rules vary from facility to facility, so check before you load one onto anything.
Leaving it at the curb isn't a plan either. It'll sit there — and depending on your town, a hot tub parked out front is exactly the kind of thing code enforcement takes an interest in. The tub is your problem until somebody takes it apart properly and gets each piece where it belongs.
What dismantling on-site actually involves
We don't drag hot tubs out whole. We take them apart where they sit.
Drain it. This is the one thing we ask you to handle before we show up. A full tub is hundreds of gallons and thousands of pounds of water. If you can't drain it — the pump's dead, you can't find the valve, whatever — tell us when you book so we come prepared.
Kill the power. Plug-and-play units just unplug. Hard-wired 240V tubs are a different story, and those need a licensed electrician to disconnect at the panel. Don't touch that yourself. If yours is hard-wired and still live, let us know and we'll work around it or wait until it's done.
Cut the shell down. Saws, in sections, right there on the pad or deck. The shell becomes pieces a person can actually pick up and carry.
Break down the frame. Skirting off, wood frame apart, plumbing and motor pulled. If the deck was built around the tub, that's where our shed and fence removal experience comes in handy — we know how to open up just enough decking to get the pieces out without wrecking the rest of your deck.
Haul it in pieces. Dollies, boards laid down over your lawn and decking, and out through the gate. Then we sweep up. Screws, splinters, foam bits — all of it. You shouldn't be finding hardware in the grass next week.
What it looks like on the day
Here's a real one. This tub sat on a patio in a Delaware backyard — full wood surround, water still in it, hadn't run in years.
Before: the tub as we found it.
And here's the same patio once we were done. Shell cut down, frame broken apart, plumbing and pump pulled, every piece carried out and loaded. What's left is the clean outline where it sat for a decade.
After: tub gone, patio swept.
That's the whole job. No tub in your yard, nothing for you to lift, nothing left to deal with.
The tubs we take
All of them, basically:
- Acrylic shell tubs
- Wood-frame tubs and cedar soaking tubs
- Inflatable spas
- Swim spas
- Plug-and-play units
- Built-in and in-ground tubs
- Working or broken
- Indoor or outdoor
If it holds water and you're done with it, we'll take it.
Where it ends up
We don't just run everything to a hole in the ground. The copper wiring and the motor get pulled and recycled — that's the same process behind our scrap metal removal work. The frame wood gets separated out. Any brush or debris we clear to make a path can go with our yard waste removal crew on the same trip. Whatever's genuinely left over — the shell, the foam, the mixed material — goes to licensed disposal.
Same goes if tearing out surrounding decking leaves you with a pile of lumber. That's construction debris removal territory and we can take it in the same run.
How to get ready for us
Not much, but these four things save everybody time:
- Drain the tub. Well ahead of us if you can — a soaked lawn is no fun to work on.
- Clear a path. Move the patio furniture, the grill, the kids' stuff.
- Measure your gate. Or just tell us roughly how wide it is. It changes how we cut.
- Tell us about the terrain. Stairs, slopes, a deck built around the tub, a retaining wall, a tight side yard. None of it stops us. All of it changes the plan.
Why DIY usually goes sideways
People try. We've cleaned up after plenty of attempts.
The pattern is always similar. Somebody rents a truck and calls two friends. They get the skirting off fine. Then they hit the shell and realize it isn't coming out. Or they get it out and can't get it up onto the truck. Or they get it on the truck, drive it to a facility, and get turned away because it's not an accepted item. Now there's a hot tub in a rented truck, the clock is running, and the friends have gone home.
The safety piece is real too. That much awkward weight on a slope, on stairs, or over a deck edge is how backs and fingers get hurt. We're licensed and insured — workers comp and general liability — so if something goes wrong on your property, it's not on you.
Delaware backyards have their own problems
We've done this all over the state and the access challenges tend to run by neighborhood.
Older Wilmington homes: narrow side yards, fences right up against the house, sometimes the only route out is through a gate barely wider than a wheelbarrow. Cutting the shell down small isn't optional there — it's the only way it leaves.
Newark and the Pike Creek and Hockessin area: mature landscaping, retaining walls, backyards that drop off. We lay boards so we're not rutting your lawn.
Newer subdivisions in Middletown, Bear, Smyrna, Townsend, and Dover: big composite decks with the tub sunk right into them, no gap anywhere. Those get taken apart in sections and hauled through the house-side gate.
Down in Kent and Sussex — Milford, Lewes, Rehoboth Beach — we see a lot of salt-air corrosion. Fasteners that should back out just snap. We plan for it.
We cover all three counties. See the full list on our service areas page, or check the Wilmington, Newark, Dover, and Middletown pages directly.
How the quote works
Text or email us a couple photos — the tub, the gate, the path from the driveway. That gets us most of the way to an accurate number.
Then we come out for a free, on-site estimate. No obligation, no pressure. You get a flat price upfront, before anybody picks up a saw. That number doesn't move partway through because the shell was thicker than expected or the frame fought back. If you want to understand how we price junk removal generally, our pricing page lays it out, and we go deeper in our guide to what junk removal costs in Delaware.
Same-day is often on the table
We run six days a week — Monday through Friday 7am to 7pm, Saturday 7am to 3pm, closed Sunday. Same-day service is often available depending on where you are and what the schedule looks like. We won't promise a slot we don't have, but call early and there's a good chance we can get to you. More on that in our same-day junk removal post.
Junk Away is family-owned. Two brothers, Bobby and Brian, who grew up on a farm in Middletown and still live here. 4.9 stars across 300+ Google reviews and 2,600+ jobs done — you can read the reviews yourself.
Ready to get that thing out of your yard
You've waited long enough. Getting a number costs you nothing — the estimate is free, there's no obligation, and if you don't like the price you tell us no and we go on our way. No hard sell.
Call (302) 532-1186 or get in touch through our contact page. Send a photo if you've got one handy. We'll tell you straight what it takes, give you a flat price, and — often enough — have your deck back to you the same day. Questions first? Our FAQ covers most of them, and you can see everything else we haul on our services page.