Hot tub removal cost in Jacksonville

The short answer

$322 for a hot tub or spa. That covers cutting it down on site, carrying the pieces out, and disposal. There is no separate demolition charge, no heavy-item fee, and no disposal charge arriving afterwards.

Related items, since they usually come up in the same conversation:

Minimum $75 per visit, which a hot tub clears several times over on its own.

Two things that have to happen before we arrive

Drain it. A filled tub holds several hundred gallons and there is no moving it wet. Drain it through the drain valve or a submersible pump the day before, and let it sit long enough that the footwell is not still holding water. If it has been sitting derelict, this is doubly important - a stagnant hot tub in Northeast Florida is a mosquito nursery, and by the time most people call us it has been one for a while.

Disconnect the power. Most hot tubs here are on a dedicated 240-volt circuit through a GFCI disconnect box on the wall of the house. That should be shut off and disconnected by a licensed electrician before removal. We will not cut live wiring and no legitimate crew should. That is a safety boundary, not an upsell - the electrician's fee is theirs, not ours, and it is a short visit.

The screen enclosure problem

This is the Jacksonville-specific part, and it is the thing that most often turns an easy removal into a planning conversation.

A large share of hot tubs here sit inside a screened lanai or a pool cage - the aluminum-framed, screened structures that cover so many Duval and St. Johns County pool decks. They are wonderful for keeping mosquitoes and love bugs out of the pool. They are also a sealed box around your hot tub.

Three routes out, in order of preference:

• Through the screen door. If the cut-down pieces fit through the standard screen door to the pool deck, this is clean and nothing gets touched.
• Through the house. Sometimes shorter and simpler, and we will floor-protect the route.
• Through a removed screen panel. The panels come out of the frame and go back in. This needs to be agreed in advance, and if you are not comfortable with us touching the cage, a screen company can pop a panel before we come and replace it after.

Send a photo of the enclosure and the doorway when you book. That single photo decides the whole plan.

The rest of the access questions

Beyond the cage, the usual Jacksonville obstacles:

• Gate width. A standard single side gate is often the pinch point. Measure it. A double gate changes everything.
• Pavers and pool decking. We do not drag across paver decks or painted deck coatings - pieces get carried. Say if the surface is delicate.
• Irrigation and landscape lighting. Shallow lines run all over Jacksonville back gardens. Mark anything you know about.
• Second-floor decks. Less common here but they exist at the beaches, and a tub on a raised deck needs a route planned rather than improvised.
• Soft ground. After a wet week the back garden may not take a loaded dolly. If the schedule is flexible, the day after a dry spell is easier for everyone.

None of these change the $322. They change how long we allow for the job.

How the cut-down actually works

Nobody craning anything over a roof. The standard method is:

• Remove the cover and the cabinet panels.
• Cut the acrylic shell and the foam into sections small enough to carry by hand.
• Pull the pump, heater and pipework out separately - that is the heavy, metal-rich part.
• Carry it out in pieces and sweep up.

It is noisy for a while and it makes foam dust. On a normal tub in an accessible spot it is a couple of hours, not a day.

Why so many Jacksonville hot tubs end up derelict

We take out a lot of tubs that were barely used, and the reasons repeat:

• The climate. A hot tub is a winter pleasure, and Jacksonville winters are short. From roughly May to October a heated tub is not appealing, so a lot of them run four months a year and sit for eight.
• Covers die here. UV and humidity destroy vinyl covers fast, and a failed cover absorbs rainwater until it is too heavy for one person to lift. A waterlogged cover is often the moment someone gives up on the tub entirely.
• Salt air. At Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach and Jacksonville Beach, cabinets, fittings and control boards corrode noticeably faster.
• New house, inherited tub. Half our calls are from people who bought a house in Mandarin or Julington Creek with a tub they never wanted and have never filled.

The hurricane-season argument for doing it now

A derelict hot tub is a genuine liability from June through November. A failed or unsecured cover is a large flat object in high wind. A tub holding stagnant water is breeding mosquitoes during the wettest months of the year. And if the enclosure comes down in a storm, you now have a screen cage collapsed on top of a hot tub, which is a much bigger and more expensive job than the one you are reading about.

If you already know the tub is going, the cheap time to do it is a dry week in spring, not the Tuesday after a storm when every crew in Northeast Florida is booked solid.

Booking and combining

Most people clear the rest of the pool deck at the same time, since the truck is there and the minimum is per visit. A common Jacksonville combination: hot tub $322, patio table $89, four patio chairs (4 × $30 = $120). $322 + $89 + $120 = $531. Or a tub plus a dead above-ground pool: $322 + $145 = $467.

Send two photos when you book - one of the tub, one of the route out through the enclosure or gate - plus the gate width if you have it. We will confirm the $322 and the window in writing before anyone drives out.

Frequently asked questions