City services

What Katy Curbside Collection Will and Will Not Take

You are already paying for a surprisingly generous curbside service. Knowing exactly where its limits sit tells you when you need a container and when you do not.

Start with what you already pay for

We are a dumpster company, so this may be an odd thing to lead with: for a lot of household jobs in Katy you should not rent a container at all.

City residential collection runs through Texas Pride Disposal and appears on your water bill at a monthly rate. For that you get weekly garbage and recycling, a weekly heavy-trash allowance, weekly yard debris collection and a quarterly bulk pickup. It is a genuinely useful service and plenty of people underuse it.

So work out whether your job fits inside it first. If it does, we will tell you. If it does not, the rest of this explains exactly where the line sits.

One universal rule: everything has to be at the curb by 7:00 AM on your service day.

Heavy Trash: three items a week

Each week the collection contractor will take up to three bulky items — furniture, appliances, or objects that simply will not fit in the garbage cart. Place them at the curb next to the cart.

Three items a week adds up if you plan ahead. A sofa this week, a mattress and a bookcase next week, a dresser the week after. For a slow, staged clear-out that is a real allowance and it costs you nothing extra.

What it will not do is clear a house in a weekend, which is where we come in.

Yard debris: the bag and bundle limits

Weekly yard debris collection is more tightly specified than most people realise, and the details matter:

• Bags: limited to 15 bags, none exceeding 35 pounds each.
• Branches: must be tied in bundles not exceeding 40 pounds, less than two inches in diameter, and cut to four-foot lengths.
• Total volume: limited to 4 cubic yards per service day.

Read the branch specification again, because it rules out a lot. Anything thicker than two inches in diameter does not qualify. That means a genuine tree removal — or even taking out a mature shrub bed — is outside the service, regardless of how you cut it.

There is also a specific provision worth knowing if you have hired someone: commercial tree services must haul off their own limbs. If you paid a company to take a tree down, that debris is theirs to remove, not something to leave at your curb.

Super Heavy Trash: quarterly, six cubic yards

On top of the weekly service there is a quarterly bulk pickup, on the first Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of March, June, September and December depending on your collection day. It takes bulky items, bags and bundles up to six cubic yards in total — roughly the volume of a small car.

If your clear-out is not urgent, timing it to land just before a Super Heavy Trash date is the cheapest possible approach. Six cubic yards is a meaningful dent in a garage.

The exclusion list

This is the part that sends people to us, and it is worth reading in full. Excluded from collection:

A few of those catch people out regularly:

• Construction debris in any form. Drywall, flooring, cabinetry, fencing, decking — if it came off a building, it is not a curbside item.
• Dirt and rocks. Landscaping spoil has no free route.
• Concrete and bricks. Including a patio slab or an old flower bed border.
• Pallets. Surprisingly common and specifically named.
• Tyres. A separate route entirely.

Pay piles

Worth knowing before you assume a container is the only option. For larger volumes, the city's guidance is to contact the collection contractor directly for a "pay pile" quote.

That will not cover construction debris or the excluded materials, and for anything substantial a roll-off is usually both cheaper and far more convenient — you are not staging everything at the curb and waiting. But for a one-off oversized pile of otherwise-acceptable material, it is a route worth pricing.

When a container is the right answer

• Any renovation or construction work. Excluded outright, no exceptions.
• A tree removal, or anything with branches over two inches in diameter.
• A whole-house or garage clear-out you want done in a weekend rather than staged three items at a time over two months.
• Concrete, brick, dirt or rock from landscaping or foundation work.
• Anything a contractor generated. That debris is theirs to remove.
• Business, church, apartment or rental property. Outside the residential service.
• Addresses outside the city limits, which are on no city route at all.

Outside the city limits

Everything above is the City of Katy residential service. A great deal of what people call "Katy" is actually unincorporated Harris or Fort Bend County — Cinco Ranch, Cypress, Bear Creek, Nottingham Country and most of the master-planned communities.

Out there, collection is arranged through your MUD or your HOA rather than the city, and the terms vary from one district to the next. There is no single answer, so check your own provider rather than assuming the city rules apply.

What does not change is the material. Construction debris, concrete, dirt and the rest of the exclusion list need a container wherever you are.

Call and describe what you are clearing. If the free routes will handle it we will say so — and if they genuinely will not, we will put you in the right size container.