15-yard dumpster rental in Columbia, SC.

What a 15-yard box takes off a Columbia property

An attic or garage that has not been touched in years. A spare bedroom of furniture ahead of a move. One bathroom stripped to the studs — tub, vanity, tile, and the wallboard behind it. Carpet and pad pulled from three or four rooms. A fence line of posts, pickets, and rails. The limbs a Midlands thunderstorm leaves across the yard.

Those loads share a shape: they come from one room, one system, or one corner of the lot, and they run out before a bigger box earns its footprint. Fifteen cubic yards handles them with room to keep the debris below the top rail, which is where every legal load has to sit.

The footprint on the ground

The container measures 16 feet long, 7.5 feet wide, and 4.5 feet high. Six feet shorter than our 20 and 30-yard boxes, it fits driveways the longer containers overrun — a common constraint on tighter city lots near downtown Columbia and in the older street grids of West Columbia and Cayce. The truck still needs a straight approach to roll the box off and to winch it back on, so count the space in front of the drop point, not just the pad it sits on.

Walls at 4.5 feet mean you can lift material over the side instead of walking every armload through the rear door. The door still opens for wheelbarrows and the heavy pieces.

Heavy material belongs in this box

Concrete, brick, tile, plaster, dirt, and roofing use up a weight allowance long before they fill a container. That is why dense debris gets quoted into the smaller box with a controlled fill level — a 30-yard box of broken slab cannot legally leave the site. Tell us it is heavy material and we set the allowance and fill line before delivery, not at pickup.

Keeping a heavy load clean also changes what the landfill charges. Lexington County's Edmund Landfill tips clean concrete and clean asphalt at $28.00 per ton under its July 1, 2025 schedule, against $35.00 per ton for mixed C&D debris. A slab load stays a slab load only until household junk lands on top of it. And the county notes that even residents pay tipping fees on large truckloads of concrete, demolition, and remodeling material — the free household allowance does not cover a renovation.

Checked against Lexington County's published fee schedule, August 2026

When to move up a size

A full kitchen plus flooring, a whole-house cleanout, or anything with cabinets stacked on furniture usually wants the 20-yard box. Renovation and construction volume goes to the 30-yard box. And if the whole job is a few sorted bags and a broken chair, say so — a safe self-haul may beat a rental, and we will tell you that on the phone.

Planning to stage the box in a street instead of a driveway? Columbia treats that as a temporary encroachment. Read the permit rules before you pick a date.