Roll-off containers / 20 cubic yards
20-yard dumpster rental in Columbia, SC.
Twenty-two feet of floor with 4.5-foot sides. The box we book most for Columbia houses.
01 / THE JOBS
The default box for a full project.
Big enough for a whole-room tear-out. Short enough for most driveways.
Where the 20 earns its keep
A kitchen gut is the classic load: cabinets, countertops, the old flooring, and the drywall that came down with them. Estate clearings and whole-house cleanouts fill it steadily rather than all at once. Deck demolition stacks well against its 4.5-foot walls. A pre-move purge — garage, closets, the furniture nobody wants — rarely needs more.
One local wrinkle worth knowing before an estate or rental job: in Lexington County, waste from rental properties, contractors, landscapers, and other commercial sources cannot ride the free neighborhood collection centers. It goes to the county landfill and pays tipping fees. Clearing an inherited house or a turned-over rental is exactly the kind of load a quoted roll-off is built for, because the disposal cost is settled in the rental terms instead of discovered at a gate.
Roof tear-offs and the weight question
Shingles fill a box slowly and use up a weight allowance fast. The 20-yard container is a common tear-off size for Columbia-area homes, quoted with an allowance matched to the roof you describe. At Lexington County's Edmund Landfill, shingles tip at $35.00 per ton whether clean or mixed under the schedule effective July 1, 2025 — but the rate the county reserves for improperly separated mixed loads is $54.00 per ton. The lesson costs nothing: tell us what is going in the box, then load what you said.
Checked against Lexington County's published fee schedule, August 2026
Footprint and placement
The box runs 22 feet long by 7.5 feet wide, with walls at 4.5 feet — low enough to load over the side from a truck bed or a scaffold plank. The rear door swings open behind the container, so the pad needs clear length beyond the steel. Ahead of the box, the truck wants a straight run to tilt the container down and to pull it back up loaded. A flat, firm driveway carries it; soft ground after a week of Midlands rain is worth mentioning before dispatch, not after.
If the only workable spot is a street or any public right-of-way inside Columbia, that placement is a temporary encroachment under city rules. The permit page covers the city process and the second SCDOT permit some streets require.
Up a size, or down
Multi-room renovations, additions, and construction debris outgrow the 20 — that is 30-yard territory, same footprint with taller walls. Dense material runs the other way: concrete, dirt, brick, and tile belong in the 15-yard box with a controlled fill level, because weight, not volume, is the limit on heavy debris. Unsure which side of the line your job sits on? Describe it and we place it.
Book the size most Columbia jobs use. Address, material, dates — that is all we need.
Call (803) 921-8473 →02 / FAQ
20-yard questions, answered.
Capacity, driveways, appliances, and cost.
Will a 20-yard dumpster handle a whole-house cleanout?
It handles most of them. Furniture, boxes, clothing, and general household contents are bulky but light, and 20 cubic yards absorbs several rooms of it. If the house also holds a garage, shed, or attic worth of material, describe everything on the phone — the honest answer is sometimes the 30-yard box, and it is cheaper to size once than to swap mid-job.
How long a driveway does the 22-foot box need?
The container is 22 feet long and 7.5 feet wide, and the rear door swings open behind it, so the drop zone needs more than 22 clear feet. Add the straight approach the truck uses to roll the box off. Measure before you book and report anything overhead — limbs, wires, carports.
Can appliances go in a 20-yard dumpster?
Refrigerators, freezers, and air conditioners are handled as a separate stream under South Carolina law, and Lexington County charges a $15 Freon-recovery fee per unit at the landfill gate. Set refrigerant appliances beside the box, not in it, and mention them when you book so the disposal plan covers them.
What drives the price of a 20-yard rental in Columbia?
Address, material, rental period, and the weight allowance the load needs. A shingle tear-off and an estate cleanout can fill the same box and weigh very different amounts. Give us the job details and the quote spells out the included terms.