20 Yard Dumpster Rental in Roanoke, VA

A 20 yard roll-off is roughly twenty-two feet long, eight feet wide and about four and a half feet tall, which is eight or nine pickup loads. It is the size most people picture when they think of a roll-off, and in this valley it is the one that fits the most common job. Household contents and remodel debris fill volume faster than they build weight, so a 20 will take a large clear-out and still go out at a lawful payload.

• Capacity20 cubic yards
• Footprint22 ft x 8 ft x 4.5 ft
• Weight allowance3 – 4 tons
• Holds about~6 – 8 pickup truck loads

Why people choose the 20 yard

The 20 is the Roanoke default because the open-ended house job is the Roanoke default. Crawlspaces are common across this valley and plenty of older city houses have basements, and the City of Roanoke reports 44,543 housing units with 55 percent of them built before 1960, describing its stock as generally old, well-built and well designed, with foursquares, craftsman bungalows and folk Victorians in it. Houses like that were built with storage under the floor and over the ceiling, and three or four generations fill both. So the job is rarely one room. It is a crawlspace and an attic and a garage, worked through over two or three weekends, with a porch or a shed added at the end because the container is already there. That is a 20 yard job. A 15 would have you rationing space by the second weekend, and a 30 would be more container than the drive can comfortably take. If you are genuinely unsure which way to go, describe the pile down the phone and we will size it with you.

The second reason is that household and remodel material is airy. Furniture, mattresses, boxed contents, carpet, cabinetry, doors, trim and drywall all consume volume quickly and build weight slowly, which is exactly the profile a 20 is designed for. A multi-room remodel behaves the same way as long as the heavy components are kept out of it. What changes the arithmetic is density: masonry, tile bedded in mortar, crawlspace spoil, and anything that has been damp. Roanoke City, Roanoke County, Vinton and Salem are all designated SEVERE for termite infestation probability, so a house job here has a habit of producing a pile of rotten sill plate and band joist alongside the boxes and the furniture. When that happens, put the heavy material in a 10 loaded flat and keep the 20 for everything else. Two containers sorted by material almost always cost less than one that has to be part-emptied before it can leave. Tell us what the walls and the floors are made of when you call, and we will split the job correctly the first time.

The 20 is also the practical limit on many Roanoke properties, which is a point worth making plainly. At around twenty-two feet the box needs real room to be set down and swung, and this is a valley of hillside lots, short drives and older narrow city streets. A roll-off delivery is a gravity operation: the container comes off the rails under its own weight and the cable pulls it back up loaded. On a graded drive in South Roanoke, Grandin Court, Deyerle or Garden City, a 20 is often the largest box that can be placed and recovered safely, and the 30 that would fit the volume simply has nowhere to go. That is not a limitation people expect until the truck is in the street. It is also why we ask about the drive before the size: the answer to how big is frequently decided by the ground rather than by the pile. Send a photo of the drive if that is easier than describing it, and we will tell you what will fit before delivery day.

Finally, the 20 covers the gap that curbside collection leaves, and that gap is wide here. The City of Roanoke collects bulk on your trash day capped at three items a week and brush with limbs under three inches in diameter in a pile no larger than six feet each way, and its own solid waste plan excludes homeowner-generated remodeling materials along with construction and demolition debris, rocks, dirt, brick, concrete, stumps, treated lumber and fencing. Roanoke County answers the remodeling question differently and allows small amounts with its biweekly bulk pickup, so confirm the rules for your own locality. Either way, three bulk items a week will not empty a house. What we haul goes to the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority, tipped at the Tinker Creek Transfer Station on Hollins Road and then railed 33 miles by Norfolk Southern to the Smith Gap Landfill. In the city the Norfolk and Western built, the valley’s waste still leaves town on a train, which is worth knowing the first time somebody asks where all of it goes.

Good fit for

• A crawlspace and attic cleared over a few weekends
• Multi-room remodels with cabinets and carpet
• Whole-floor clear-outs in an older city house
• Larger rental turnovers and move-outs
• A two-layer roof tear-off on an average house
• Deck removal plus a fence line and shed
• Storm cleanup mixing limbs, fencing and contents
• Estate work in a house with an attic and a basement

Not the right size for

• Loads made up mostly of concrete, brick or block
• Crawlspace spoil and soil in quantity
• Saturated contents after a water loss
• A whole large house emptied in one go
• Commercial gut jobs and construction sites
• Very short or steeply graded drives with no turning room

Will it fit?

A 20 yard is about twenty-two feet long, so plan on roughly twenty-eight feet of usable ground once the rear door swing is included, plus about ten and a half feet of width. The truck wants around 60 feet of straight approach to line up and back and 20 feet or more of overhead clearance for the hoist. In this valley the two things that stop a 20 are grade and overhead. Roll-off delivery is a gravity operation, so on a hillside drive we square the truck to the slope, spot the set from the low side and consider where a loaded box will sit rather than where an empty one starts, and on some drives the answer is that a 15 is the better container. Overhead is the other one: mature street trees and the electrical service drop from the pole hang across a lot of older city drives, and a longer box needs more room for the hoist. Plywood goes under the wheels and the rails on every placement. The fire code applies wherever it lands, keeping any container of 1.5 cubic yards or more at least five feet from combustible walls, openings and roof eave lines under International Fire Code § 304.3.3.

Before delivery, move cars and bins, mark irrigation heads and septic lids, and tell us about new concrete, soft or made ground, a steep or hillside-cut drive, or a service drop hanging under the tree canopy. Plywood goes under every wheel and under both rails as standard. Our delivery and driveway protection guide and our steep driveway guide cover the rest.

Compare all five sizes