What does it cost to dispose of a piano?
We charge no heavy-item surcharge. A piano is dismantled on site and disposed of as material; you pay the working time at 65,45 €55,00 € per person per hour and the weight at {{p:disposalPer100Kg}} per 100 kilograms. A piano weighs 200 to 350 kilograms, giving €95 to €167 of disposal, plus one to two hours of dismantling. The same principle applies to safes.
Many providers charge a flat €300 to €600 for a piano. That is not outrageous — it follows from a different way of working, and it is worth understanding, because it explains why it can be cheaper.
Why no surcharge is needed
A piano is heavy because it contains a cast-iron frame carrying several tonnes of string tension. That frame is why moving a piano normally needs four people, straps and a specialist vehicle.
But if the instrument is being disposed of rather than transported, all of that falls away. We dismantle it where it stands:
- Case, lid and keyboard removed — wood
- Strings released and removed — metal
- Cast-iron frame separated — scrap metal, the heaviest single part
- Felt, hammers, action — general waste
What was an immovable 300-kilogram object becomes several carryable parts that one person takes down an ordinary staircase. No crane, no four carriers, no specialist vehicle. Hence no surcharge.
Dismantling takes about an hour for an upright, two to three for a grand — a grand has more case and a more elaborate frame structure.
What does a grand piano cost?
A grand weighs 300 to 500 kilograms, so €143 to €238 of disposal, plus two to three hours of working time. Budget €350 to €550 including VAT in total, depending on the floor.
Safes
The same principle, with one caveat: a safe cannot always be dismantled. What we do depends on the type.
Furniture and lighter wall safes up to about 150 kilograms we move with a sack barrow and roller boards. Over several steps it is secured and carried in stages — slow, but without specialist equipment.
Heavy free-standing safes from 300 kilograms are opened and, where possible, dismantled. The concrete core between the steel walls is the weight; separated, both parts dispose of normally. That is work, but manageable work.
Important: the safe must be open. A locked safe with no key or code is a special case — we do not force safes open, because it cannot be ruled out that contents belonging to you would be damaged. Instruct a locksmith or safe engineer beforehand. If you know it is empty and confirm that in writing, talk to us.
Other heavy objects
Exposed-aggregate concrete elements, planters, gravestones. Purely by weight. An 80-kilogram concrete planter is unremarkable; thirty of them in the garden is two tonnes.
Boilers and oil tanks. The boiler is scrap metal. An oil tank must be professionally emptied and cleaned first; residual oil is hazardous waste at 9,50 €7,98 € per litre. We do not take tanks that have not been emptied.
Cast-iron baths. 100 to 150 kilograms, usually cut up on site.
Workshop machinery. Lathes, mills and pillar drills are dismantled. Note that coolants and oils are hazardous waste and are billed separately.
Pianos in a courtyard or cellar. The commonest special case. If the instrument has to come up an outside stair or through a narrow cellar passage, it is dismantled entirely on site — there it is mandatory rather than optional.
When to sell rather than dispose
With pianos it is worth a short check before booking a clearance date.
Selling is worth it for playable instruments by known makers — Steinway, Bechstein, Blüthner, Grotrian-Steinweg, Schimmel, Yamaha, Kawai — where the action and tuning are sound. Such instruments have a real market, and a dealer or piano technician will usually give you a value over the phone.
Selling is not worth it for unbranded instruments from the 1960s and 1970s, where the soundboard is cracked, where there is woodworm, or where the piano stood for years in a damp cellar. Munich's market is full of pianos offered free that still do not move — because transport alone costs €300.
That logic is the same reason we do not offer a general value deduction: what has a market, you should sell yourself. What does not, we dispose of at the material rate.
What to tell us in advance
- Which object it is and, if possible, the maker and model
- Which floor it is on and whether there is a lift
- Whether it would fit through the doors and stairwell in one piece at all
- For safes: whether it is open
- For oil tanks and machinery: whether operating fluids are still inside
With those details the item appears in the quote instead of being negotiated on the day. A photo is usually enough — upload it to the quote tool. The full weight-based rates are on the disposal and recycling page.