Clearing an Estate House in New Orleans: Thirty-Five Gallons in the Quarter

New Orleans is the only city in this series that measures what it will collect in gallons. Outside the French Quarter the figure is 192 gallons at a regular collection — a little under a cubic yard. Inside the Quarter and the Downtown Development District it is 35. For a house that has to be emptied, those numbers decide the method on the first morning.

The Capacity, and Where the Line Falls

Section 138-46, as amended in September 2026: "Outside the French Quarter and Downtown Development District, not more than 192 gallons of solid waste per service location shall be removed at each regular collection. Within the French Quarter and Downtown Development District, not more than 35 gallons of solid waste per service location shall be removed at each regular collection. Bulky waste shall be collected in accordance with section 138-43."

Thirty-five gallons is one kitchen bin. For a Creole cottage or a Quarter apartment being cleared after a death, the municipal route is effectively closed for everything except the bulky items that section 138-43 handles separately — and those have limits of their own.

Three Clocks, Depending on the Block

Section 138-43 collects bulky waste "a maximum of once per week on the second regularly scheduled day for pick-up of solid waste or on an 'on-call' basis for larger pick-ups", and then sets three different windows.

A four-block stretch of Frenchmen Street has its own rule. That is worth knowing because a crew working to a single standing instruction across the city will be wrong somewhere, and the windows are narrow enough — thirteen hours at the longest, twelve and a half in the Quarter — that the error is not recoverable the same day.

Two more provisions shape who does what. Subsection (c) puts the scheduling duty on the resident: "The resident shall be responsible for calling or emailing the city's service provider or 311 to schedule an 'on-call' appointment for bulky waste collection." And subsection (d) limits the service: "Bulky waste shall only be collected from residential units."

What Is Eligible, and How Little of It

Subsection (g) lists what qualifies for bulky waste collection at a residential service location, and the weights are the part that catches a clearout.

• Tree limbs and branches under four feet long and 12 inches in diameter, neatly bundled, each bundle 50 pounds or less - maximum six bundles per regular collection or 15 per scheduled on-call collection
• Metal materials weighing 25 pounds or less
• Pipe less than one inch in diameter and less than four feet in length
• Manufactured items, including but not limited to furniture and appliances
• Bagged leaves, weeds, grass and hedge clippings, each bag 50 pounds or less - maximum six bags per regular collection or 15 per on-call collection
• White goods
• Twenty-five pounds or less of construction and demolition solid waste

Twenty-five pounds of metal, and twenty-five pounds of construction and demolition waste. An old bed frame exceeds the first; a single interior door and its frame exceeds the second. Furniture and appliances are eligible as manufactured items without a stated weight, which is the one generous line in the list — and subsection (e) attaches a condition to it: "All compressors must be removed from appliances prior to being placed out for collection."

Where It May Not Go

Subsection (f) requires bulky waste in alleys to be placed adjacent to the property line, and curbside bulky waste to be "in front of the resident's property, between the sidewalk and the street curb." It then prohibits placement "on the sidewalk or in the street, within five feet of any fire hydrant, utility pole, mail box, or any other fixed object, on top of any water meter, behind a fence or any obstruction or barrier, or in any other manner that would interfere with or be hazardous to pedestrians, bicyclists, or motorists."

On a New Orleans block the strip between sidewalk and kerb is narrow and crowded — utility poles, meters, street trees — and "any other fixed object" with a five-foot radius removes most of it. The prohibition on placing material behind a fence also rules out the instinctive approach of staging inside the gate of a vacant property.

Contractors' Refuse Is Not Collected At All

Section 138-53 is a single sentence and it governs more estate clearouts than its length suggests: "Contractors' refuse and manufacturing or trade refuse is not acceptable for municipal collection."

Where a contractor is engaged to clear a house, whether what leaves the building is the household's refuse or the contractor's is a question with a real answer and a real consequence. It is worth settling with Sanitation before a crew is booked, because if the material falls on the wrong side of that line the municipal route does not exist for it, and the planning has to start from a private hauler and a disposal facility instead.

Special Service, and the Bill That Finds the Water Account

Section 138-62 provides the overflow route and prices it. On written request and authorization the department may make "special unscheduled collection of refuse in excess of the maximums regulated by section 138-46", and "A charge shall be levied for such service at the rate of $12.00 per hour, plus a fixed rate of $8.00 for hauling to the disposal site."

Subsection (b) routes the charge: due and payable on completion, "paid by the owner, agent or occupant of the property on the water and/or sewerage bills of the sewerage and water board." As in Dallas, the invoice arrives on a utility account rather than in the post — and on an estate property that account is often still in the decedent's name.

Subsection (c) is the one that reads as though it were written for successions: "If the director of sanitation is in doubt as to what party (owner, agent or occupant) is responsible for paying this service charge, the director of the department of sanitation may demand payment in advance of providing such special unscheduled refuse collection." A representative administering a succession is precisely the ambiguous party that subsection contemplates, so expect to be asked to pay first and plan the estate's cash accordingly.

Who Gets Cited

Section 138-37(a) escalates: a first conviction for violating sections 138-38 through 138-47 is punishable by a fine of not less than $150.00, a second by not less than $250.00, and "For a third conviction and each subsequent offense, a fine of not less than $500.00 or imprisonment of no less than five days nor more than 90 days or both."

Then the sentence that matters when work is subcontracted: "Owners, agents, including commercial haulers, and/or occupants of property may be charged with violations of these sections." Liability is not channelled to one party. The owner, the agent and the hauler are all exposed, which is an argument for the representative to know what the crew is instructed to do rather than leaving placement to whoever shows up.

The Louisiana Duty Behind All of It

Louisiana states the representative's duty more plainly than any other state in this series. Code of Civil Procedure Article 3221, headed Preservation of succession property, is one line: "A succession representative shall preserve, repair, maintain, and protect the property of the succession."

There is no casualty exception on its face, no approval threshold and no court application. Article 3191(A) then supplies the standard and the consequence: "A succession representative is a fiduciary with respect to the succession, and shall have the duty of collecting, preserving, and managing the property of the succession in accordance with law. He shall act at all times as a prudent administrator, and shall be personally responsible for all damages resulting from his failure so to act."

Personally responsible for all damages. Against a city whose penalties reach three parties at once and whose charges land on a utility account nobody is reading, that is a reason for a representative to run the clearout deliberately rather than delegate it and hope.

Article 3191(B) offers a practical answer for heirs who live elsewhere: "A nonresident succession representative may execute a procuration or mandate appointing a resident of the state to represent him in all acts of his administration." A resident agent, appointed properly, can stand in for the acts of administration this work involves. The full Louisiana provisions, and the other six states' answers, are in a succession representative's duty to preserve property in Louisiana.

Planning the Job Backwards

• Establish which rule set the address falls under - French Quarter and DDD, Frenchmen Street between Esplanade and Dauphine, or the rest of the city - before anything is scheduled
• Settle with Sanitation whether the material will be treated as household refuse or contractors' refuse, because section 138-53 closes the municipal route entirely for the latter
• Plan around 192 gallons, or 35 in the Quarter, per regular collection; for a whole house the realistic route is on-call bulky collection, special service under 138-62, or a private hauler
• Separate out the 25-pound categories early: metal and construction and demolition waste are capped there, and the rest has to go another way
• Remove compressors from appliances before anything is placed
• Check the verge against the five-foot rule and the water-meter prohibition, and do not stage behind a fence
• Expect to be asked for payment in advance under 138-62(c), because an estate is exactly the ownership doubt that subsection addresses
• Where the representative lives out of state, consider the resident agent route in Article 3191(B) rather than managing placement windows remotely

For the clearing work itself see what a trash-out is, and for the eviction version, the eviction property cleanout process. The same job runs on different rules in San Antonio, which refuses anything over eight cubic yards; Dallas, where the overage is billed to the water account; Houston, where the record owner is presumptively liable; Cleveland, where staging is itself the offence; Columbus, where bulk needs an occupant; Cincinnati, where a pile of small items is not bulk refuse; Pittsburgh, which bills hourly; and Philadelphia, where a street dumpster is unlicensable across much of Center City. The statutory duties by state are collected at estates, probate and fiduciary.