Junk removal in Westboro, Ottawa.
We clear junk in Westboro, and the first thing we ask about is the tree. Westboro sits in Ward 15, Kitchissippi, between Island Park Drive and the Ottawa River, with Richmond Road running through the middle of it. Seventy-one per cent of its houses are detached and most were built between 1900 and 1960, so unlike the inner-city streets there are real driveways to load from. What there also is, on almost every one of those lots, is a mature tree. Under Ottawa's Tree Protection By-law any private tree measuring 30 cm across the trunk is a protected “distinctive tree”, and its root zone is fenced off before work starts. That ring is usually exactly where you would put a truck.
Call or text and say the address.
(613) 852-4059There are two Westboros on the same street, and they are not the same job.
The first is the original stock. Ribbon development ran along Richmond Road from the mid to late 1800s, Senator James Skead put a sawmill up near what is now Westboro Beach in the early 1870s, and the post office took the name Westboro in 1899, the same year the Ottawa Electric Railway started work on a streetcar line out this way. It was a police village in Nepean Township after that. Sources disagree on which year that began, so we do not print one. Ottawa annexed it in 1949 to 1950, in the same transfer that took 7,420 acres off Nepean Township including Westboro Beach and Nepean High School. Those are the houses the Wikipedia figure describes: detached, on their own lots, built before most of the city's suburbs existed.
The second Westboro arrived after 2000. Older homes are being replaced by modern infills, lots are being severed, and condo projects keep going up. A tall and narrow new build on a severed lot has most of the frontage taken by the house, and the driveway that used to serve the original is now half as wide or gone.
So the useful question is not which neighbourhood you are in. It is which of the two houses you are in. A 1930s detached original with a full driveway is one of the easier clear-outs in the inner city. The infill beside it, on half the original lot, is a carry to the street. Tell us which one on the call and the quote holds.
One thing worth knowing if you are clearing out a family property here: after the annexation the City changed street names that were duplicated across the two former municipalities. Churchill Avenue used to be Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue used to be River Road, both renamed after the Second World War. If you are working from an old deed, an estate file or a letter and the street does not exist any more, that is usually why.
Four ways a load leaves a Westboro address.
| Route | What it takes | What it will not take | The Westboro catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| City curbside collection | Three items every two weeks, per household on curbside collection | Renovation debris of any kind, and anything over three items without a yellow bag | Fine on a detached original. A condo or a multi-unit building is on containerized collection instead, and the three-item arithmetic never applied to it |
| City yellow bag | Anything over the three-item limit that fits in the bag | Furniture and large bulky items, which cannot be bagged at all | A sofa still counts as one of your three no matter how many bags you set out beside it |
| Drive it to Trail Road yourself | One load, on a weekday, in a vehicle that can carry it | Asbestos, liquid waste and hazardous waste, which the site does not accept | Trail Road is at 4475 Trail Road off Moodie Drive, the far southwest corner of the city. From Richmond Road that is a real drive each way, and the gate is closed Sundays |
| A truck | The whole pile in one visit, carried out and swept behind | Household hazardous waste, and fridges and freezers until the refrigerant is removed and the unit tagged | Where the truck can sit. On the older lots that is the driveway; on a severed infill lot it is the road, and beside a protected tree it is neither |
The tree in the front yard is a permit, not a decision.
This is the rule almost nobody calling from Westboro has heard, and on an old street with big trees it decides how the whole job is staged.
Ottawa's Tree Protection By-law No. 2020-340 defines a distinctive tree as any tree on private property with a DBH of 30 cm or greater inside the urban area, where DBH is the trunk measured 130 cm off the ground. Part V of the by-law applies that to properties one hectare or less in the urban area, which is every residential lot in Westboro. Section 57 is blunt: no person shall injure or destroy a distinctive tree. Section 58 allows it only where the General Manager has issued a distinctive tree permit, and a permit application needs an arborist, a tree information report and the property owner's written consent.
The part that changes a clear-out is the root zone. The by-law sets a tree's critical root zone at 10 cm of radius for every 1 cm of trunk diameter. Run that on the 30 cm threshold and you get a protected circle three metres out from the trunk in every direction, and Westboro's front yard maples are frequently well past 30 cm. Section 74 then requires tree protection fencing at least 1.2 metres high around the outer edge of that zone before any work activity starts, staying up until the work is finished. Section 75 allows the fenced area to be reduced only where an arborist prescribes mitigation, and names the measures: plywood, wood chips or steel plating over the roots, proper pruning of roots where they are hit, and tunnelling or boring for excavation.
Read that against a Westboro driveway. Three metres of protected ground off a tree near the front of the lot can take the only place a loaded truck could reasonably stand. That is not a reason to give up on the job, it is a reason to look at the yard before the day rather than on it.
And if you are doing this as part of a build, Section 62 catches it early: where a building permit application for infill development or a Committee of Adjustment application is made in the urban area, the owner or applicant has to submit a Tree Information Report. The by-law defines infill development as low rise residential development not subject to site plan control, plan of subdivision or plan of condominium, which is the exact description of what has been replacing Westboro's older houses since the 2000s. Committee of Adjustment is where lot severances go. So on this neighbourhood's most common project, the tree paperwork is triggered by the application, not by the demolition.
Old paint and old pipes.
Most houses here were built between 1900 and 1960, and that puts a large share of the neighbourhood on the wrong side of a Health Canada line.
Health Canada's guidance is direct: a home built before 1960 probably contains lead-based paint. Built between 1960 and 1990, the exterior may contain it, and interior surfaces may hold smaller amounts that are still harmful, particularly to young children. It says there is no known safe level of lead exposure. It also names the mistake people make when clearing an old house themselves: do not use sanders, heat guns or blowlamps on lead-based paint, because that turns it into toxic dust and fumes. If you want certainty rather than caution, send paint chips to a lab or hire a contractor with x-ray equipment.
We haul debris out. We do not test paint, and we do not disturb suspect material blind. Check the build year of the specific address rather than trusting a decade label for the street, because Westboro streets are genuinely mixed and on an unverified address the safer assumption is the older one. That applies to hoarding cleanup, to a water and flood damage strip-out, to mould remediation and to demolition, which are the four jobs where somebody opens up a wall rather than carrying things out of a room.
Water work here has a second reason to check the year. The City's Lead Pipe Replacement Program exists because roughly 30,000 Ottawa homes built before 1955 may still have a lead water service pipe, and a good part of Westboro's original stock falls inside that window. A flooded basement is one of the few times anyone actually looks at the service entry. Verify the specific address with the City rather than assuming from the neighbourhood.
Where the bin goes, and why the answer differs by house.
On a detached Westboro original, a bin usually goes on the driveway and there is nothing to apply for. That is a real advantage of 71 per cent detached housing and it is why this neighbourhood is easier to work than Vanier or Centretown.
On a severed infill lot with no driveway width to spare, the bin goes on the road, and the road is City right of way. The City requires a temporary construction related encroachment permit for a portable storage container that uses any part of the right of way, including for loading and unloading, and it asks for a minimum of 10 business days to process one. So on those addresses a bin job starts ten business days before anybody lifts anything, and a crew that loads and leaves the same day does not touch that rule at all, because nothing stays standing on the road.
Which junk removal company is the best in Ottawa?
We are not going to answer that about ourselves. Here is what to ask instead, and it works on any quote including ours.
Ask what the price is based on: volume, weight, the hour or the item, and what changes it. Ask where the load goes and what gets separated out before it gets there. Ask what happens to the things on the refusal list. Ask whether the quote is confirmed before anything is lifted or counted up once the truck is full. And on a Westboro address, ask where they intend to stand the truck, because a company that has not looked at your frontage and your front-yard tree has not looked at your job.
Send photos, and say which house it is.
Call or text (613) 852-4059, or email info@ottawasiterestoration.ca. Photos of the pile get you a quote without anyone driving out to look first. Say the street, say whether the house is an original or a newer infill, and say whether there is a tree between the door and where a truck could park.
Westboro was Nepean Township land until the 1949 to 1950 annexation, and we cover the rest of it too: Nepean and, further west along the same corridor, Kanata. The full list is on service areas, and the model behind every number is on pricing.
Westboro, answered.
Something not covered? Text (613) 852-4059.
By volume. Junk removal in Ottawa is priced on how much room the load takes in the truck and sold as a fraction of it, not by the hour and not by the item. An hourly rate bills you for traffic. Item pricing breaks the moment two chairs and a dresser take up the same space as one sofa. Three things move that number, and in Westboro they land in an unusual order. Volume: flat-packing and breaking boxes down genuinely drops a load a fraction. It is the one thing you can do that lowers the price. Weight: concrete, tile, plaster, brick and shingles bill by the tonne at the scale, not by the space they fill. This matters more here than in a newer suburb, because a house built between 1900 and 1960 comes apart into plaster and lath rather than drywall, and a Westboro renovation load is heavy out of all proportion to its size. Access: usually the mild one on a detached original with a driveway. On a severed infill lot, or where a protected tree's root zone has to stay fenced, it becomes the whole job. We publish no figures on this page and we do not invent one on the phone. The pricing page sets out the model in full and shows what other Ottawa haulers publish, so you can see where a quote should land before you accept it.
Every hauler in the city has a floor, and it is there because a single item still costs a truck, a crew, a cross-city drive to Trail Road and a fee at the scale. The mattress does not get cheaper for being alone. In Westboro the honest split is this. If you have one item and no deadline, the City's curbside allowance may take it for nothing and that is worth checking first. If you have one item and it is a cast iron tub on the second floor of a 1920s house with a turn in the stairs, you are paying for the carry, not for the tub. Those are two different calls.
The City is the free option, and for most of Westboro it genuinely works, because most of Westboro is detached houses on curbside collection. Ottawa collects three garbage items every two weeks. A bag counts as one. A bin with a removable lid counts as one, up to 140 litres and under 15 kg. A bulky item counts as one, and the City's own examples are a carpet, couch, desk, chair, cabinets, tub, mattress and patio furniture. Anything above three has to go out in a City branded yellow bag, and there is no cap on how many of those you buy. Two rules catch people: a bulky item cannot be bagged, and you cannot tie a yellow bag to it. So a mattress goes out as a mattress and counts as one of your three, however many bags you own. Where it stops working in Westboro is renovation debris and yard waste. Plaster, wood, drywall, concrete and asphalt from a building project are not collected with the regular garbage at all, and a pre-1960 house being opened up produces exactly that. Nor is the material from a tree that came down, which in this neighbourhood can be a lot of it.
The refusal list is the same for every hauler in Ottawa and it is not a preference. Paint, gasoline, motor oil, propane cylinders, pool chemicals, fire extinguishers, pharmaceuticals and needles are household hazardous waste, and a truck taking them to a landfill is not a legal disposal route. Fridges, freezers, air conditioners and dehumidifiers are refused until a certified technician removes the refrigerant and tags the unit. Almost all of it has a free destination in Ottawa. We wrote the whole list and where each item actually goes, in our guide to what a junk removal truck will not take in Ottawa.
Sometimes, and a company that will not say so is selling you something. From Westboro it is a fair drive. The Trail Waste Facility is at 4475 Trail Road off Moodie Drive in the far southwest corner of the city, and the City publishes its hours as Monday to Friday, 7 am to 6 pm, closed Sundays, and open on selected Saturdays only. Check the City's page for which Saturdays before you drive out, because the list changes through the year and the two days most people are free are usually the two the gate is shut. DIY wins with one load, a vehicle that carries it and a free weekday. It stops winning quickly on a century-house renovation, because plaster and lath is heavy, the fee at the scale is by weight, and four trips across the city is a day off work and four minimum charges. The site does not accept asbestos, liquid waste or hazardous waste at all.
Where these facts come from
Every external fact on this page, with the date we read it. Collection rules, by-laws and permit timelines change; check the source before you act on one. On 2026-08-24 ottawa.ca returned a bot challenge to direct requests, so the tree by-law was read from an archived capture of the City's own page and carries that capture's date rather than a date nobody read the live page on.
- Westboro, Ottawa: the 71 per cent detached figure, the 1900 to 1960 build window, the boundaries, the history and the post-war street renaming read
- Kitchissippi Ward, which is Ward 15 and includes Westboro read
- City of Ottawa, Richmond Road / Westboro community design plan, background history read
- Today in Ottawa's History, amalgamation: the 1949 to 1950 annexation and the 7,420 acres read
- All Things Home, Westboro: the infill, severance and condo layer read
- City of Ottawa, Tree Protection By-law No. 2020-340: the distinctive tree definition, the critical root zone formula and sections 57, 58, 62, 74 and 75 read
- Health Canada, Lead-based paint read
- City of Ottawa, Lead Pipe Replacement Program read
- City of Ottawa, curbside garbage collection and the three-item limit read
- City of Ottawa, Trail Waste Facility Landfill read
- City of Ottawa, temporary construction related encroachments read
Clearing something in Westboro?
Call or text for an up-front quote. Same-day and next-day service across Ottawa and Gatineau.