Tile Roof Tear-Off Dumpster Size Guide for Mesa and the East Valley

When somebody calls us about a container, the first number out of their mouth is usually square footage, and usually that is close enough. Roofing is the exception, and in Mesa it is the exception twice over. A tile roof is not sized by the room the debris takes up. It is sized by what that debris weighs — and concrete roof tile weighs three to four times what an asphalt shingle roof of the same size weighs.

Ruben has been setting roofing boxes around the East Valley since 2013, and the call that goes wrong is always the same one. Somebody in Red Mountain Ranch or Augusta Ranch has a tile roof coming off and a 20 yard in their head, because a national sizing chart said a whole roof fits in a 20 yard. What happens is that the box reaches legal haul weight around a third full and then sits in the driveway, loaded and unmovable. A tile tear-off that looks like a 20 yard job is a weight job, not a volume job. That is the most common sizing mistake in this market.

The square, and what tile does to it

A square is 100 square feet of roof surface, and a properly measured count allows for pitch, hips, valleys and overhang. A 2,200 square foot house in east Mesa is not a 22 square roof — with slope and eaves it is usually 26 to 30. Get that number from whoever is doing the work, then apply the material:

• Concrete roof tile: roughly 900 to 1,000 lb per square — the tile alone, before underlayment, battens and nails.
• Clay roof tile: lighter than concrete, still in a different weight class from shingle. Unless the roofer has a better figure, we size clay the way we size concrete.
• Asphalt shingle: roughly 250 lb per square for a single layer.
• Underlayment, battens, flashing and fasteners: add 5 to 10 percent on top, more if the roof is stripped to the deck.

Run the arithmetic on one roof

Take a plain 20 square roof, two materials.

In asphalt shingle: 20 squares at about 250 lb is roughly 5,000 lb. Two and a half tons. Add felt and drip edge and you are still under three. One container, one pull, and volume runs out before weight does.

In concrete tile: 20 squares at 950 lb is roughly 19,000 lb. Nine and a half tons before a roll of brittle underlayment goes in, and call it ten by the time the deck is clean. That is not one container of anything — it is a staged job with more than one pull, and forced into one box the truck cannot pick it up.

Same roof, four times the weight, a different plan. Everything here follows from that, and it is the weight logic behind our concrete and heavy debris work.

The sizing table

Weights are approximate, tile or shingle plus its underlayment. Staged means one box on the driveway and a swap booked in advance, not a bigger box. Road weight decides the answer, not the walls of the container.

For anything other than a roof, see our Mesa sizing guide; dimensions for every box are on the dumpster sizes page.

Three roofs, three different jobs

Concrete tile: the 1990s and 2000s subdivisions out east

Almost everything built east of Greenfield from the early 1990s on is stucco and concrete tile. Red Mountain Ranch, Las Sendas, Augusta Ranch, Superstition Springs and, more recently, Eastmark are wall-to-wall with it, and those roofs are hitting their first tear-off now. Broken tile packs into the corners of a box far more densely than whole tile, so tell the crew before they start whether you want it stacked or thrown.

Clay tile: older stock and the higher end

Clay turns up on older Mesa houses and higher-end custom work, particularly the hillside lots toward Red Mountain. It is more fragile than concrete, breaks on handling far more readily, and is much more likely to be worth saving. Barrel clay in a discontinued profile is close to irreplaceable.

Flat and low-slope: the 1950s and 1960s block ranch

The other Mesa is the low block ranch stock — Dreamland Villa, Velda Rose, Mesa Grande and the older neighborhoods along the Broadway and Southern corridors. Those roofs are built-up tar and gravel, sprayed foam, or modified bitumen: no dense units, but rolls, sheets, saturated felt and, on a built-up roof, a real tonnage of gravel ballast that loads like landscape rock. The critical point here is the date. A great deal of it is pre-1980, which puts the felt, the mastic and the built-up system itself in the category that must be tested before anybody pulls it off.

Underlayment is the hidden weight

Very few tile jobs here replace the tile. Most are a re-felt: the tile comes off, the underlayment beneath it is replaced, the same tile goes back down. That is the normal cycle on an Arizona tile roof, and it is why underlayment matters as much as tile.

Arizona sun does not treat felt kindly. Twenty-five years under tile in 115 degree summers leaves it brittle enough to come off in shards rather than sheets, and plenty of roofs carry two generations of it plus decades of blown grit. On a 30 square roof that is a real addition to the load. If the deck is being stripped clean, add a pull.

Pull your salvage before the box arrives

This is the advice that saves the most on a tile job, and it has to happen before we deliver. Good field tile is frequently reused: on a re-felt it goes straight back on the roof, and on a partial replacement sound tile in a matching profile and color is worth keeping for repairs. In an HOA community it may be the only practical way to match the street years from now. Broken tile, ridge and rake pieces and anything cracked goes in the container; sound field tile goes on pallets in the side yard.

Decide which is which before the container lands. Once a crew has a box in the driveway and a schedule to keep, everything goes in it, and the tile you meant to keep is hauled off at your expense. Put the pallets clear of our approach path, then call us with the number actually going in.

Asbestos, and the notification nobody expects

Roofing felt, mastic and built-up systems installed before 1980 can contain asbestos — a live possibility on any mid-century flat roof in central and west Mesa. Test rather than tear off. If it comes back positive the material goes to a licensed abatement contractor — we cannot take asbestos-containing material in any container, on any job, ever.

The regulator is the Maricopa County Air Quality Department, not ADEQ, under Rule 370. Two things follow:

• Notification goes in at least 10 business days before work starts. Two full weeks on a calendar, so it is a scheduling item, not paperwork for the morning of.
• Demolition notifications are required regardless of whether asbestos is present. The sleeper item on every teardown in this county.

Requirements change, so confirm what applies to your job with Maricopa County rather than taking this page as final.

Heat decides the working day

From May through September the roof is the hottest surface on the property, and tile holds that heat past sundown. East Valley crews start before first light all summer — four thirty in the morning is normal, not heroic — and in July they are off the roof by mid-morning. Nobody stands on concrete tile at two in the afternoon in a 115 degree week.

So a tear-off that runs a day and a half in February runs three or four short mornings in July. The container sits longer and the swaps land earlier. Book swap-outs for first thing, so the box leaves while the crew is still working.

Monsoon drives the season

The monsoon runs June 15 to September 30. Through those weeks a single microburst — straight-line winds near 100 mph for three to five minutes over a small area — will lift, slide and crack tile across a whole subdivision in one afternoon, and a dust storm off an outflow boundary does its own damage on top. The metro took a significant dust storm on 19 August 2026, visibility under a mile, gusts mainly 55 to 65 mph.

What matters is what happens next. After a storm crosses the East Valley, every roofer, adjuster and container in Mesa, Gilbert and Queen Creek is spoken for inside a week. Book early rather than book right. A container size can be changed with a phone call; a slot on the truck cannot. Watch the National Weather Service through the season, and see monsoon storm damage cleanup in Mesa for the rest of the sequence.

Placement on a tile job

Put the box as close to the tear-off side as the drive allows. On a tile roof, shovel distance is tonnage carried by hand: every extra ten feet is thousands of pounds moved further than it needed to go.

• Protection boards go under the rails on every set, without exception. An asphalt drive here goes soft by mid-afternoon from May to September, and a loaded tile box on soft asphalt takes an impression you can still see next winter.
• Approach: roughly 60 feet of straight run to set a box down and pick it back up, and about 10.5 feet of width through gates, between block walls and past parked vehicles.
• Overhead: the hoist needs 20 feet or more of clear vertical space. Here the obstruction is a fan or date palm, an unlifted mesquite, carport framing on the older ranch stock, or the service drop from the alley. Look straight up before you book.
• Clear of the drip line, so tile does not bounce off the rails into rock.
• The street is a separate question. Placing a container in a Mesa street requires a City of Mesa Temporary Traffic Control (barricade) permit — call 480-644-4882 or email barricade@mesaaz.gov to confirm requirements for your address, and see dumpster permits in Mesa. Sidewalks and alleys stay clear.

HOA rules on tile are stricter than you think

In Mesa's master-planned and HOA communities, container placement and duration are governed by your CC&Rs — check with your association before delivery. On a tile roof there is a second layer, because the CC&Rs in most east Mesa subdivisions also govern the tile profile and the color you may put back. The replacement may need approval before the old roof comes off. Ask both questions at once: what materials are approved, and how many days a container may sit.

Which box, and how many

For nearly every residential tile tear-off in Mesa the answer is the 10 yard with swaps booked ahead: short, low to load into, and able to sit on a 1990s two-car driveway without eating the approach. The 15 yard suits smaller tile jobs, foam and modified bitumen flat roofs, and jobs where decking comes off too. The 20 yard is right for shingle roofs and mixed roofing-and-remodel loads — and it is the box people wrongly ask for on tile.

Keep the load clean: tile, underlayment, flashing, battens and nails ride together, palm fronds and decorative granite do not. Run a magnet sweep when the last tile is off.

Talk it through before you book

Give us three things and we will tell you honestly what you need, including when the answer is a smaller box hauled three times: the square count, the material — concrete tile, clay, shingle or flat — and whether the deck is being stripped. If salvage comes off first, say so; it changes the count.

Sandstone Bros has run roll-offs from the yard at 1913 N Rosemont, off McKellips in north-east Mesa, since 2013. Ruben answers the phone, Marco runs the yard, and protection boards go under every set. Full detail is on our roofing dumpster rental page. Call (480) 757-9432, or the numbers on our contact page, and we will get the right container in the right spot before the first tile comes off.