Above Ground Pool Removal in Dothan, AL

It Has To Come Apart To Leave the Yard

An above ground pool went up in a day and it will not come down in one piece. There is nothing to pick up and carry. A 24 foot round pool is a steel or aluminum wall rolled into a circle, held by uprights and top rails, lined with vinyl and set on a bed of sand. Taking it out means unbuilding it in the reverse order it went up.

Most of what we get called about has been out of service a season or two. The pump quit, the liner tore, the kids grew up, or the family bought the house with the pool already in the yard and never wanted it. By then it is green water and a wall rusting at the bottom.

Everything that goes

• The vinyl liner, cut into strips so it can be carried and loaded
• The wall, rolled back up or cut into sections, plus the foam cove behind it
• Top rails, uprights, caps, connector plates and the bottom track
• The ladder or deck steps, and any handrails
• Pump, filter, hoses, skimmer, chlorinator and timer box
• Solar cover, winter cover, cover reel and the water bags
• Patio blocks under the uprights, and whatever ended up in the pool over winter

Draining It, and Where the Water Goes

The pool has to be empty before anybody touches it, and draining is the homeowner’s job because of how long it takes. The volumes are larger than people picture. A 15 foot round pool with a 48 inch wall holds around 4,000 gallons. A 24 foot round with a 52 inch wall is in the region of 13,000. At a little over eight pounds a gallon, that is more weight than any yard equipment will move.

A submersible pump is the practical tool. Most move a few thousand gallons an hour, so a big pool is still most of a day. Start it the day before, not the morning of. The last inch or two will not pump and soaks into the ground under the liner, which is normal.

Where it goes matters as much as how fast. Send it away from the house and foundation, away from a septic field, and not toward a neighbor’s yard downhill of you. Stop adding chlorine well ahead of time so the water has gone flat before it hits grass, and keep treated water out of a storm drain. If you are unsure about discharging to the street, ask the city first.

The Teardown, Part by Part

The order is fixed by how the pool was built. Top rails and caps come off first, freeing the uprights. The liner is next, and it is the worst of it. Vinyl that has been in the sun for ten years is stiff and heavy and holds water in every fold, so it gets cut into strips rather than dragged out whole. A full size liner in one piece is not something two people carry.

Then the wall. It is a single long sheet of steel or aluminum with edges sharp enough to take gloves seriously. Depending on condition it gets unbolted and rolled up like a carpet, or cut into flat sections that stack. Rusted walls tend to come apart on their own.

The metal is the good news. The wall, rails, uprights and ladder are steel or aluminum, so they go to scrap rather than a landfill. Sand filters need their own line: the tank holds a couple of hundred pounds of filter sand, which is easy to forget until somebody tries to pick it up.

What the Yard Looks Like Afterward

Expect a circle. Under the pool is a leveled bed of sand, sometimes a ton or more, and around the edge a ring of dead grass that has been in the dark all summer. Neither disappears with the pool.

The sand stays unless you want it hauled, and that is worth deciding in advance, because sand is heavy and it is effectively a second load. Plenty of people spread it, use it as a base for a shed, or leave it and reseed over it. Raking the ring flat and clearing the debris is part of what we do. Regrading, topsoil and sod are landscaping.

If there is a deck attached to the pool, say so up front. Boards we pull to free the wall come out with the rest, but taking down a full standing deck is separate work.

Timing and Price

Most of these jobs land at the end of the season, late summer into fall, once it is clear the pool is not going back in service. Spring is the other cluster, when somebody prices out opening it and decides not to. Fall is the easier of the two, since a pool drained in October beats one sitting in July heat.

Price follows the size of the pool, whether it is drained when we arrive, the carry distance to the truck, gate width, how much deck or fence has to come apart, whether the sand is going, and what else rides along. A 15 foot pool beside the driveway and a 27 foot pool at the back of a fenced yard are not the same day.

Pool jobs usually come with other things. Patio furniture, a grill, fence panels and brush from the same corner can all ride along. Brush is on the yard debris removal page, and if this is part of clearing a property before a sale, look at cleanouts. If you have been weighing a container in the driveway instead, the dumpster rental alternative page covers the difference.

We cover Dothan, Houston County and the surrounding Wiregrass. Send photos through the form above or the contact page.