Breaking Out a Pool Shell Safely

The demolition half of the job

Pool demolition is the part with the excavator: drain, isolate, break out, load, cart. It is straightforward work done by people who have done it before, and genuinely unpleasant work done by people who have not. Concrete pool shells are thicker and more heavily reinforced than most people expect, and the bond beam at the top is often the hardest part of the structure on the property.

The pools that come out around Perth fall into a few groups: reinforced concrete and sprayed concrete in-ground pools, fibreglass shells, above-ground steel and resin pools, and the solid concrete above-ground structures that turn up on sloping blocks and are always a bigger job than they look.

How the structure comes out

Draining is first, with the water directed to an approved discharge point. Then the services: plumbing lines cut and capped, and the electrical supply to the pump, filter and lights isolated by a licensed electrician before anyone starts breaking concrete.

The shell itself depends on what it is made of. A fibreglass pool is cut into manageable sections or lifted out whole where access allows, which is fast and produces relatively little waste. A concrete pool is broken down with an excavator-mounted hydraulic hammer, and the reinforcing steel is separated from the rubble as it goes so the concrete can be recycled and the steel sold as scrap.

Surrounding surfaces come off at the same time. Coping, paving, aprons and decking all need to be clear before the shell can be worked properly, and they are part of the same waste run — the approach is the same as on the concrete removal page.

Access is what sets the price

Two identical pools on two identical blocks can differ by thousands of dollars, and the reason is almost always how a machine gets to them. A wide side gate or a drive-through carport means a standard excavator and trucks parked close. A narrow side access, an established tree you want kept, a steep drop to the backyard, or a rear-of-block pool behind a two-storey extension means smaller machines, more passes, dumpers running rubble out to the street and a longer day.

Perth's sandy soils help here. Free-draining Swan Coastal Plain sand means excavation walls behave predictably and there is no water sitting in the hole while you work. On the limestone side of the metro, around Fremantle and the Scarborough dune line, some shells are set into rock, and that is slower.

Then the hole has to be dealt with

A demolished pool is an open excavation, and it does not stay open. The backfill, compaction and certification side of the work — including the engineered fill you need if anything is ever going to be built over it — is set out on the pool removal and filling page. Almost every job we quote covers both stages together.

If the pool is being cleared as part of a larger project, it usually gets scheduled alongside the house demolition or the site clearing so the machines and trucks make one trip instead of three. Costs for each stage are in the demolition cost guide.

Call (08) 9516 0951 and tell us the pool type, the approximate size and how wide the narrowest point of the access is.