Getting Rid of a Pool and Filling the Hole

Why Perth backyards keep losing their pools

Pools go for three reasons, and they are usually all three at once. The barrier and maintenance obligations never stop. The running cost of chemicals, pumps and water through a Perth summer is real money. And a pool taking up half a small infill block is space that could be a granny flat, a garden, a shed or a decent patio.

Removing the pool also removes the drowning risk, which for families with small children and pets is often the whole argument on its own.

Perth's sand makes this easier than it is elsewhere

Most of the Perth metropolitan area sits on the Swan Coastal Plain, on deep, free-draining sand — Bassendean sand inland, Spearwood sand over limestone nearer the coast. That matters for pool removal in two ways.

First, excavation and backfill are straightforward. Sand is easy to work, it does not hold water against the excavation walls, and clean fill sand is readily available across Perth rather than having to be trucked from a long way out.

Second, sand compacts predictably in layers when it is done properly. That makes an engineered fill result achievable on a normal suburban block, without the drama you get filling a void in reactive clay.

Where it gets harder is in the limestone country behind the coast, around Fremantle and Scarborough, where the excavation may have been cut into Tamala limestone and the shell is locked into rock rather than sand. And out towards the scarp in Armadale, clay soils behave differently and need a different compaction approach.

The two options, honestly compared

Full removal. The entire shell, the bond beam, the coping and the surrounding concrete come out. The void is filled with clean sand in layers, each layer compacted, and the surface finished to grade. This is the option if there is any chance of building over the area, subdividing, or selling in the next few years.

Partial removal. The top portion of the shell is removed, the base is holed so water drains, the walls are pushed in and the whole thing is covered. It is cheaper — but there is now buried rubble on the property. It must be disclosed to a buyer, it can cause long-term settlement, and no builder will found a structure over it without deep piers. Partial removal also roughly doubles the per-job cost compared with a simple fibreglass lift-out in some cases, once the breaking and filling are counted.

We will quote either, but we will tell you which one your block should have.

How the job runs

Draining first, with the water directed to sewer or stormwater as the rules allow rather than over the neighbour's fence. Plumbing and electrical to the pump, filter and lights isolated and removed. Then the shell: a fibreglass one is cut and lifted out whole or in sections, a concrete one is broken up with an excavator-mounted hammer and carted away.

Filling is where the corners get cut in this industry. Done properly, clean fill sand goes in in layers of a few hundred millimetres, each compacted before the next, so the final surface does not sink over the following two winters. Where you plan to build, a geotechnical engineer tests the density as the fill goes up and issues the certification your builder will ask for.

Decking, fencing, paving and the pool equipment slab usually come out at the same time — related work sits on the concrete removal and garage and shed demolition pages, and the shell demolition detail is on the pool demolition page.

After the pool

A filled void is bare sand, and bare sand in Perth blows around and repels water. Most people follow up with turf, a patio or garden beds. A soil wetting agent and a covering of bulk mulch is the cheapest way to stabilise it while you decide.

Ranges for pool work sit alongside the rest of the numbers in the demolition cost guide. Call (08) 9516 0951 with the pool type, rough size and how a machine would get into the yard.