Plenty of the larger gardens around Birkdale acquired a pool at some point in the last forty years, and a fair number of those pools have not been swum in for a decade. Running costs, maintenance and the fact that our summers rarely justify it all point the same way. Swimming pool removal is groundworks rather than clearance, and one detail in it decides whether the garden works properly afterwards. Our Birkdale skip hire service supports a steady run of this work.
Full removal or partial fill
There are two approaches and the difference in cost is considerable.
Full removal means breaking out the entire structure, shell, base and walls, taking all of it away and backfilling the void with imported material. It is the expensive option and it leaves you with ground that behaves like any other part of the garden.
Partial fill means breaking the walls down below finished ground level, breaking holes through the base, and using the broken concrete as part of the backfill. It costs a fraction of the full removal and for most domestic gardens it is entirely adequate.
What matters is that partial fill is done properly, because done badly it creates a problem that takes years to show itself and is expensive to put right.
The base must be broken through
This is the single most important thing in the whole job. A pool shell is a watertight concrete tank. Fill it with material and leave the base intact and you have not removed a pool, you have created a very large buried container that collects water and never drains.
The consequences arrive later. The ground above stays permanently saturated, nothing grows properly, the area becomes soft, and in the worst cases the surrounding ground subsides as material washes into voids. It also has to be disclosed when you sell.
The base needs breaking through in multiple places, generously, so that water passing down through the backfill can get away into the ground beneath exactly as it would anywhere else in the garden. Around here the sandy ground drains well, which helps considerably once the water has a route.
Backfill has to be the right material
The second thing people get wrong is filling the void with topsoil because it is cheap and it is what plants grow in.
Topsoil is compressible and it settles. Fill several feet of depth with it and over the following years the ground sinks, sometimes by a surprising amount, leaving a dish in the lawn that has to be topped up repeatedly.
The correct build up is clean inert material for the bulk of the depth, placed and compacted in layers rather than tipped in one go, with topsoil only in the final few hundred millimetres where planting actually needs it. Compacting in layers is what stops the settlement, and it is the step most often skipped because it is tedious.
We supply screened top soil for that final layer and can deliver it on the same run as a container rather than as a separate trip, which saves a delivery charge at the point where the garden is being put back together.
What comes out and what it weighs
Before any breaking starts, the pool has to be drained, and the same rules apply as to any treated water. Stop dosing it for several days so the sanitiser level drops, then discharge slowly to the foul drain rather than to a surface drain, ditch or watercourse.
The chemicals go separately. Pool sanitisers are oxidisers and part used tubs should not be mixed together or put in a container, and our guide to hazardous waste and why it cannot go in a skip covers where they go.
The plant room is the next thing. Pumps, filters, heaters and control gear are electrical waste rather than skip waste, and our guide to how to dispose of electrical waste responsibly explains where they belong. There is a scrap value in the pump housings.
Then the structure itself. Coping stones, tiling, liner where there is one, and the broken concrete that is not being reused as backfill. Concrete is about as dense as material gets and it is usually reinforced, which means it does not break into convenient pieces. Our page on skip size versus weight limits explains why weight decides the container rather than volume.
Sizing it
Even on a partial fill there is material going off site, because the coping, tiling, liner, plant and surround all have to go somewhere and the void will not take all of the broken concrete.
For heavy inert material, smaller containers exchanged more often beat one large one that cannot be lifted once loaded. A 4 tonne midi skip on a running exchange is usually the efficient answer, with an 8 tonne builders skip for the lighter mixed waste from the surround and plant room.
Keep the clean concrete separate from everything else. It crushes down and gets recovered rather than disposed of, and our environmental and recycling page explains what happens once it reaches our site.
Access is usually the constraint
Pools are at the back of gardens and the machine has to get to them. On the larger plots around here that is often possible down a side access, and where it is not, the job becomes considerably more expensive because everything moves by barrow.
Work out the machine access before you get quotes, because it changes the price more than the size of the pool does. The container wants to be as close to the end of that route as possible.
Birkdale sits within Sefton borough, so a skip on the road needs a permit from Sefton Council at £36 per month. Most properties with a pool have driveway room, which avoids the fee and the paperwork entirely.
Local coverage
We work this coastal stretch daily, running Southport skip hire and Ainsdale skip hire jobs alongside Birkdale.
Ring us on 01704 779345 with the pool dimensions and whether it is a full removal or a partial fill. Our contact page is there if the groundworker would rather deal with us directly.
