To be clique, all good things must come to an end. After 25 years, I was tiring of the annual start up and shut down of the pool. Cleaning the pool was a chore. Nobody was using it so cleaning of the pool was done occasionally resulting in more time. The kids were no longer home and Efiwym and I would only swim in the pool unless the water was 80 degrees. The pool decking needed to be replaced. Warped, twisted, splintered, and cracked, it looked terrible. The railings were loosening up and the gate was wobbly. The pool liner was bleached and was getting hard and brittle. It was time to take down the pool.
At the end of this summer, I would not prepare the pool for the winter. I would drain the pool completely and start the demolition. I would have mixed emotions as removing the pool was the affirmation, I was entering a new stage of my life. I was an empty nester, an older homeowner tearing down something that resulted in a ton of memories. However, I could not wait to eliminate a time-consuming task from my summer and removing that eyesore in my backyard.
Throughout late summer and early fall, I would use my Ryobi® reciprocating saw to cut the deck into parts. I made sure the parts were small enough to be easily removed. Sometimes I needed to remove bolts to disconnect the deck structure, but the reciprocating saw did the job.
Once I moved the deck away from the pool, I would start disassembling it. I would remove the top rail and the filter skimmer. I now could remove the pool liner. I cut it in sections and peeled it easily from the pool walls. The walls came down and the posts soon followed. I was ready to dispose of the pool and deck.
I rented a large dumpster with a door to walk the pool parts into it. With the help of my family, we took pieces of the pool from the backyard to the dumpster on the driveway. We reminisced about our pool adventures. We laughed about the time the police showed up on a late Sunday night as the kids were playing Marco Polo. The neighbors complained about the noise. The kids talked about their pool parties. The conversation made the task easier.
We filled the dumpster to the top. We needed to close the door and started to toss pieces over the walls. Once we were done, there was a hole in the backyard that needed to be filled. I would need to find a contractor to fill the hole and grade the yard.
I had a landscaper fill the hole and regrade the back yard. Efiwym and I would lay sod the following spring. The cost to remove the pool was not cheap, but I remember commenting when we bought the pool that it might be as expensive to remove it as to install it. Not quite, about half.