Above-ground pool removal in Las Vegas

The short answer

$145 for an above-ground pool, frame and liner, disposal included. Related items if the whole back yard is going:

The minimum visit is $75, so a pool on its own at $145 is priced exactly as listed.

Why these appear and disappear so fast here

Above-ground pools make obvious sense in this valley. Summer runs long and hot, an in-ground pool is a serious expense and a permanent commitment, and a large share of valley households are renting and cannot dig anyway. A frame pool on a levelled patch of the back yard solves the problem for a few hundred dollars.

Then the valley takes it apart. Between UV on the liner, water temperatures that climb high enough to make chemistry a constant fight, evaporation in single-digit humidity, and fine dust blowing in off the desert and through every monsoon storm, an above-ground pool here works hard for a short life. Two or three seasons is a realistic run before the liner is failing at the seams and the frame's uprights are chalked and bent.

Add the turnover. People sign a lease, put a pool up for the kids' first summer, then move at the end of the second one and it stays where it is. A good share of the ones we take out have been standing empty for a year.

What to do before we arrive

• Drain it completely. Thousands of gallons cannot be lifted. Drain it fully, and check any current guidance in your area on discharging treated water, because chlorinated water is not great for desert-landscape plants or for a storm drain.
• Let the liner dry. Two or three dry days in valley sun is all it takes and it changes the job completely. A dry liner folds and loads easily. A wet one is heavy, slippery and full of algae.
• Pull the pump and filter. They can go in the same load. Disconnect the power first.
• Set aside the chemicals. Chlorine, shock, acid and algaecide are household hazardous waste. We cannot take them.

None of that is complicated. It is just the difference between a fifteen-minute job and an hour of unpleasantness.

What is under it matters

Pull an above-ground pool off a Las Vegas back yard and you find one of two things.

On rock landscaping, which is the usual case in the valley's desert-scaped yards: a flattened, bleached circle where the pool sat, with the weed barrier fabric crushed into it and the rock compacted. Cosmetic, and raking plus a bit of new rock fixes it.

On what used to be grass: a dead circle that will not recover on its own. Most valley yards have limited turf to begin with, and a dead ring in it is conspicuous. Plan what is going there next before you take the pool down, because staring at a bald circle all summer is worse than the pool was.

Either way, the pad or base material under it can go in the same load if you want it gone. Sand, foam base panels and ground cloth all load fine.

Getting it out of a walled yard

Valley back yards are enclosed by CMU block walls with one side gate, and the gate is frequently narrow with an AC condenser pad or a hose bib right behind it. For a pool this is rarely fatal, because the frame comes apart into poles and the liner folds. But two things are worth flagging at booking:

• Larger rigid-wall pools, which have steel or resin wall sections that need cutting down rather than folding.
• Anything half-buried, which happens when a pool has stood on rock landscaping for a couple of years and the rock has migrated up around the base.

Measure the gate and tell us the width. It is the single most useful thing you can send with a back-yard booking in this market.

Worked example: a Spring Valley back yard

A rental turning over where the tenants left the lot of it: an above-ground pool, a patio table, four patio chairs and a storage cabinet holding the pool gear.

$145 + $89 + $30 + $30 + $30 + $30 + $74 = $428.

One visit. The pool chemicals in the cabinet come out first and go to a household hazardous waste drop-off, because those we cannot load.

HOA considerations

Across the valley's master plans, above-ground pools are a frequent point of friction in the first place. Many associations restrict or prohibit them outright, and several restrict anything visible above the block wall line, which a taller frame pool often is.

Relevant to the removal: you generally cannot stack the disassembled frame, the base sand and the liner on the driveway while you work through it. We load as we go, straight from the back yard to the truck, so nothing accumulates where it becomes a compliance issue. If you have already had a notice about the pool, get a booked date on the calendar and send the confirmation once it is done.

Best time to do it

Late September through November. The season is over, the liner will dry fast in the still-warm sun, and nobody is working in a walled back yard at 110 degrees with the block walls radiating heat back at them.

Doing it in spring instead means it sat through a whole winter, and doing it in July means everyone has a bad afternoon. The $145 does not change either way.

Frequently asked questions