Above Ground Pool Removal in Mandurah — Frame, Liner and All

When the wall rusts, the pool is finished

Above ground pools in the Peel live a hard life. Salt air off the estuary and the coast gets into the steel wall and every fastener, liners go brittle in the sun, and the timber decks built around them rot at the stump line. Once the wall is rusting through, no liner replacement is worth the money — the pool is done, and every year it stands it's still a fenced body of water the council expects a compliant barrier around, inspected on the four-yearly cycle.

Taking it down properly is the cheap end of pool removal — typical figures are on the What It Costs page — and unlike an inground removal, there's usually no excavation at all.

The job runs in a fixed order

• Drain first, lawfully. Pool water is pumped down at a rate the ground can take — not sheeted across the neighbour's boundary. Saltwater pools take more care about where the water goes.
• Barrier stays up. WA's Building Regulations 2012 require the safety barrier until the pool can no longer hold 300 mm of water. It comes down late in the day, not first.
• Liner out, wall down, frame flat. The liner is cut and rolled, the steel wall is unbolted or cut into panels, the frame is dropped and stacked.
• Load and go. Steel to the metal recycler, liner and rot to the tip — cartage and tip fees inside the quote.
• Pad levelled. The sand pad gets spread and raked so you're left with a level piece of yard, not a crop circle.

Most standard round and oval pools — the 4.5 m to 7.3 m sizes common in Greenfields-era and Golden Bay backyards — are on the truck by mid-afternoon.

What's included, what's not, what it depends on

Included:

• Draining, dismantling, loading, cartage and all tip fees
• Attached ladders, pumps and hoses (pump electrically disconnected first — see below)
• Sand pad spread and levelled

Not included:

• Electrical disconnection of the pump and any lighting — your electrician, before we start
• New turf or landscaping over the pad

What it depends on:

• Decking. A wrap-around timber deck can double the volume of waste; it's quoted in the same visit so nothing half-finished gets left.
• Access. Panels carry through a standard gate; a fully fenced rear yard with no side access just means more carrying, not a different job.
• Semi-inground pools. Sunk partway into the sand, common on sloping Wannanup and Madora Bay blocks — these sit halfway to an inground job and get quoted after a look.

Straight answers

• Permit? Usually not for a small above ground pool — but confirm your case, and the council must still be notified after removal so the pool leaves the four-yearly inspection register and the fee leaves your rates. Details on Approvals.
• Is the steel worth anything? As scrap, a little — it's factored into the quote rather than pocketed quietly.
• Old spa underneath the deck too? Common combo — see spas and plunge pools; both go in one visit.

We ask the contractors we work with to hold the relevant WorkSafe WA licences and public liability cover — ask to see them. Call (08) 9516 1339 with the pool's size and what surrounds it, and you'll get a number and a day.