Taking out an in-ground pool in Buffalo, or digging a new one

Fill-in or full removal: what stays in the ground

A partial removal, usually called a fill-in, is the common choice when the yard is going back to lawn. The pool is drained, the floor is broken through in several places so water can escape, and the coping, bond beam and top of the walls are knocked down into the hole. Clean fill goes in over that rubble in compacted layers, then topsoil. The lower shell stays buried for good.

A full removal hauls out every piece: liner, wall panels, concrete, rebar and plumbing. The hole is backfilled with compacted fill, and if you might build there someday, an engineer can test that compaction so a record exists. It means more trucking and more imported material, but nothing is left underground to explain to an inspector, a buyer or the next contractor.

Three questions usually settle it:

• Could a garage, shed or home addition ever sit where the pool is? Lean toward full removal.
• Are you selling in the next few years? Ask your attorney what a buried shell means for your sale.
• What does your building department require? Its answer may make the choice for you.

Why the floor gets broken before any fill goes in

A concrete pool floor left in one piece is a bowl. Fill it with dirt and it still catches every bit of rain and snowmelt that soaks down through the fill, and a waterlogged fill-in becomes a soft, sinking patch of lawn that never quite dries. That's why the floor gets broken clean through, not just cracked, before anything goes in.

The ground around Buffalo raises the stakes. The NRCS describes the Odessa series, one of the red, lake-laid clays found across the Erie-Ontario plain, as somewhat poorly drained, with low or moderately low saturated hydraulic conductivity in the substratum. Put simply, once water reaches that clay it leaves slowly. The openings in the floor have to be large and numerous enough to let water out at clay's pace, and the fill directly over them should drain freely.

Timing matters as well. An empty shell sitting in saturated ground can be pushed upward by the water around it, so a drained pool shouldn't sit empty for weeks before the floor is opened. If the yard around the old pool was already soggy, fix that with yard drainage while the equipment is on site.

Vinyl, gunite, fiberglass or above-ground: what comes out

How the teardown goes depends on how the pool was built.

• Vinyl-liner pools have steel or polymer wall panels bolted together, braced from behind and locked into a poured concrete collar at the base. The liner is cut out, the panels come apart, and the collar and the floor (often a troweled vermiculite or sand-and-cement mix) are broken up.
• Gunite and poured concrete pools are a steel-reinforced shell. They call for a hydraulic breaker and rebar cutting, and they make the most rubble.
• Fiberglass pools are one molded shell, cut into sections and hauled.
• Above-ground pools come apart rail by rail. The liner, wall and uprights go, and so do the sand base and cove underneath, which is why the leftover circle needs regrading and seed.

The equipment pad, pump, filter, heater, skimmer and return lines leave with the pool. The concrete deck or patio can go too; breaking and hauling slab concrete is the same work as our driveway rip-outs. A pool house or shed in the way is a small demolition job that can be folded in.

Excavating for a new pool: permits, spoil and access

Much of what makes a new in-ground pool last happens in the dig. The hole follows the pool plans: the footprint, the shallow-to-deep profile and working room around the walls so the installer can set panels and bracing or form the shell. We dig to the plans and grades that you or your pool installer provide.

Paperwork comes before the machine. The Town of Amherst's posted pool packet is a good example of what to expect. It requires a building permit for any pool that is constructed or excavated, asks for a survey showing the pool with a grade and drainage plan, wants a letter from National Grid stating it has no objection to the proposed pool, and says the permit must be issued before any work, including excavation. Other towns and the city run their own processes, so check yours before a dig date is set. Our Amherst service area page covers more about working there.

Then there's the dirt. The pool itself, 16 by 32 feet and averaging five feet deep, works out to roughly 95 cubic yards of soil in place before you add the working room around the walls, and all of it bulks up once it's dug loose. Decide early whether it gets trucked out or spread to reshape the yard; if it stays, that's a grading plan, not a pile. Rain that falls into an open hole in clay stays there, so expect some pumping after a wet week. Plan the route in, too: the excavator and dump trucks need a clear path to the backyard, which often means a fence section comes out for a while.

Local rules, the safety fence and selling after a fill-in

Rules for taking out a pool are set locally, and they aren't uniform. The Town of Tonawanda's posted demolition requirements, for instance, call for a site secured with fencing, clean fill with documented custody and an inspection before any fill is placed. Ask your building department whether your removal needs a permit, whether an inspector wants to see the broken floor, and whether rubble may stay in the hole.

Inside the City of Buffalo, the pool chapter of the city code requires every pool to be enclosed by an unclimbable fence at least four feet high with a self-closing, lockable gate. A drained pool with its floor broken open is a deep hole lined with jagged concrete, so keep that enclosure closed until the hole is filled, with temporary fencing across any section pulled out for machine access.

If you plan to sell, remember that most New York sellers of one- to four-family homes must deliver a Property Condition Disclosure Statement before the buyer signs the contract. Its questions about certificates of occupancy and about drainage problems that leave standing water can touch an old pool site. Keep the permit, the inspector's sign-off and photos of the opened floor with your house records.