Drought Concerns Buoy Pool Removal Business

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Having a swimming pool at home is as much of an L.A. birthright as sunshine and complaining about traffic on the 405. But with the state in the fifth year of a drought, many homeowners are opting to pull out pools as a drought-control measure.

With the state and municipalities taking measures to limit consumption – Gov. Jerry Brown last year imposed restrictions aimed at cutting water use by 25 percent and Glendale considered a moratorium on new pool installation before opting instead for tougher water restrictions – many homeowners have taken the plunge and simply chosen to remove pools altogether.

That has created an opportunity for some contractors, who have seen business rise steeply over the past few years.

Scott Choppin, founder and chief executive of S.K. Choppin Demolition Inc. in Long Beach, said every third customer tells him the water needed to maintain the pool prompts their decision to tear it out.

“And that number is growing,” he said.

It requires five days, two men, and one machine to tear up a pool and fill it with dirt, he said. The cost runs from $6,000 to $9,000 for an average pool. 

Choppin founded his firm in 2009 and embarked on a range of construction and demolition projects. It was a one-boss, one-employee operation back then, and he would bring on labor as required. But he pivoted a couple of years ago to focus largely on pool demolition after watching a video on YouTube of a bulldozer demolishing a swimming pool.

He realized then that there was a niche for companies like his in pool demolition.

There are nearly 329,000 residential pools in Los Angeles County (and 1.2 million statewide), according to building industry research firm Metrostudy. 

Choppin started to winnow that number down in 2014. His firm took 11 pool demolishing orders that year, a number that grew to 19 a year later. Today, the company averages seven orders a month, around 80 orders a year. 

“We’ve grown 200 percent in the last two and a half years,” Choppin, 48, said, referring to the increase in business, adding that his company has hired five employees over the last year. 

One of Choppin’s recent customers, John Huynh, said he decided to get rid of his pool to cut maintenance costs and water consumption. 

“Pool maintenance requires a lot of water and we didn’t want to deal with that,” said Huynh, who paid $7,800 for demolition of the pool at his Monterey Park home. “I would think getting rid of a pool is going to help us save water.” 

While removal does result in some savings – in addition to lower water bills, homeowners’ insurance costs can also decline – the net benefit often depends on what replaces the pool.

“Over the course of time a pool uses less water than an equivalent amount of grass does,” said Jerry Wallace, chairman of the California Pool and Spa Association in Sacramento.

An average pool requires 18,000 to 32,000 gallons of water to fill annually, while a lawn consumes 44,000 gallons of water a year, according to the association.

Some in the industry propose using self-sustaining and water-neutral pools connected to tanks that collect rainwater and help cut water consumption. 

“You have a certain amount of evaporative loss and depending on a climate it could be up to an inch per week,” said Wallace. “But if you use a plastic solar cover, it minimizes the evaporation.”

Water going up into the atmosphere is in some ways less a worry than water headed in the other direction.

The concrete shell of a swimming pool is expected to last 25 years, while the interior plaster can last up to 35, according to a study by the National Association of Home Builders. The majority of local pools were built in the 1960s and ’70s and many have developed leaks over time. 

Faced with the prospect of draining a pool for repairs, some homeowners choose to get rid of its altogether. 

“Homeowners don’t want to pay for water if they have a leak in their pool,” said Steve Espenschied, owner of Huntington Beach’s Kennah Construction, which operates in Los Angeles and Orange counties. “In some cities water is really expensive.”

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