Why St. Mary's / Bonneville Hills pools need more than a dump-and-fill
Pulling out a pool is the easy part. What matters is the ground left behind, because it has to carry a lawn, a patio, or a whole new building for decades. A pool that is crushed in place and covered with loose dirt can keep settling for years, leaving sinkholes, standing water, and cracked slabs.
The ground under most St. Mary's / Bonneville Hills yards is Lake Bonneville red clay and bench gravel. Conditions change across town, from clay on the valley floor to gravel on the bench, so we check what is actually under your yard before deciding how to drain and fill the hole.
The benches here are old shorelines of Lake Bonneville, the Ice Age lake that once covered much of northern Utah. Its beaches left sand and gravel on the benches, while fine clay and silt settled on the old lakebed that is now the valley floor. Two pools a mile apart can sit in completely different ground, which is why we don't use one backfill plan for the whole valley.
Backfill and drainage in St. Mary's / Bonneville Hills
East bench foothill runoff toward Red Butte Creek: that's the site condition we plan around first in St. Mary's / Bonneville Hills, because it shapes how we dig, drain, and fill the hole. For the backfill itself, we place fill in thin lifts and compact each one to 95% of its maximum dry density under the Modified Proctor test (ASTM D1557), the standard engineers use for ground that will carry structures.
Building where the pool was
In St. Mary's / Bonneville Hills, a big part of what's driving pool removals is mid-century modern landscape overhauls and lawn expansion. If an ADU, garage, or addition is going where the pool was, the ground under its footings has to be solid. A partial removal leaves broken concrete in the ground, which works under a lawn but is a poor base for a foundation. For any structure, we recommend full removal with compaction that can be tested and documented for your permit.
Engineers and building departments commonly call for fill under new footings to be compacted to at least 95% of the Modified Proctor maximum dry density (ASTM D1557), confirmed with field density tests as each lift goes in. That's already the spec we build to here, so the old pool site is ready for the testing your ADU permit may require.
Protecting your St. Mary's / Bonneville Hills property
On estate properties, the bigger worry is often the driveway, not the pool. We work with rubber-tracked, zero-tail-swing midi excavators, lay composite ground protection mats over stamped concrete, pavers, turf, and irrigation, and load debris into trucks for staging off-site instead of setting heavy roll-off dumpsters on decorative concrete. Low branches over the access route are checked during the site visit, before any machine arrives.
Water, utilities, and selling your home
Before demolition, the pool has to be drained legally. The rule we follow in St. Mary's / Bonneville Hills: De-chlorinate below 0.1 ppm before storm drain discharge; max 30 GPM. Some cities send pool water to the sanitary sewer instead of the storm drain, so we confirm which applies before the pump goes in.
Most in-ground pools also have a gas heater and a dedicated electrical sub-panel.Utilities in St. Mary's / Bonneville Hills are Enbridge Gas Utah (formerly Dominion Energy) gas and Rocky Mountain Power electric. Licensed trades cap the gas line and lock out the pool circuits before the excavator arrives.
If you plan to sell, the paperwork matters too. The Utah Seller's Property Condition Disclosure asks sellers to disclose known buried debris, fill, and settling. A partial fill-in leaves broken concrete in the ground, and a buyer's inspector or lender may flag it. Full removal with a compaction report gives you documentation instead of a disclosure question.
Permits and disposal in Salt Lake County
St. Mary's / Bonneville Hills is in Salt Lake County. One local hurdle to plan for: Salt Lake City urban forestry root protection zone compliance. We go over it during the free site visit and build it into the schedule, so it doesn't stall the job halfway through. Debris from St. Mary's / Bonneville Hills jobs is hauled to Salt Lake Valley Landfill, and clean concrete from full removals goes to recycling.