How to get rid of an old hot tub (fast!)
We recently had a big success around here--after almost 3 years of living here with a mossy broken hot tub on the back patio and worrying what to do with it... it's now gone! And we're ready to set up a nice patio space and enjoy the extra room. I debated a couple different ways to get rid of it, really happy with what we did!
How to get rid of a broken hot tub
I got rid of a LOT of dirty backyard stuff by putting it on Facebook Marketplace for free or cheap. Two plywood lean-tos, our entire deck, a large wood/metal storage shed, and more. It's great--it's sustainable (vs. demoing and putting in a dumpster), it helps somebody else out (the sweetest people who have a goat farm took the two wooden structures), and it's very easy even when you have a tiny baby, husband in physical therapy school, and very busy weekends like I did when we were first going through all that yard stuff. (See the before photos of the yard here.)
For a while we thought about getting the hot tub fixed, but it's a few hundred bucks to even have the diagnostics done and we don't actually want it. Plus it would need some clean-up and a new cover, and not sure the electrical hookup works. So once we decided we didn't want it, I thought we'd get rid of it on FMBP too. (I know people who've done this, including their parents, although theirs was a working old hot tub.)
However if we were going to do that, really should have done it before or when we had our fence replaced, when we could have removed a panel and not worried about putting it back perfectly. Plus, we planted our garden again this spring and trekking through with a hot tub would have damaged it, ha! I ended up getting really motivated to get it gone, though, so I posted it on FMBP for free... and immediately felt worried about the reality of dealing with the actual removal.
So right after I put up the listing I googled "hot tub removal portland." I found quite a few hits. Some are larger, national companies that do junk removal or even specialize in things like hot tubs, but a few were local companies. It was a Sunday so I submitted the contact form for about 5 of them, didn't expect to hear back right away.
I got two emails back, one from a larger company asking for more info and more photos. The other was from a local company (this one), who said their rate for removing a freestanding hot tub (not sitting inside a deck) is $395, $495 if inside a deck. Their fee included removal (cutting it up), cleanup, hauling away, and dump fee. I asked if they could fit us in that week... yes!
I was so excited by the idea of having it all DONE I was pretty much sold right away. $400 is a lot but if we did it ourselves (Jason had volunteered, kind of excited by the idea of the chopping and demolishing) there'd be $150 or $200 for the dumpster, plus any tool rental, plus of course an entire precocious weekend day gone and a very tired husband at the end.
The hot tub removal guys showed up around 10am on a Tuesday. I had a meeting that started then so I got them going and didn't get to watch any of the demo, but it took them about 35 MINUTES. Isn't that crazy!?!?! I came back and it was all gone. Wow.
We're working on an actual patio refresh with power washing and doing more cleanup to the patio, adding some string lights, etc. but we were excited to set up our new outdoor furniture (these chairs and these benches, plus a table I got locally) and start using it already!
Don't mind all the moss, faded umbrella, randomly placed concrete blocks, and bright-colored plastic. We have had zero time to do anything else out here lately but we will!
Feels so good to have it gone. Jason did point out that we got a lot of house projects done using the old hot tub as a work bench!, so it did get to have a purpose even for us. But we had dinner out here for Father's Day already and what a nice thing, dinner outside! (We did our gazebo makeover last summer but it's not a dining space, just lounge furniture.) Really excited to clean up this area and make it really nice too!
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