Draining a pool is easy. You have a pump that is designed to move water and when set properly, it sends it to drain. Surrounding the pool is a concrete sidewalk. This is pretty standard for many pools and as long as you never want to remove it, isn’t a problem.

If you do want to remove it, then you have an issue. For those not familiar with concrete, it’s made up of a few things, Sand, Gravel, and Portland Cement. Once set it is very hard and a very hard surface. Thankfully there are weaknesses to concrete and in a process like this you must exploit them.

Before we can get to the weaknesses, the first thing that needs to happen is to cut the concrete. There are specific tools for doing this that can be located via your neighborhood rental store and a reasonable cost. I think mine was about $50 with cutting wheels. I think this produced the biggest mess that I’d ever created.

Cutting the concrete is a misnomer. The actual process that is performed is to grind away the concrete in a straight line. Keep grinding long enough and the line finally goes through the concrete pad. Then you just start moving along that line to get all the way to the end.

During this whole grinding process, water is ran over the disc constantly to keep it cool. It also serves to remove the dust that is created by the grinding process. As I performed this task, the entire sidewalk area became covered in a layer of grit in the water that was running off. The grit that was kicked up onto my wife’s rose bushes lasted through the entire summer.

This is one of the jobs where I would have loved to have had a second person helping for the day. There are two cuts here that are each about 3 feet across. Grinding does make progress, but it is incredibly slow. The whole time you are holding onto what is effectively a chainsaw motor with an attachment on it and holding it for extended periods.

You also can’t measure progress easily in this process. You just have to trust yourself that you are getting there gradually. The best way I could measure was with a small metal rod that would fit in the hole and then mark where it was. If you put it in the wrong place in the cut, it won’t matter so this was more of a sanity thing then a really matters thing.