Playset and Swing Set Removal in Chicopee, MA

A playset comes down for one of two reasons. Either the children outgrew it years ago and it has been quietly rotting since, or you are selling the house and a buyer does not want it.

Either way it is a half day job at most. A metal swing set is bolted together and comes apart with a socket set. A wooden set is more substantial, particularly the large cedar and redwood towers with a fort, a slide and a climbing wall, which are essentially a small building.

Prices run $200 to $500 for a standard set and $500 to $1,000 or more for a large wooden structure. Some item based services advertise from around $114 for a simple metal frame, though that assumes it is already dismantled and at the curb, which it rarely is.

The legs are usually in concrete

This is the part that turns two hours into four. Most sets have their uprights set into concrete footings below ground, sometimes a foot or more of it per leg. Digging those out is real work and it leaves a set of holes that need filling. Cutting the posts off at ground level is faster and cheaper, and it is genuinely fine if nothing is going back in that spot, though it does leave concrete in your lawn.

Is it worth giving away instead

Sometimes, and it is worth twenty minutes of trying. A wooden playset in sound condition has real second hand value, and there are people who will collect and dismantle one for free just to have it. The catch is that taking one apart without damaging it is skilled and slow, and most people who say they will collect it do not turn up.

Set a deadline for yourself. If nobody has collected it in two weeks, book the removal. A playset that has been half dismantled while waiting for somebody who never came is worse than either outcome.

Be honest about condition too. Pressure treated timber that has been standing in this climate for fifteen years is often soft at the ground line even when the top looks fine. Nobody wants that, and a set that fails at a post is not a gift, it is a hazard you have handed on.

Where it goes

Wooden sets go to construction and demolition processing, because Massachusetts banned wood from landfill disposal on 1 July 2006. Metal frames, slides with metal rails, chains, bolts and swing hardware all go to scrap. Plastic slides and climbing holds have no good route and go to a transfer station. It is a mixed load, which is why it gets sorted rather than tipped.