What hot tub removal costs in Philadelphia

The short answer

$322 for a hot tub or spa, removed and disposed of. Related items if the whole set-up is going:

A tub plus the deck surround it sat on is $322 + $120 = $442. A tub plus an above-ground pool from the same yard is $322 + $145 = $467. The per-visit minimum is $75, and the $322 already sits well above it.

There is no extra charge for the roof, the stairs, the fact that your street is one lane wide, or the fact that the tub has to come out in pieces. That is the job.

Where Philadelphia hot tubs actually live

This is not a city of large back gardens, so spas end up in some genuinely awkward places, and each one has its own removal problem.

• Roof decks. Fishtown, Northern Liberties, Pennsport, Graduate Hospital and a good deal of new-build South Philly. The tub went up during construction, or up through a pilot house door, or was craned in. Getting it down again is the hard version.
• Small rear patios. A twelve-by-fifteen concrete yard behind a row home in Point Breeze or East Passyunk, reached only by walking through the kitchen or through a narrow gate onto a service street.
• Hillside decks. Manayunk, Roxborough and East Falls, where the deck is off the back of the house and twenty feet above the ground on posts.
• Actual gardens. Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy, Overbrook, the far Northeast — the one situation where a tub can sometimes be dragged out whole through a side gate.

Only that last group is straightforward, and it is the minority.

How a hot tub actually comes out

Almost never in one piece. In Philadelphia the standard method is to dismantle it where it stands.

• Drain it first. This is your job, not ours — see below.
• Strip the cabinet. The wooden or composite skirt comes off, exposing the shell and the plumbing.
• Disconnect and remove the equipment. Pump, heater, control pack.
• Cut the shell. The acrylic-and-fiberglass shell is cut into manageable sections. This is what makes a roof deck or a through-the-house route possible at all.
• Carry it out in pieces. Down the pilot house stairs, through the second floor, down the main staircase and out the front door — which on a Philly roof deck job is the only route that exists.

A four-person spa cut into sections still means several trips down three flights of a row home. That is included in the $322.

What you need to do before the day

• Drain it completely. A full spa holds hundreds of gallons and weighs more than anything else in your house. Drain it the day before so the shell is dry and the surrounding deck is not slick.
• Where the water goes matters. Do not send chemically treated spa water straight into a storm drain. Let the chemistry sit for several days first, or drain slowly to a sanitary connection. Check the current guidance from the city water department if you are unsure — this is one people get wrong.
• Disconnect the power. A hot tub is a hard-wired 240-volt circuit on its own breaker. Have an electrician disconnect it at the tub end. Crews do not do electrical disconnection.
• Clear the route. If it is coming through the house, the stairs and the hallway need to be walkable, and it is worth moving anything breakable off the second floor.
• Tell us the location honestly. Roof deck, hillside deck, rear patio through the house, or a gate. It does not change the $322, but it changes how many people turn up.

Winter is a real factor here

Philadelphia gets hard freezes. If a tub has been sitting unused and unheated through a January, there is often water left in the pipework and the pump housing, and it will be frozen solid. Frozen plumbing means the shell is heavier, the lines shatter when they are cut, and a roof deck with a skin of ice on it is not a place to be carrying fiberglass sections.

If you have the choice, do this job between April and November. If you do not, drain everything you can reach and say so when booking so the crew comes prepared rather than discovering it at the top of three flights of stairs.

The deck underneath

A hot tub that comes off a roof deck or a rear deck usually leaves behind a stained, rotted or structurally suspect platform, because a spa is a very concentrated load sat on timber for years.

Deck boards, framing and posts price as construction debris at $120. So the whole job — spa plus the surround it was sitting on — is $322 + $120 = $442. If a lot of decking is coming up, pricing the debris by volume may be simpler: a quarter truck is $241, a half is $431.

One caution for Philadelphia roof decks specifically: if the deck structure is being altered rather than just cleared, that is a construction question with permitting implications. Check the current requirements before anyone starts cutting framing. Removing a hot tub is not that; taking apart the deck might be.

Booking it

Tell us three things: where the tub is, roughly how big it is, and whether it is drained and electrically disconnected. That is enough. The price is $322 and it does not move for the roof, the stairs, the gate you do not have, or the fact that the truck will be double-parked on a one-way street in Pennsport for an hour.

Allow a few hours for the visit. This is one of the longer jobs on the list, and it is the one where doing it properly and doing it fast are not the same thing.

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