Pool and Screen Enclosure Demolition Debris: A Melbourne, Florida Guide

Three jobs get lumped together on the Space Coast and they could not be less alike once the debris hits the ground. An aluminium screen enclosure produces a mountain of material that weighs almost nothing. A concrete pool deck produces a modest pile that will bottom out a truck. The shell produces both, plus a hole and a permit file. I have run roll-offs in Brevard since 2015 and I still watch people order one container for all of it and fight it for a week.

From Suntree down through Palm Bay and out along the beachside, nearly every house has a cage, a deck, a pool or all three. Here is how the debris really sorts out.

The screen enclosure is the one Florida job that genuinely wants a big container

This is the exception to everything else I preach here. Normal Space Coast advice is small and heavy, because block, stucco, tile and barrel tile are dense and a big box tempts you into overweight. A cage flips that. Aluminium extrusion and screen mesh is enormously bulky and almost weightless — the lightest material per cubic yard we haul.

A typical Melbourne cage is a lattice of hollow aluminium uprights, headers, chair rails and purlins wrapped in fibreglass screen. Take it apart and it does not compact. Long extrusions bridge the container and hold air underneath, and mesh comes off in enormous limp sheets. You fill volume long before you approach any weight limit, which is what a 30 yard roll-off or a 40 yard roll-off was built for. On a two-storey birdcage, the 40 earns its keep.

Two habits make that container work harder. Cut the long members down — an extrusion in thirds lies flat and nests instead of tenting. And walk the mesh down as it loads, because screen full of air eats a box you pay for by the yard, not the pound.

Storm-damaged cages

Half the cage removals we run are not remodels, they are storms. Matthew in 2016, Irma in 2017, then Ian and Nicole back to back in 2022 — Nicole chewed up the beachside from Satellite Beach through Indialantic, and cages were among the first things to fail. Bent uprights and shredded panels are rarely worth repairing, and once the adjuster has been out the frame comes down.

County debris contractors handle right-of-way collection after a declared event, but that is slow and it does not cover a structure you dismantle yourself. Our notes on hurricane and storm debris cleanup in Melbourne cover how the streams separate. Keep vegetation out: Florida treats yard trash as its own stream, so fronds and limbs go as a clean separate load.

Pull the aluminium out as scrap — it has real recovery value

Cage aluminium is not junk metal. Extrusion is a clean, high-grade recyclable, worth separating rather than burying in a mixed load. Strip the screen and spline, keep fasteners out, and stack the bare extrusions on their own. A clean single-material metal load routes to a scrap processor instead of a landfill. The wider picture is in our guide to recycling and disposal in Brevard County. The mesh has no practical recycling stream and rides in the mixed container.

Pool removal: partial fill-in versus full removal

A partial fill-in breaks out the top ring, punctures the shell floor so groundwater drains through instead of pooling, and backfills the void in compacted lifts. It is faster and produces far less debris, because most of the gunite stays in the ground. The catch is permanent: that is now a filled excavation with buried concrete under it, it generally must be disclosed to a future buyer, it will not usually carry a structure, and settlement is a real possibility if the lifts were not compacted properly.

A full removal takes the entire shell out — walls, floor, steps, rebar, plumbing — and puts clean structural fill back in. Several times the debris and more cost, but generally the better long-term answer: the lot goes back to being a lot and you are not handing a buyer a question mark.

Either way, a permit is typically required — a demolition permit through the City of Melbourne inside city limits or through Brevard County in unincorporated areas, with West Melbourne and Palm Bay running their own departments. Expect the file to touch electrical disconnect, backfill compaction and a final inspection. Requirements change, so confirm what applies to your address with the City of Melbourne first. Putting a container in the right of way has its own rules, covered in our piece on dumpster permits in Melbourne.

The deck and the shell are dense — small container, hauled repeatedly

Here is where people get hurt. Gunite and shotcrete shells are several inches thick and shot full of rebar. Decks here are broom-finished concrete, pavers over sand, or stamped concrete. All heavy, none of it fit for a big box.

Concrete goes in a 10 yard dumpster, and only a 10, hauled as many times as the job needs. A 10 of broken gunite and rebar-laced deck hits the limit for a legal road load long before the walls look full. That material in a 40 does not get you a better deal, it gets you a container nobody can legally lift. It is why we run dedicated concrete and heavy debris containers separately, with next-day swap-outs.

Keep it clean. Nothing but broken concrete, block and rebar routes to a crusher and comes back as base material; mix in mesh, PVC and old liner and you have turned a recyclable load into general demolition debris. Two containers on site is the right setup on almost every full removal.

Screen rooms, lanais and what is worth saving

A screen room or lanai is a half-step up from a cage: aluminium framing, but with insulated or acrylic panels, vinyl windows and sometimes a block knee wall. Framing and panels ride with the cage material; knee wall, slab and tile go with the concrete.

Salvage deserves twenty minutes before the excavator starts. Pavers lift by hand, pressure wash clean and get reused as a walkway or shed pad. Precast coping in good shape has value, and travertine deck tile is worth pulling if it is not bonded down hard. Anything set aside is volume you never pay to haul.

Before the excavator moves: locates, gas and bonded electrical

Call Sunshine 811 before any digging. It is free, state law, and not optional because the pool has been there thirty years. Give the ticket its waiting period. Sandy soil means shallow, drifting utilities, and irrigation and low-voltage lines are not covered by 811 at all.

Two pool-specific hazards deserve their own line. If the pool has a gas heater, a natural gas or propane line runs to the equipment pad and must be shut off and properly capped by a qualified contractor before anything moves. And every pool built to code has a bonding grid — heavy copper tying shell steel, deck, ladder, light niche and pump together electrically. The pump circuit needs de-energising at the panel by a licensed electrician, and the abandoned bonding wire dealt with rather than left in a hole. Code evolves, so have a licensed contractor confirm current practice.

Sandy soil, a high water table, and the shell that tries to float

Brevard has sand and a water table close to the surface, especially beachside and after a wet season. That produces a counter-intuitive problem: an empty concrete shell can float. Drain a pool at high water and hydrostatic pressure underneath will lift it, crack it or pop it out of the ground. It happens here every year.

That is why fill-ins call for the floor to be punctured before backfill, and why a pool sitting empty needs its hydrostatic relief valve working. Never discharge pool water where it can reach a storm drain or the Indian River Lagoon, already under pressure from seagrass loss and nutrient loading. Guidance changes, so check with Florida DEP or the county before you pull the plug.

The equipment pad, the filter and the chemicals

The pad is small but mixed. Pump housing, motor and PVC manifold go in the general container, as do cartridge filters. A sand or DE filter has to be emptied first, and spent DE is not a mixed-load item, so check before you crack the tank. Copper heat-exchanger elements from an old heater are scrap.

Pool chemicals are prohibited in any container we own. Chlorine tablets, cal-hypo shock, muriatic acid, algaecide and stabiliser are reactive or corrosive, and trichlor will start a fire if it gets wet alongside anything organic. Take it to a Brevard County household hazardous waste drop-off, set up for exactly this — hours and accepted items change, so ring ahead. More in our guide to what can go in a dumpster in Brevard County.

Component by component: material, container, notes

Fitting a container and an excavator on a Melbourne lot

Access is usually the constraint. The pool is in the back yard, the container sits on the drive, and a mini excavator has to get between the two — on a typical Melbourne lot that means a side gate, a fence section out, and a path across turf a tracked machine will mark up.

Plan the sequence: container first, machine second, because a roll-off truck needs a straight backing line that a parked excavator will block. On beachside streets in Indialantic and Melbourne Beach, where drives are short, narrow and often shell or paver, we frequently drop the box on the street instead — back to the right-of-way permit question. Sandy ground ruts easily under a loaded truck, so protection boards go under the rails as standard; more in our notes on driveway protection during dumpster delivery. In Suntree, Viera or Baytree, check association rules before delivery day. Still weighing sizes? Our walkthrough on choosing a dumpster size in Melbourne lays out the trade-offs.

Talk it through before you swing a hammer

Pool and cage work is one of the few jobs where getting the containers right at the start changes the whole week: one small box cycling for concrete, one big box for aluminium and mesh, a clean scrap pile, and the chemicals somewhere else entirely.

Call Wes and the crew at Collins & Co Dumpster Rental Melbourne on (321) 341-7478, tell us what is coming out and how big the cage is, and we will tell you what to have on the drive and when to swap it. Same-day and next-day delivery across our Space Coast service areas.