That swing set hasn't moved in three years. The slide's gone chalky from the Idaho sun, one seat is missing, and there's a bare rectangle of dead grass underneath. Your kid is fifteen now, so trampoline and swing set removal finally made it onto the list.

We get that call all summer around Boise. It sounds like a Saturday project, right up until you're on your knees in the dirt with a wrench that doesn't fit a bolt nobody's turned since 2014.

Why swing set removal takes longer than you'd guess

Most backyard play structures were built to survive kids and weather, and they do that job well. Which is exactly the problem when you want one gone.

Wood forts are usually lag-bolted together, and half those bolts are seized with rust. Metal sets around the Treasure Valley often sit in concrete footings. Sometimes a foot deep, sometimes more, and there's no way to know which until somebody starts digging.

Then there's whatever's underneath. Pea gravel, rubber mulch, or a layer of shredded bark that's been sitting long enough to turn back into dirt. If that's going too, it's a separate pile and it's heavy. A five-gallon bucket of pea gravel runs about 75 pounds.

Where does all of it end up? Wood and plastic go to the Ada County Landfill out on Seaman's Gulch. Clean steel poles are scrap, so those head to Western Recycling instead, which shaves a little weight off the dump ticket. Slides and tunnels are landfill unless they're nice enough that somebody actually wants them.

Trampoline removal in Boise: the springs are the real job

A trampoline looks like the easy one. Round frame, a handful of bolts, fifteen minutes.

The springs disagree. A 14-footer has 80 to 96 of them, every one under tension, and they all come off before the frame breaks down. Get careless with one and you'll take a spring across the knuckles you'll remember all week.

Tip: Pull the springs in opposite pairs across the mat, the way you'd loosen lug nuts on a wheel. The tension stays even and the last twenty come off easy instead of fighting you. Drop them in a bucket as you go so you're not finding them with the mower in October.

Don't forget the anchor kit. Anybody who's watched a trampoline tumble into a fence during a spring windstorm has staked or augered theirs down, and those augers usually sit deep. Worth checking before you assume the frame just lifts off the lawn.

The frame itself is galvanized steel, so it's scrap rather than trash. Mat, net, and pads are landfill. The foam sleeves mostly crumble in your hands.

What trampoline and swing set removal costs around Boise

Here's roughly where these jobs land for us in Boise, Meridian, Nampa, and the rest of the valley. Play structures get priced on volume plus labor, same as the rest of our junk removal work, so the number moves with size and how buried it is.

What you've got	Typical price	Time on site
Standard 12–14 ft trampoline	$150–$250	30–45 min
Large trampoline, net and anchors	$200–$300	45–60 min
Metal swing set, no concrete	$200–$325	About an hour
Wood play structure with fort and slide	$350–$650	2–4 hours
Play structure with concrete footings	$500–$900+	Half a day

Concrete is the biggest swing in that range. Two posts set in concrete is nothing. Six posts under a big cedar fort is a genuine afternoon with a digging bar and a wheelbarrow.

If you want the fuller picture on how volume pricing works, we laid it out in our Boise junk removal cost guide.

So can you handle trampoline and swing set removal yourself?

A standard round trampoline? Probably, yeah. Two people, a socket set, a spring pull tool from any hardware store, and about an hour.

We'd take the job, but honestly, that one's hard to justify paying for if you've got a helper and a truck. Taking it apart isn't the hard part anyway. The hard part is what you do with a bed full of steel tubing and a mat that refuses to fold flat.

Wood play structures are where it stops being fun. Pressure-treated lumber studded with rusty hardware, and you can't burn it, so it's getting hauled somewhere no matter what.

A few things that speed either job up, whether we're doing it or you are:

Call 811 before you dig out footings, since sprinkler lines and low-voltage lighting sit shallow in most Boise yards
Clear a path from the structure to the driveway, gates included
Decide ahead of time whether the gravel or bark underneath is going too
Pull off anything you want to keep, like a good slide or a basketball hoop

If the set is still solid, try the neighborhood before the landfill. Play structures in decent shape move quick on local buy-nothing groups, and Idaho Youth Ranch will take smaller outdoor toys, though not a full swing set. Same thing we tell folks hauling out old exercise equipment: heavy stuff somebody else wants is free to get rid of.

The bottom line

Trampolines are a fair weekend project if you've got a truck and a helper. Wood forts with concrete footings are the ones people call us about halfway through, usually with three posts still standing and daylight running out.

Either way it's an hour or two on our end and the yard's flat again the same day. Want a number before you commit? Send a photo and we'll price it over the phone. Call or text (208) 593-2877, or take a look at what else we haul on our junk removal page.