Let's talk about basketball poles / goals

**Rusty Nuts** · 01-26-2011, 12:58 PM

There seems to be a bumper crop of broken, portable basketball goals around here.

i wonder how much steel is in one of those things- anyone ever weighed or scrapped one?

And how do you take off the heavy, weighted base? I'm thinking that a lot of them use water as the ballast, but I'm not sure.
Or will the scrap yards take them as is- with the plastic base attached?

**Bigblue12v** · 01-26-2011, 04:08 PM

The bases normally fill with water, sometimes people fill them with sand. The poles are hollow and not really that thick of metal. I'd take all of 'em I could get, but I wouldn't drive clear across town for one. I'd say the pole weighs 50# or so maybe, so $5-6 each? The homemade ones that are sunk in concrete are usually a lot thicker of pipe than the manufactured portable ones. Use a sledge hammer to bust the concrete off of poles if the concrete is still attached in a big glob. A couple well aimed whacks will normally do the job.

**Rusty Nuts** · 01-27-2011, 11:45 AM

I'm not motivated enough yet to break concrete for a couple of bucks.
The ones I've seen are all the portable type with the big plastic bases.
They seem to fall over and break a lot, and the trash pick up won't take them, so they usually either stay where they fell(probably because they're heavy) or they get dragg3ed to the side of the house and left to rot. I could probably find 20 in an afternoon if i tried.
They're heavy, but they have the back boards nbd bases, which are they fly in the ointment.
I wonder if a small sledge would work for removing them, or if sawzall would be required?? I guess a socket set would work, but it seems like it would take forever.