Pool removal in Sherman OaksA City of Los Angeles neighborhood, with hillside streets south of Ventura Boulevard and postwar homes to the north.

Why Sherman Oaks yards still have these pools

A neighborhood built when a backyard pool was part of the house.

Sherman Oaks is a neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, and it includes a portion of the Santa Monica Mountains.^[2] It was developed beginning in 1927 and named for Moses Sherman.^[2] Wikipedia lists ZIP codes 91401, 91403, 91413, 91423 and 91495 for the neighborhood.^[2]

Housing age helps explain why so many of those backyards still hold original gunite pools. In ZIP codes 91403 and 91423 — two of the ZIPs Wikipedia associates with Sherman Oaks — the Census Bureau’s ACS 2024 5-year estimates count about 29,827 housing units. About 71 percent of them were built before 1980, and about 37 percent were built in the 1950s or 1960s.^[3][4][5][2] Roughly 35 percent of units in those two ZIPs are single-family detached homes; the rest include the apartment corridors that run through the Valley floor.^[3]

Those mid-century single-family lots are exactly where a tired pool, a cracked deck and a high water bill start to feel like the wrong use of a yard. They are also where a leave-no-trace removal has to thread machines past mature palms, block walls and neighbors who live close.

South of the Boulevard, and north of it

The hill streets and the flats are not the same job.

Ventura Boulevard is the commercial spine — the Village of Sherman Oaks sits where Van Nuys Boulevard meets Ventura.^[2] South of that line the neighborhood climbs into the Santa Monica Mountains.^[2] Those streets are where a 10 percent slope can take the uncertified fill-in path off the table, where a grading pre-inspection report may be required, and where a side yard may not exist at all.^[1]

North of Ventura, toward Van Nuys and the Los Angeles River, lots flatten and side-yard access is often simpler, but apartment buildings and narrower lots bring their own protection problems.^[2] The river itself runs along the northern edge and forms part of the boundary with Van Nuys.^[2]

Nearby names people use when they describe a Sherman Oaks yard include the blocks around Ventura Boulevard, the hillside canyons that climb toward Bel Air and Beverly Hills Post Office, and the flatter streets that fade into Studio City on the east and Encino on the west.^[2] If you are not sure which side of a boundary you sit on, say the nearest cross streets in the form. Mapping L.A. publishes a neighborhood map used throughout Los Angeles.^[6]

Sherman Oaks uses City of Los Angeles rules, not a separate building department. LADBS Information Bulletin P/BC 2023-111 is the document that describes both backfill methods, the inspections, and the compaction and drainage-hole details.^[1]

FAQ

Sherman Oaks pool removal questions

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