Yesterday, I was able to dismantle the remains of the play structure that I made for the boys many years ago, well mostly so. I got all of the wood structure off, but six concrete piers still remain in the ground. The piers were placed to anchor the structure and now seem all too well anchored now. Each pier had a metal brace in its center that had held a 4×4 vertical post. I tried sawing off one of these braces, but there just wasn’t enough room between the bottom of the brace and the top of the concrete pier. Next, I tried breaking up one of the concrete piers, but that didn’t work either. I next tried to dig out one of the piers and got it about halfway uncovered, before Anne called me in for lunch. I got the pier loose to the point that I could freely rotate it, but I could not lift it out of the hole. After lunch, I tried YouTube U for ideas on how to extract these piers. There were three methods suggested by different people. The best idea was to use an engine hoist. This is a tool that is intended to lift car engines out of a vehicle. They are not too expensive to buy, and they are also rented, so this is a viable approach. Another idea was to use a farm jack. This is a jack that is five feet high. They also sell for less than a hundred dollars. Finally, the cheapest approach would be to use a 2×8 board as a lever and pull the piers out that way. I am going to move on to other projects and let these ideas simmer for a while.