Looks great, Steve! Congrats!!

Now you gotta jump in...

Rob

Very nice! Enjoy!

Sue

Nice looking pool and plenty of summer left to enjoy it.

What did you end up doing about the fence bonding?

Looks great Steve. Now relax and enjoy the rest of the summer. You've earned it.

Thank you all!

We have gone swimming and I can't tell you how nice it felt! Temp was 83 -- not too bad w/o solar.

The pool has a nice shallow end for games, etc - -a little tight depth-wise for diving, but we'll be careful.

Steve

Steve, congrats! I bet it was sooooo nice to have that first swim. I remember when my family and I all jumped in our new pool for the first time not much more than a year ago. I've followed your build progress for quite a while now - it's been great checking out all your pictures, but even better seeing that it's all completed!

Greg

Your pool looks great! Congratulations!

We have been looking at the same diving board. Are you happy with it? Does the cantilever stand give it a little bounce?

Enjoy!

Thanks,

We wanted a diving board that was a little different -- this fit the bill for us. It is quite wide -- really takes getting used to after growing up with 18" boards.

It could be used with one of two bases -- the cantilever or a fixed base.

The fixed base is usually just fine for a normal board, but this is a rigid board... rigid board with a rigid base is a diving platform -- no real movement.

So we decided on the cantilever base -- rigid board with a flexible base. It has a good amount of bounce. It is quite flexible to a point and then stiffens up. i would have preferred it to be more progressive, but it does have a good spring to it.

The cantilever base is not approved for salt pools -- but almost all of SRSmith's bases are not approved for salt pools -- we're taking our chances.

One word of warning, the 'grip' on the board is very rough. The first time I dove off I pushed off with my toes and ripped them up (to the point of bleeding). I will have to find some way to sand off the grip near the tip.

Overall pleased -with the board and base.

Steve

We've been having fun in the pool -- very refreshing. It's been 90 or so outside and 84 in the pool.

I noticed today that there are two spots of rust in the plaster about 1/8" across with a starbust of rust on the plaster all around maybe in a 1/2" to 3/4" diameter. They are in the wall of the deep end. All I can guess is that they are nails left in the shotcrete (they used them for their scafolding) that are too close to the surface.

I know these will quickly leave a rust stain down the plaster -- what can be done about these?

Thanks,
Steve

You probably do not want to hear this It sounds like you need to have those areas need to be knocked out, repaired and plastered.

You have a very atypical setup and I hope you don't take this as a criticism of your layout but I wonder if you considered doing an infinity edge instead of the setup with the retaining wall? With your setup it would have seemed like an opportunity to be looking at a waterfall of water. I know these are very expensive but with the grading and retaining wall, plus the wall of the pool the cost would have evened out a bit.

Brian

Thanks -- I've come to that conclusion, but they'll have to wait until the summer is over otherwise the kids will kill me in my sleep!

As for the infinity edge pool (BTW, no offence taken):

- too much $$ for the pool
- pump costs for the negative edge $$ to buy and run
- I like deck area and I'd have to give up a lot of it (the other side is 24" raised bond beam)
- something didn't strike me well having an infinity edge pool with the view of the kitchen..... better if it's a nice view of the ocean, lake, or valley.

I know what you're saying, though. It's a shame to look at a retaining wall from the house. We'll grow a climbing ficus vine on the wall and soon (2-3 years) it'll be all green.

I painted the landscaping/hardscaping on the dirt last week and will get the landscaping walls going next week.... hopefully. Lase measurers are great for layouts (I dimensioned each layout point to 3 key points on the house and just triangulated to find each point) but they can't be used in the sun -- thus a few hours of work each day at dusk until dark.....

Steve

Sorry it has been so long -- the pool is great. The pool company believes they can chip out and patch the 2 rust spots underwater (they call a "Pool Dr." company....).

I have been spending a bit of time on the Intellitouch automation. It's a little cumbersome, but I'm getting it. Not the most intuitive interface. The pool company said they can't remember another pool/spa combo (no water-features) with 6 automated valves. I have the pool programmed as follows:

6:00-7:00: Spa mode at 20 gpm to keep spa chlorinated (IC40 not turned on yet, but in theory) and keep fresh water in the spa pipes.

7:00-9:00: Vacuum mode (Kreepy Krauly). I have a dedicated vac port for this, so skimmer turns off to allow the flor to remain low and the fcleaner to be turned off entirely when swimming. This is the valve that really is not needed. Once installed, it seems the vac by itself (no skimmer) only needs 17 gpm to work corectly -- could have been on with skimmer without real problems. I have had the Kreepy Krauly seck air a few times and shut down the pump. The VF will not re-prime in this mode -- too much head I guess... I may have to have the vac valve stay upen (partial skimmer) and up the gpm to compensate. We'll see.

9:00-10:00: Skimmer mode. This is normal pool, no vac, no spill, but with 50 gpm to circulate the water and clean the top of the pool. There are not aimable eyes for the returns, only holes int he sire of the pool at the returns (angled) unfortunately, so i cannot aim them a little higher. The shallow end 9farthest from the equip) has half of the return flow as the closer jets, so this mode helps -- I might up it to 60 gpm.

10:00-2:00: Normal pool mode. No spill, about 25 gpm. Since this is not normal mode, the Intellitouch determines the flow based on the total run time and gallons. With all of the other programs I have going on, this is a useless number (though conservative). I will eventually run the numbers for each of the programs (once -I finish messing with them) and determine the gallons needed in normal pool mode and fake the total pool size to get one turn/day.

2:00-4:00: Spillway on (most common swimming time) at 50 gpm (returns off) for a nice spill effect. Also serves to chlorinate the spa (second time -- also chlorinated in spa mode at 6:00am). Also needed to keep the level of the spa up -- evaporation will kill an inch every couple of days in this little warm body of water.

4:00-6:00: Back to normal pool mode for a while.

The spa bypass works well -- jets will knoch you out of your seat. It will achieve a max of 108 gpm at the head pressure I have -- I have it set at 100.

I 'll detail more on the solar later.

Steve

If you're interested, I've posted some landscaping pics in the "Oasis" area.

post78796.html#p78796

The project will soon be done! (Ha!, what am I saying, the project is NEVER done!)

Steve

Steve,

I have been following your build since we started dreaming of ours....hehe And it looks absolutely awesome!! The pool looks great, and actually looks like the one we used to dream about...hehe

I just checked out your landscaping pics, and it looks like it's coming along very nicely. But to be honest, the "future grassy area" you have kinda looks like a perfect place for a huge putting green to me. You can put some of that artificial "maintenance free" grass on it, and you kill two birds with one stone. That is, if you play any golf.....

Looks Great!!

DMAN

Steve, I've also followed your pool build since I joined ...the pool and entire area turned out so beautifully! Great planning and execution...the landscaping is really coming along. I was in early planning stages, and liked your tile and overall design. It's so nice to be able to see so many different builds...it helped me a lot to be here through my own design and now the build phase. Really admire the way you tackled this whole thing intelligently and meticulously. You're an inspiration..thanks! I'm planning on putting up pics soon...we've started and have the gunite already...life has been crazy here in Ike hurricane-land, so I have to catch up with myself. Congrats, again..I still go back and look at your build...you and Vegasmom's. You guys rock!

Thanks Pisces & Dman -- It feels great to be almost there. I could not have done it w/o this site -- so I hope to help others get inspired also.

The grass is in -- the real stuff. I'm afraid gophers would try to dig up under the artificial turf and leave a big bulge (but it would be fun to watch).

I'll get some pics posted to the other thread soon. In the meantime, I have to do some serious cleaning of the pool and deck -- loads of dirt from the winds and landscaping. (and time for another filter cleaning...)

I need to take off the cover for the winter -- the water is about 72 degrees... to cold for swimming (tho the air is in the 90s here now)

Thanks again,

Steve