Pool & Heater are installed!

[HappyAuer]

The past 3 days have been a whirlwind. But it's already worth it. Thursday morning I woke up with no pool in my yard, and today I swam at home in 87-degree water. Here's a recap of the events:

Here's where we decided to install our new pool, a 15x30 oval above-ground (Vera the cat approves):

We had 2 major deliveries arrive on Wednesday afternoon: the pool itself, and all the materials for our new pool deck. The pool heater was already waiting in the garage, since I'd ordered it online. Here's the pool site early Thursday morning:

Then the fun started. First my plumber arrived with a 3-person crew and an excavator, to dig 1 trench for the gas and electric, and another trench to re-route the storm water from my sump pump away from the pool.

This rock was in the way and had to be moved:

Next, the 6-person pool building crew arrived and got right to work (with Bobcat #2), and finally the electrician and his assistant came and did their work. The skill and work ethic of all the workers was impressive, and they did a nice job cooperating with one another to work toward the common goal of getting our pool up and running.

They blew out a wheelbarrow tire, so my son came to the rescue with his own wheelbarrow:

By late afternoon, it was complete and filling with water:

We have great tap water pressure, so the pool was full by Friday afternoon. The water temperature was 62. When a kid is excited enough, he'll brave the cold:

Friday was a huge day, too. Around 8am our deck builder arrived with yet another large tractor to dig post holes for the new pool deck. The electrical inspection was in the afternoon, and the town building inspector came to look at the post holes (they're strict on footer depth here because our winters are cold and frost heave can ruin a deck if they're not buried deep enough).

In the meantime, I had to balance the water, install the steps (with a ladder temporarily mounted until the deck is complete), backfill dirt around the pool (there isn't enough-- we're short on fill dirt because the huge boulder left such a void), and connect the heater to the pool's circulation system. I had asked my plumber to complete that installation when I made the appointment, but apparently they misunderstood and thought they were only expected to run the gas line. Thankfully, they left behind their PVC pipe cutter, which I found very useful as I built a bypass for the heater (I will call them on Monday and let them know they left the tool at my house). By late afternoon on Friday I had the heater working, which allowed me to get the water temperature to 74 before we turned it off for the day.

The pool steps are too buoyant to work without weights, but the weights needed to be filled with sand, and I needed to dry some sand before I could funnel it into the spouts on the weights. So the steps floated out of control until today when I got the weights attached. Then I re-did a portion of my plumbing that hadn't come out very good the first time. Finally, with the water approaching the mid-80s, I quit for the day and spent the next couple of hours in the pool. Now the solar cover is on and hopefully saving all that heat for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we're having friends over for swimming and a campfire. Can't wait to show off the new pool!

 

[Casey]

The pool looks great! Post pics of the deck as it is completed!

 

[HappyAuer]

Deck construction is moving along well, despite crazy amounts of rain and me having no time to help. Thankfully I have a friend who is a good carpenter and he's doing a great job. We're going on vacation Monday and hopefully the deck will be finished when we return.

One thing I never thought about before getting a pool was all the mud in the weeks following the initial pool build. There was a lot of digging, so there's a lot of exposed dirt for now. In the 15 days since our pool went up, it's probably rained on 13 of them, with several heavy downpours, a couple of all-day rains, and one record-breaking day with almost 4 inches of rain in a 12-hour period. You can't go anywhere near the pool without getting muddy. We haven't spread grass seed yet, and I suppose it's a good thing because it all would have washed away.

One challenge for us was that we had a shortage of fill dirt-- probably because of the car-sized boulder that was removed when digging the gas/electric trench. We had 2 truck loads of topsoil brought in, but we've only used about half of it so far; moving it is slow, difficult work when it's waterlogged. So we didn't do an adequate job grading around the pool and that was made painfully obvious when the big storm hit on Monday:

When I saw the huge puddles against the edge of the pool, I considered that to be an emergency and I pulled a couple of late nights hauling wheelbarrows full of mud in the dark to build up a grade that would keep runoff away from the pool. But it was too late to keep the sand base under the pool from getting wet, and now it's a little squishy in some spots. Hopefully it will firm up as the ground dries. The ground goes uphill away from the pool on one side, and that's where the worst puddles were, so I made a sort of "moat" on that side, and today we got a thunderstorm that proved the moat is doing its job.

One good thing about the heavy rain is that it showed us very clearly where more fill dirt was needed, such as in several of the post holes for the new deck:

The deck is pretty huge, because we want to have room for lounge chairs and pool toys and a solar cover reel. I designed it on computer, and it's great to see it becoming reality and looking a lot like my picture. Today we jumped in the pool from the deck for the first time, and that was a thrill.

Next up are railings, stairs, and fascia. I really hope we have some hot, dry weather in August so I can jump in my pool and soak up some sun on my new deck!

 

[Esiebert7625]

Nice deck, love the contrasting wood colors and pattern. Had to be very time consuming to get all the angles on the cuts just right. What kind of wood did you go with, all the posts and framing look like PT wood but what about the decking, is it a composite wood?

 

[RangerBob]

The deck work is very nice, great craftsmanship. I am all about the sea-doo float!

 

[HappyAuer]

Thanks for the compliments. Our deck builder has done an awesome job patiently and accurately measuring all those angled cuts and small pieces. The decking is TimberTech Earthwood Evolutions, which is a capped composite. It's pricey, and for a deck this big it really blew our budget, but we looked at all the composite and PVC decking at a local lumberyard and we liked this much more than anything else we saw.