Hole is dug. Crazy clay. A lil help?

[t0ddly]

A quick description of my scenario.

• Vinyl pool with hole dug and 48 inch steel walls are going up in a couple days. Currently great dry weather.
• The top of the pool will be a couple inches above grade at the higher point of my grade and a foot above at the other lower side of grade.
• Crazy heavy clay and the dig was painful.
• The deep end has about 2 inches of water that seems to be self-replenishing the evaporated water with slow seepage from the clay around and above the pool bottom.
• I have asked my builder to provide stone for backfill but crushed rock with sharp edges would have been about $6k extra. My excavator found me a great deal on what we in Michigan refer to as 6A washed stone ¾ to 1 inch. This stone does not have many sharp edges like crushed which I know would have been preferable.

• The builder knows I had an awful history of floating liners at my last house and it is a MAJOR concern for me with this project.

Questions – again – I hope you can help me here.

• Am I making things worse with the type of stone I have chosen for backfill or am I still way better off than sand?
• Can deck cement be poured right over the top of this material? PB thinks they will want to put sand over the rock and then pour. This seems odd to me.
• Should I lead away from this backfill area to low points on my well graded but heavy clay yard using a couple French drains or just a solid pipe from the backfill area? Or is this not really necessary at all?
• My builder suggested I stick with sand - no drainage French or otherwise - and install a sump in the bottom of the deep end with flex pvc to a valve up top and powered by the pool pump. This seems too manual to me and susceptible to human error on when to engage it. I told him I would pay for that but would consider it the very last line of defense if all the other mitigations listed fail and not as a primary solution. Am I on the right track or am I being ridiculous?

Thank you very much for your time.

Todd

 

[dw9000]

I live south of you and I put an in ground concrete block / vinyl liner pool. I backfilled the bottom foot or so with crushed limestone, then dirt.

I really wish I had put in some of that 4" black flexible drain pipe (with the cloth jacket), basically making a footing perimeter drain. At the lowest point, I would of tied it to a 10' piece of 4" PVC to the surface, that way in the spring when all the snow melts or I get the spring downpours, I could snake in a hose and suck it out with transfer pump (something like below). Using a garden hose takes a while to pump it out, but at least I'd have access to it. This year, I drained the pool and tucked a sump pump behind the liner and sucked it all out, then filled it back up and it was a pain to make sure all the wrinkles were out but I got my pool up and running and it looks great. Next spring I'll likely have another fight.
Either way, if you use stone or sand you are going to get more water down on the perimeter of your metal walls, then if you just backfill with the existing clay/dirt.

 

[t0ddly]

I had a similar system on my last pool. I didn't know the tube leading to the bottom was even there until we ripped out the wood porch and wondered what the heck is this for? It probably would have saved me some liner grief had we known about it.

 

[balagreta]

All my years building pools, GRAVEL, no dirt and have a footer drain or sump pit

 

[Brianf60]

All my years building pools, GRAVEL, no dirt and have a footer drain or sump pit

When you say footer drain do you only go down to the footer/ base of the steel walls or is it necessary to go down as low as the deep end?