New Pool w/ Falls & Slide in Baton Rouge, LA

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New Pool w/ Falls & Slide in Baton Rouge, LA

Matchless1 said:
No locking device out of the box. One could be fashioned if you're handy though. Not sure how air tight these things are though even if latched and locked.


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No worries on airtight since I'd be adding a vent hole. Mostly wanting to make sure it could be kid tight if I put the MA in there. Thanks!!!


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So tomorrow will be 4 weeks since plaster. The Start Up New Plaster guide on TFP says not to use robotic cleaners in the first 3 weeks. So I should be good to go by now to use my robot, right? Any reason to wait?

Also, there's quite a bit of debris and dirt in the pool from the landscaping and sod work over the past 2 days (pictures soon to come). Is there any reason not to turn the robot loose and really test it out or should I vacuum that stuff first? Obviously, the robot would be SOOO much easier, but I also want to make sure I'm not overlooking a reason not to use it.
 
kimkats said:
What does your PB say for HIS warranty?

TFP says it should be okay IF you PB does.

:kim:
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PB said it was ok, so I set it loose yesterday, and it worked really well. So far so good.

Update on progress: Phase 2 of landscaping started and finished last Thursday. This included re-planting the waterfall planters due to the patching of the leaks and fixing of the drainage, building the bed against the house, the decking planters and around the palms. Unfortunately, when they planted the left side, we got the placement of the plants and speaker perfect, but realized they didn't pull up the irrigation line before doing so. 3 of us dug (by hand) for about 5 minutes in that little planter and could not find it, so they had to remove the plants and speaker (b/c they ended up disconnecting the speaker wire while digging) just to find that tiny little micro irrigation tube! After re-planting those 3 plants (a third time), I think/hope they're are finally settled. We decided to wait to plant the Blood Banana and Liriope (Monkey Grass) in the decking planters until the Fall when it's a little cooler to give them a better chance (notice the Canna are not looking so good due to the heat right now). Also, we changed the Agapanthus to Liriope due to low tolerance to full sun and due to the future larger size of the Agapanthus.

The sod guys were there Thursday afternoon hand-grading the land and scraping (by hand) any remaining grass. Those guys WORKED!! And it was HOT!! Friday they came back to finish grading and start laying sod. It took them all day and got interrupted by a brief shower, but were able to finish laying all 4 pallets by 4:30 just in time for the rain, which hasn't really stopped since, which is good for the sod, but not so conducive to fence building. Fortunately, my dad had a lot of wafer boards we used to walk on mostly to minimize traffic on the fresh sod.

My good friend and dad showed up Saturday to help me put up the composite fence pickets. We quickly realized that these composite boards presented all kinds of challenges, which I won't get into, except to say if I had to do it again, I would just go with regular cypress/cedar pickets. Also, square head screws are the worst invention in the history of screws! It does look really good though and hopefully will be continue to look this way for many years to come with minimal maintenance. I still need to put in the other half of the screws and build the gate, but my temporary board gate works just fine for the dog at least. We worked from about 7:00 am Saturday until 8:30 pm in between two rain interruptions and managed to get all but the last 5 boards on the end (slanted top edge), which may have happened if I had made the cuts right. Oh well, I woke up the next morning and got them up pretty quick.

Pics from the last few days...

Landscaping







Palm tree straightening



Sod prep and more landscaping and me routing low voltage wire for landscape lighting as well as dog fence wiring before sod











Future rock bed at hose spigot



Sod



















Fence pickets





 
That looks awesome! Poor plants being planted and unplanted LOL I hope them get to stay this time. Those are some tiny lines for sure.

You say dog fence wire. Is your dog trained to it yet? That is not a lot of room from the wire to the where he can go. I am not sure it is enough room. We had to use that for one of our dogs to keep him out of the pool yard/back porch (he found out there was cat food on the porch-yummm). I had to really work on one area due to the distance between the pool and pond. Play with it some before you put the collar on him.

That sod is awesome. Glad you had so much rain to help water it in!

That fence looks great! I hear you on the screws! How many did you strip out??? How many bits did you round off? NOT the best thing at all BUT it is done and you will be glad in the future with the low care needed.

:kim:
 
Very nice! The landscaping makes it even better. Do you have the lights installed? Any pics at night.

The steps to the slide is a great idea, the entire design is really well done.

In looking at it in the last picture, it almost looks like a Mayan Temple (pyramid) in the back.
 
kimkats said:
That looks awesome! Poor plants being planted and unplanted LOL I hope them get to stay this time. Those are some tiny lines for sure.

You say dog fence wire. Is your dog trained to it yet? That is not a lot of room from the wire to the where he can go. I am not sure it is enough room. We had to use that for one of our dogs to keep him out of the pool yard/back porch (he found out there was cat food on the porch-yummm). I had to really work on one area due to the distance between the pool and pond. Play with it some before you put the collar on him.

That sod is awesome. Glad you had so much rain to help water it in!

That fence looks great! I hear you on the screws! How many did you strip out??? How many bits did you round off? NOT the best thing at all BUT it is done and you will be glad in the future with the low care needed.

:kim:
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He's not trained on the new areas (he was on the old ones), so we are training him now. Only the mulched areas are protected. Wherever you see a single yellow wire, it's actually a twisted pair of wires, which disables the fence barrier in order to connect one perimeter to another.

We only completely stripped out a few of the screws, but about 90% of them slipped/rounded towards the end a little bit even putting all of our weight into them.

bdrex28 said:
Very nice! The landscaping makes it even better. Do you have the lights installed? Any pics at night.

The steps to the slide is a great idea, the entire design is really well done.

In looking at it in the last picture, it almost looks like a Mayan Temple (pyramid) in the back.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the kind words. The pool lights have been installed and I've posted some pictures several pages back, but I'm still working on getting the landscape lighting connected. Higher priorities at the moment like the Stenner pump, fence gate, micro irrigation completion, etc., but I'll be sure to post some more night pics once all the landscape lighting is done.

Funny you mention the Mayan Temple...my PB made the same comment when it was all said and done. I considered working fire in there some kind of way to add to that theme, but running a gas line (not to mention buying decorative gas fixtures) just wan't in the budget.

lsuxtremist said:
Love this build. Very professional!! Your hard work has certainly paid off.
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Thanks very much! Still a few more weekends left before I can really take a breath (and then the Fall before landscaping is really done), but I'm just so glad at this point that I'm done having to take off so much time from work and coordinate between all the crews.
 
First post newby here :) I just looked through your entire build and it looks amazing! You guys must be thrilled with your new oasis. Do you have any plans on continuing the pickets around the sides of your yard along your neighbors fence posts, assuming they would be OK with that?

P.S. Also, would you be able to give a ballpark on the cost for a project like yours? If not, I totally understand just figured I would ask. We are starting to look for our "forever" home, and absolutely wanted a pool/backyard oasis to be part of that equation, but really have no idea how much something like what we are looking for would impact our budget. If it's not Kosher to ask that on this forum, or you would prefer not to answer for whatever reason, feel free to ignore.
 

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BaltimoreCaesar said:
First post newby here :) I just looked through your entire build and it looks amazing! You guys must be thrilled with your new oasis. Do you have any plans on continuing the pickets around the sides of your yard along your neighbors fence posts, assuming they would be OK with that?

P.S. Also, would you be able to give a ballpark on the cost for a project like yours? If not, I totally understand just figured I would ask. We are starting to look for our "forever" home, and absolutely wanted a pool/backyard oasis to be part of that equation, but really have no idea how much something like what we are looking for would impact our budget. If it's not Kosher to ask that on this forum, or you would prefer not to answer for whatever reason, feel free to ignore.
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Definitely no plans to put pickets (especially composite ones) on neighbor's fence. I will PM you regarding your other question.
 
Landscapers came by yesterday and planted the Liriope in the decking beds as well as replaced the purple ivy with another green one, which I think really looks a lot better. The only thing left to plant now are the 2 Blood Bananas in the fall.

I have discovered a problem in the bed against the house though. The Hibiscus are turning yellow and the Camellia is getting some brown leaves. There is too much water in the bed that is not draining properly. I've talked to my landscaper and my drainage guy and I think we concluded that there is a pretty thick layer of clay underneath the soil, which is trapping the water. I have gutters above the bed, but there is some run-off coming from the pool deck. Installing a french drain under the bed and tying into the existing drain pipe would be the best, but also the most costly solution. We also discussed digging out all of the clay and replacing with a rock and fabric bed, then going back with the top soil and mulch. Both of these options involve destroying the bed. So, I think the first thing I'm going to try is creating a sloped trench 2"-3" wide between the decking and the bed, then lay visquine and pour small red rocks, then cover with mulch to try and re-direct some of the run-off water out to a nearby catch basin.

Here is a photo of the bed before finishing and sod...


Landscaping finishing this week







 
kimkats said:
Let us know how the fix works. It is going to take time and changing things to get it all dialed in BUT when you do it will be SO worth it!!

I LOVE how it all looks! SO pretty!

:kim:
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Will do. Looking forward to just relaxing on the weekends one day very soon! Today I was able to get the speaker wires all hooked up to the inside receiver and they all work (thank goodness)! Also hooked up all of the landscape lighting that I had. I just have two more lights for the palm on the right that are on order. I'm really happy with the way they all came out. Also mounted the hose on the back wall and finished the rock area right there. Let me tell you, drilling into that stone is nothing like drilling into brick! It took about 30 minutes to get 2 holes drilled (had masonry bits, but no hammer drill handy unfortunately), but it's pretty solid.

Just a few pics of the rock area and some evening shots. I'll have to get my wife (the photog) to take some decent night pictures once we finish that other palm.






Not the best pics, but you get the idea...



 
It was a hot one today, but I managed to install the French drain in the landscaping bed. Then we got a bad storm tonight to test it out. Water seems to be draining out of the pipe into the basin...I just hope it's catching most of it. A few days ago I installed the last two palm lights, so all the landscape lighting is now done. I still haven't been able to install the Stenner pump yet, which is really frustrating because the company that I ordered some of the black fittings from that I need still hasn't shipped them. So, at least another week of manual chlorine addition (oh well).

Landscape Lighting done!



French Drain











 

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