Waxahachie, TX Owner Build - A race to beat the baby!

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These are SUCH GREAT IDEAS!!! I wish we could have done this when I was homeschooling my kids! They lived science lessons and experiments, and helped me with everything.
What great memories!

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JoyfulNoise said:
Jamie,

Question: You know what that 30-day break-in period represents?

Answer: A very good teachable-moment for your children in learning patience, self-control and respecting the wishes of mom & dad. Those are life-lessons that are in very short supply these days.

It's also a very small fraction of the overall lifetime of the pool and the many years of enjoyment you and your family will get from it. A lot like pregnancy, "birthing" a pool is an exercise of patience and long-suffering...but the end-result is well worth it!! I leave you with this picture that is dear to my heart -

0742CD17-A1D0-4F63-A17B-17503EE14AA2_zps5jfempjm.jpg


You'll get one of those pictures soon too, no doubt in my mind!!
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Matt- I just LOVE this picture!
 
Thanks, Matt, and everyone else for chiming in! What a sweet photo and memory for your family, Matt. These are good ideas, and real life opportunities for patience and delayed gratification are always good life lessons especially for kids. I'm not really getting a lot of pushback from the kids about when they will get to finally swim, but that would probably change when there is actually water in the pool. It was awhile back already, but one of my favorite quotes about the timeframe for the pool came from my six year old: "The pool will be ready when it is ready." Haha! Very true! (It was closer to Christmastime when be said it. Can anyone guess the children's book (paraphrased) literary reference?")

After my initial trial at using the TF-100 kit, the kids were excited to hear that I was going to teach them too, but so afar we haven't gotten to that yet. I'm sure they'll find it interesting though. I'll take any help I can get!

The owner of the concrete company will be coming out tomorrow with his spraydeck guy to discuss what needs to happen next for fixing the decking. He originally mentioned power washing to get the loose parts off, but I'm not sold that is the way to go, since it doesn't seem it would lift any area that isn't already chipping (but that I can pick out by looking and chip off with a screwdriver or something hard like that.). I'm thinking a thorough sanding would be more effective, but we'll see what ideas they have once I show them the current condition.
 
BigEinAZ said:
They need to use a walk-behind grinder on the WHOLE surface. You want all the delaminations exposed and ground out not just the ones that are obvious now. Your topping will only turn out as well as your prep.
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I appreciate this. This is what I was thinking myself, but it's even better to have confirmation. I want it done right the first time and don't want to have to deal with spraydeck chipping off because the were too lazy to prep right. Hopefully it won't be a battle to have them agree to this.
 
JamieP said:
It was awhile back already, but one of my favorite quotes about the timeframe for the pool came from my six year old: "The pool will be ready when it is ready." Haha! Very true! (It was closer to Christmastime when be said it. Can anyone guess the children's book (paraphrased) literary reference?")
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Que Sera, Sera?!

6 is such a fun age! I have 6 year old twin boys that constantly amaze and exasperate me all at the same time!

For the decking I would ask for an extended warranty that covers that problem just in case. They might say no but it definitely wouldn't hurt to ask!!


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twinkiesmommy2009 said:
Que Sera, Sera?!

6 is such a fun age! I have 6 year old twin boys that constantly amaze and exasperate me all at the same time!

For the decking I would ask for an extended warranty that covers that problem just in case. They might say no but it definitely wouldn't hurt to ask!!


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Good guess, but no.... It's a children's Christmas book which you can find with James Earl Jones narrating.

What fun to have twin boys! My kids would love to add twins to the family. They multiples can happen more easily as women get older, so I've still got a shot! ;-)

Good idea on the extended warranty. It never hurts to ask!
 
JamieP said:
I appreciate this. This is what I was thinking myself, but it's even better to have confirmation. I want it done right the first time and don't want to have to deal with spraydeck chipping off because the were too lazy to prep right. Hopefully it won't be a battle to have them agree to this.
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Jamie, Just be certain to demand that someone who has operated one of these machines before does the work. An inexperienced laborer can easily make a bigger mess of things than you have now. It isn't rocket science but it isn't fool-proof either. A sixteenth of an inch removal might be plenty, depending on how flat a surface they gave you. The other tool they could use would be an orbital grinder, similar to the ones they use to grind terrazzo flooring. You don't want a polished surface though, so if they do this, stay on the aggressive side with the stone grit.
 
BigEinAZ said:
Jamie, Just be certain to demand that someone who has operated one of these machines before does the work. An inexperienced laborer can easily make a bigger mess of things than you have now. It isn't rocket science but it isn't fool-proof either. A sixteenth of an inch removal might be plenty, depending on how flat a surface they gave you. The other tool they could use would be an orbital grinder, similar to the ones they use to grind terrazzo flooring. You don't want a polished surface though, so if they do this, stay on the aggressive side with the stone grit.
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Thanks, this is good to know. I definitely don't want a bigger mess on my hands!

Here is a photo of some of the worst spots. The big one is about 2" across. This is where I actively chipped at them, but this particular area has many more spots that I didn't bother to chip up since my position is that the whole area needs to be done anyway. Hopefully you can tell that these delaminations are pretty shallow. They really wouldn't have to grind down very far to get past them, I expect.

 
JamieP said:
Good guess, but no.... It's a children's Christmas book which you can find with James Earl Jones narrating.

What fun to have twin boys! My kids would love to add twins to the family. They multiples can happen more easily as women get older, so I've still got a shot! ;-)

Good idea on the extended warranty. It never hurts to ask!
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Christmas Miracle? I'm just guessing now as I don't think I've actually seen it. [emoji15] I should really remedy that!

They are a blast! It was like a two for one special and we were totally shocked. Lol. Absolutely, the older we get the more our chances increase. You're pregnant with your 7th? Did I see that somewhere?


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twinkiesmommy2009 said:
Christmas Miracle? I'm just guessing now as I don't think I've actually seen it. [emoji15] I should really remedy that!

They are a blast! It was like a two for one special and we were totally shocked. Lol. Absolutely, the older we get the more our chances increase. You're pregnant with your 7th? Did I see that somewhere?


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I'm not sure if you're actually thinking of the same book, but you got half of the name right! It's called "The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey" and it's about a widower who is a master woodcarver and who's hired by a widow and her 7 year old son to carve a Nativity Set that had been very precious to them but had been lost. The woodcarver starts out the story as a grouch and one of his best lines when initially asked by the widow if the set will be ready for Christmas is his gruff reply, "It will be ready when it is ready!" So that's where my 6 year old got his line about the pool. It is quite a sweet story and I highly recommend it. James Earl Jones does a fantastic job narrating it, too, which makes it even better.

If twins showed up on the sonogram we'd be pretty shocked too! But this baby is a confirmed singleton. And yes, he/she will be our seventh. Our oldest is 14 and the youngest turns two March 8th. We have a lot of fun! :)
 
I need help figuring out a pressure drop issue please: My dummy pass through salt cell arrived today and I got it set up in my plumbing. Then I pressurized the system to 30 psi to see if I would have any pressure loss like I was having before the real salt cell sprung a leak. But before filling everything with water, I removed the pump lid and lubed the o-ring, and did the same thing to the plug on the basket side of the pump. I also closed the Jandy valve to the slide because this is where I initially suspected the problem to be and thought by taking it out of the equation I would figure out better what's going on, or at least rule kt out.

So, after a little over an hour, I've lost about a 1/2 lb of pressure. There is nothing obviously dripping at the pad, and the two places I thought could possibly have an air leak, the valve at the top of the filter and the spigot at the top of the pump don't create more bubbles when I try to lather them up with soapy water.

With the slide pipe blocked off by the valve, I'm at a loss as to why I am losing pressure. There was definitely a point where I had it holding rock solid, but that was a while ago, before a stretch of a variety of workers and cold weather when I couldn't keep the system pressurized. Does anyone have any ideas? How bad is this?

Thanks for any help you can offer!
 
Thanks for asking, Denise! It actually turned out well, and I'm confident that it will turn out great.

The owner of the concrete company showed up with the owner of the company that will do the spraydeck so the spraydeck guy could assess the situation and let us know the best way to get off the chipping. It turns out that the spray deckcompany is the same one I had used for my tile and coping, is the front runner for my plaster, and had originally given me a negotiated quote for spraydeck when we thought we'd try to afford it ourselves. However, the guy I'd been dealing with must have been the partner of the guy who came out, because I'd never met this new guy before. The owners of both of these companies (concrete and spraydeck/tile/cooing/plaster) are all young and friends with one another.

We talked about the best way to get the chipping off and the concrete guy first started taking about power washing, with the spray deck guy agreeing. I expressed my reservations about this method being sufficient, and the spraydeck guy then suggested a walk behind grinder which is what I had been told here at TFP all along. Since they do other concrete work, using this machine is familiar to them.

It sounds as if they'd be ready to do this as early as next week, but my concrete doesn't reach its full 28 day cure until March 4th. Despite them telling me I'd be ok, I have to decide if waiting longer would be better.

So that's the story of the concrete fix. But that's not even the whole of my day, because I had to deal with the drainage/grading guy which ended ok, but was a disappointing experience.
 
Pressure update: The psi is at 28 this morning. (Started at 30 yesterday, had dropped to about 29.5 when I checked after an hour --too soon?, and was about 29 when I went to bed last night.) Yesterday's temps were in the 70s and we're still in the 40s right now, if
 

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