Hello All! I just wanted to take a quick moment to introduce myself. We are now the proud owners of our first pool! Mom & Dad are in our 30's and have 3 boys under 8yrs. I am Dad (Dave). We decided that an above ground pool fit our family and budget best and had it installed about 3 weeks ago. We got lucky on our timing. Since it was late in the season, we were able to get a decent discount on the main pool cost. Yay for our budget!!
Things are going good so far but it wasn’t initially without some issues. Fortunately the installer made good and we have been enjoying it since. I will admit that I was very hesitant about getting a pool before we pulled the trigger. I didn’t want to be a slave to the maintenance of a pool, had a lot of concerns about safety with our & neighborhood kids and costs. In the end, we decided to take the dive (pun intended lol). Now that I've seen the joy on the kids faces, I’m glad we decided to do it.
I found this TFP site while researching deck/fence ideas. Your love of pics made that search easier. While lurking for a bit I discovered the general consensus is to control costs & chem use by using only what's necessary and not just dump chems because it’s on the dealer prescribed "to do" list. I really like this thought process, especially the cost savings part, lol.
Now that the install is complete, I'm still just trying to get the yard cleaned up. Before the pools inception, I "thought" I had a relatively flat yard. Apparently not! The installer had to dig down 15"-16" at the deepest spot which happened to be closest to the house. I actually like that it turned out this way. I was a bit concerned about the overall height of the pool since it is about 18-19 feet from the back door. Due to this dig out I've got a huge pile of dirt, aka obnoxiously heavy sand/clay mix, to get rid of. I'm very surprised at how much came out of the ground considering it's an AGP!! It does do a great job of backfilling though, packs tight!
While the yard is messed up, I'm working on finalizing the deck & railing design. I have a lot of ideas but a lower budget than I'd like. lol We want to put a deck on one end, but we NEED to put railing of some sort around the remaining portion for safety reasons. There are quite a few neighborhood kids under 10 (more than a dozen)
We used city water trucked in to set the liner and fill the pool to about 70% (2 trucks). THe rest came from our village water system through a hose. I was able to get the pump running within 24 hours of first fill, so I've had it relatively easy getting the correct chem levels and not going green. I consider that a success. I will say that I'm still burning through the Cl that the dealer sent with the pool. I'm on the verge of running out of the chlorine refill packs (trichlor tabs) and need to decide fairly quick on the direction I want to take to get Cl in the pool. I think I know what all you will recommend! lol I'm not sold on it quite yet, but its growing on me.
My original intent here was to say Hi and I've turned long winded which is unusual for me, lol. Enough rambling for now, I hope you're all ready for some Q&A.
- Dave -
Things are going good so far but it wasn’t initially without some issues. Fortunately the installer made good and we have been enjoying it since. I will admit that I was very hesitant about getting a pool before we pulled the trigger. I didn’t want to be a slave to the maintenance of a pool, had a lot of concerns about safety with our & neighborhood kids and costs. In the end, we decided to take the dive (pun intended lol). Now that I've seen the joy on the kids faces, I’m glad we decided to do it.
I found this TFP site while researching deck/fence ideas. Your love of pics made that search easier. While lurking for a bit I discovered the general consensus is to control costs & chem use by using only what's necessary and not just dump chems because it’s on the dealer prescribed "to do" list. I really like this thought process, especially the cost savings part, lol.
Now that the install is complete, I'm still just trying to get the yard cleaned up. Before the pools inception, I "thought" I had a relatively flat yard. Apparently not! The installer had to dig down 15"-16" at the deepest spot which happened to be closest to the house. I actually like that it turned out this way. I was a bit concerned about the overall height of the pool since it is about 18-19 feet from the back door. Due to this dig out I've got a huge pile of dirt, aka obnoxiously heavy sand/clay mix, to get rid of. I'm very surprised at how much came out of the ground considering it's an AGP!! It does do a great job of backfilling though, packs tight!
While the yard is messed up, I'm working on finalizing the deck & railing design. I have a lot of ideas but a lower budget than I'd like. lol We want to put a deck on one end, but we NEED to put railing of some sort around the remaining portion for safety reasons. There are quite a few neighborhood kids under 10 (more than a dozen)
We used city water trucked in to set the liner and fill the pool to about 70% (2 trucks). THe rest came from our village water system through a hose. I was able to get the pump running within 24 hours of first fill, so I've had it relatively easy getting the correct chem levels and not going green. I consider that a success. I will say that I'm still burning through the Cl that the dealer sent with the pool. I'm on the verge of running out of the chlorine refill packs (trichlor tabs) and need to decide fairly quick on the direction I want to take to get Cl in the pool. I think I know what all you will recommend! lol I'm not sold on it quite yet, but its growing on me.
My original intent here was to say Hi and I've turned long winded which is unusual for me, lol. Enough rambling for now, I hope you're all ready for some Q&A.
- Dave -
