Landscaping ideas

[geekgranny]

WOW, anonapersona. What great advice. :bowdown: I certainly hope you don't mind me asking for some advice a little later.

Anytime. But I am not experienced with alkaline soil and so my help will be only marginally useful, I'm afraid.

I have a cutout in my pool decking about 24" from the edge of the pool where trees were kept when the pool was built. they died from Ash blight. One edge of it has a concrete bowl that has a drain in it; rest is soil.

That sounds almost like you could use it for a small waterfall as well, depending on which way the basin faces. If sealed, the concrete might hold water if the drain were plugged. Then you could use a pump that could recirculate water to a small statue that spits into the basin. Or if the basin faces away from the house or sitting area, then put in a mesh cover to hold rocks that hide the basin of water and pump and have an overflowing urn that spills into the rocks. Only works if there is a viewing or sitting area nearby.

Thanks much. See........... Your suggestion for waterfall or fountain, etc., is just what we can gain from asking you. :-D I had thought about putting a sort of foot bath there to force the dogs to walk through it before coming up on Trex deck and into house, after playing in the "silt". Maybe put some kind of fountain or bubbler too. There is only 24" concrete from edge to pool and 24" concrete from other edge to large river rocks at house foundation. The end of the drain is partially blocked where it is supposed to empty down the hill but was blocked by the railroad tie retaining wall when I had it put in years ago so it is pretty slow moving. At the time the drain was covered so I didn't know it was there. Luckily it doesn't have concrete over one end where it joins another, larger cut-out for a bigger opening in concrete for a clump of ashes they left in when the pool was put in. One of those huge ones fell over across the pool first couple of months we were here. So doing any plumbing will be much simpler having only to deal with digging in dirt.

I'll start a new thread on this. Thanks for the great idea.

gg=alice

 

[launboy]

Hey crek, sorry I didn't chime in sooner, just saw that I got a PM. There's absolutely no reason you couldn't put your equipment(pump, filter, heater) on a pad near the A/C instead of by the pool. I did it and it works wonderfully. Much quieter and nicer looking then having it right next to the pool.

My pipes do stick out of the ground all year, even after the pool is taken down. I wish I would have though of putting the connections underground in a valve box, that's genius! Then again, I did the whole thing on an EXTREMELY tight budget. I didn't even use a concrete pad for my filter and pump. My "pads", there's two, one for pool filter and pump, and one for spa pumps and blower(spa one has a "doghouse" built over it) consist of plastic shelves off a plastic garage shelf. They are about 2'x4' and work very well actually. Obviously if I had a bigger budget I could have poured concrete.

Winterizing isn't too much trouble in WI, at the end of the season I disconnect everything and use a leaf blower to get most of the water out of the pipes. This'll be the third summer with no problems(hopefully). Putting the connections underground in valve boxes would make it easier to blow them out though.

As for running the pip under concrete. That's a tough one. It really depends on how much extra pipe it would take to go around it. I for one, do not like the idea of possibly having to tear up concrete if a pipe leaks in the future. On the other hand if going around it means doubling the length, at the compromise of system performance, I might consider it.

HTH,
Adam

 

[reallytiredteacher]

Your before and "after" house/patio/yard pics were really neat!

What software did you use and where can I get it?

 

[crek31]

tired teacher -- sorry, just saw your post. also sorry I don't know the answer. The landscape architect I hired did the renderings.