Continuation of an odyssey

[kimkats]

I am wore out just from reading everything you did! You rock!

 

[Arizonarob]

Anyway, do you guys know how a car battery fails in Arizona? In the Midwest the car gets hard to start as it gets cold out. In Arizona it is fine in the morning, at work, at Lowe's and then at Circle K across the street from Lowe's, it catastrophically fails. Apparently that is how batteries fail here. Once I got my wife out, I went across the street to Walmart and bought another set of tools I already have somewhere and a battery. Car was fine after that. Didn't get home until after dark.

Welcome to AZ Fred! Do yourself a favor and grab a jump start pack to keep in your vehicles. AZ has been cursed by the voltage gods, and your battery WILL die at the most inconvenient time!!

As I was doing that the guy finally showed up to jackhammer and core out the wall for drainage. He didn't have the tools to cut the rebar, but I will hit it with an angle grinder tomorrow. I need to probably put a pipe in there and maybe mortar it in.. With a cap on it. But that should fix the drainage greatly.

After you’re done with everything else, grab a 2” mason hole saw bit and core out the center of the bottom blocks on your privacy wall every 10 feet that lead out to the drainage area. Cut 2” PVC to length and slide into the holes and silicone in place. Paint to match and you now have great drainage for the rain we never get here.

 

[mguzzy]

-Very nice job on the cover... I used to cut my cover to perfectly match the contours of my free form pool. Now I just let it flop over the edges and I hold it down with some pavers... path of least resistance.. sometimes I never put it on because I live in CA where, like you in the desert, it doesn't rain..

-no doubt your battery failure was from all that rain you don't get...

-I like the drainage solution for the drainage solution for the desert where it doesn't rain..

-my Intermatic box came with weather stripping.. I guess the installer opted not to stick on on since you are in desert where it doesn't rain..

-So are you going to build a little shed on the side of the wall to house the pool equipment and protect it from desert elements where it doesn't rain?

-I like those lizard stepping stones! I guess you only find them in the desert where it doesn't rain.

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

So, the drainage. To get it to work we had to jackhammer out a small piece of the concrete footer and dig down to the dirt. I cut out a chunk of rebar. I might do a little more jackhammer work as the hole is big enough that the famed rhino rattlesnake can get through it. I am thinking of opening it up another inch so I can get a drain block in it. And no, I am not worried about losing 6" of the footer. It will be fine.

The battery. I had my GOOD set of jumper cables with me. A nice guy with a Ranger tried to give me a jump. Couldn't start it. So one of those little packs probably wouldn't work, unfortunately. I think a cell shorted or something catastrophic like that happened. It tested 6 (!) CCA at Walmart when I bought the new battery, which seems fine. It wasn't the regulator nor alternator.

For a shed. They had them on sale a couple of weeks back, so I bought two wall sheds. If I could have worked on the landscaping on Friday, I would have had at least one done. Next weekend probably.

We got the other 6 or so tons of gravel in and it looks okay. I have to snake screen the drainage and get and put in some rip rap (coarse rocks but not boulders) and landscaping plants. Water was back up to 80F with the solar cover... So maybe we can extend out the season. I do want to get and experiment with some solar heat panels. Maybe I can extend it out further.

I bought good quality window weather stripping, and that is on the top and the sides of the door on the Intermatic panel, but not the bottom so it can breathe. Add gutters and a rain and sun shield for the equipment and we will have it.

We just got done right before the sun went down so I will post some pictures mañana...

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

Oh, and for the cover. We did the blocks on the side of the cover. It worked for two days then I had to retrieve them out of the cover and from the bottom of the deep end. It is too windy here for that unfortunately.

 

[Newdude]

Your gunite just saved you a $4500 vinyl liner replacement. And at least $10k in basement flooding if you have one. I've had 3 friends lose a liner that way. They were all in the wintertime with cinderblocks/pavers holding down the tarp cover and got pulled in from the wind. Not suprisingly all 3 switched to water filled buckets after that. Anywho good for you !!

 

[Rich D]

So.. I had to work a half day yesterday because of getting stuck at home because no road out of Corona de Tucson was passable until 1 PM on Tuesday.

I thought that would give me at least four hours to work. Ran to bLowes first and got some stuff to fix the water getting into the GFCI and these.. View attachment 119608

Yes there is the proof that "cellular core" ABS does indeed float. My wife insisted on buying a commercial solar cover roller so I had her buy a solar roller. It is pretty lightly built and the rumors of them being very responsive to their customers hasn't been true for me so far. But the ABS is to tie the two sections of the cut cover together.

Anyway, do you guys know how a car battery fails in Arizona? In the Midwest the car gets hard to start as it gets cold out. In Arizona it is fine in the morning, at work, at Lowe's and then at Circle K across the street from Lowe's, it catastrophically fails. Apparently that is how batteries fail here. Once I got my wife out, I went across the street to Walmart and bought another set of tools I already have somewhere and a battery. Car was fine after that. Didn't get home until after dark.

This morning I did a full TF-100 test. Darn, those Trichlor tabs raise CYA fast. I was hoping to get maybe another week out of them before I had to switch to Liquid Chlorine but it's at 40 now... I might want to get it up a little more but not until spring. I start Liquid Chlorine on Monday I think, once the tablets are fully dissolved. Other than that I have good balance. I am a tad bit low on CH (200) but it goes up fast here so I am not going to add any... It's close enough. Otherwise CSI has been between +/- 0.1 so far.

Then I fixed the electrical. There was literally rust in the GFCI. They really believe that it never rains here. I moved it outside of the Intermatic box... It should be okay in its own box.

View attachment 119609

I added some window weatherstripping to the door of the Intermatic box. Hopefully this will hold it until I add gutters above it. Now Alexa can control my Hayward LED through the TP-Link Kasa switch again... The electrician put in a Siemens breaker in that box only rated for Square D Homeline breakers on the light but not the dual gang on the pump. So at some point I am going to have to get a 15A Homeline breaker and do it right. The GFCI looked like a Leviton, but taking it out it was a Chinese clone of a Leviton. I give that guy a D, honestly. He also used EMT above ground outside which is legal but tacky...

As I was doing that the guy finally showed up to jackhammer and core out the wall for drainage. He didn't have the tools to cut the rebar, but I will hit it with an angle grinder tomorrow. I need to probably put a pipe in there and maybe mortar it in.. With a cap on it. But that should fix the drainage greatly.

View attachment 119610

I also built the deck box. I think I am going to put together one of the sheds tonight too. Tomorrow 7 more tons of gravel.

There is a lot of work to do in most cases to finish off a pool so like I said... As a public service I won't cut this thread off yet... . I still have another drain tile run to do, gutters to put up and landscaping and irrigation to do.

What does the other side of the wall penetration look like? Is the new hole above the top of the spillway edge?
What size drainage pipe is that?

To aid in getting storm water into the pipe you can put vertical tee's in along the run and put grates on top of the vertical pipe with the grate set slightly lower than the finish grade. With a few tees and drains you could most likely just continue the drain pipe through the new wall penetration and cover it back over with stone for a cleaner look.

 

[Arizonarob]

Rich I like that idea a lot!! I’ve filed that idea away in the cobweb ridden part of my brain for later use.

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

What does the other side of the wall penetration look like? Is the new hole above the top of the spillway edge?
What size drainage pipe is that?

To aid in getting storm water into the pipe you can put vertical tee's in along the run and put grates on top of the vertical pipe with the grate set slightly lower than the finish grade. With a few tees and drains you could most likely just continue the drain pipe through the new wall penetration and cover it back over with stone for a cleaner look.

Typically we used to do exactly that type of drainage in the Midwest.. it's called "drain tile" there... it seems to be called a "French Drain" here. I had rather severe flooding in my yard before I started the pool... it is a big reason that I agreed to the pool for the wife... the pool was $40K and it would have probably been $15K to fix the drainage. Yes the builder should have done it, but they had so many excuses not to, plus they wouldn't drain it directly to the wash which would have had me lose 2' of the fence in the backyard, too. The yards next to me that they "fixed" still don't drain very well, IMHO.

Because of that, the little "wash" area in the yard actually is pretty necessary... it's about 1/2 the drainage area. We had the excavation company do it when they dug the pool and there was a pretty substantial amount of dirt moved out of there. I added the 30' of drain tile tubing to an area that floods, but not nearly as badly, and then into that "wash". I am thinking of running another run towards the front right side of the pool, but I think I will do it in the winter or spring.. I need a break from it, and it's lower priority now than some of the other things I have to do. I'll upload a picture to what they did for a breakthrough of the fence footing. I am going to hardware mesh it off for snakes and packrats and maybe mortar in a drain block (or a pipe) so it looks a little better first. But then I'll do the rip rap in front of it and that should hide it enough to look fine.

As for dropping a brick into the pool.. only one went in, and it was one of my wife's flat, decorative "geckos"... since it's a flat piece it fell in like a sheet of paper drifting to the bottom, fairly gently. It didn't do any damage to the plaster or anything. The point of doing that before I cut it was to try to get some of the creases out. But it didn't last long enough to do that. Cut to fit, the surface tension of the water holds it in. And yes, the creases don't really matter.

I sure wish I would have had my "off" Friday to work this weekend. I could have gotten everything done that I wanted to this weekend. It would be really nice to actually have time to swim before it gets too cold. Water is back up to 80F now that it's covered, so that's still possible. This week is going to be in the upper 80's at least. I want to get one of the storage sheds built before the (short) weekend. I'll probably be doing it at night with a work light.

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

Concrete work mañana...

 

[kimkats]

Pool fun at night is the best!! I also love to be in the pool during a good rain! LOVE that you are able to enjoy it now!

 

[JJ_Tex]

Is that green square on the wall a projection tv?

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

Is that green square on the wall a projection tv?

It is indeed. $130 from Amazon but I used a lot of credit card points and only paid 88 bucks. 720p which is plenty for the purpose.

 

[livinwell]

I just read your complete thread. Your pool and hardscaping are beautiful. They say it’s all about the journey and you’ll definitely have a tale to tell and you have it well documented. Congratulations?

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

I still have maybe one to two weekends of work to finish it up until next spring anyway... But yep, I suspect the time frame and the work involved isn't atypical. The sad fact is that I literally probably did a quarter of the work myself. But this is what it takes. So far the water is so clear with TFP methods that when the pump is off stuff floating looks like it is suspended in air. So I will stick around and occasionally I will have a few more pictures to add. I definitely need a shade for the equipment here in Arizona. In the plans.

 

[Arizonarob]

What Fred didn’t tell everyone is. When he started this project he had a full head of hair, was thin-n-trim, and his left eye wasn’t twitching. Let this thread be a warning to all that might be thinking of building a pool in the Tucson area!

 

[mguzzy]

Love it Fred.. nice job.

One place I lived had a pool where the shallow end was too shallow for most activities but the perfect height for using the side of the pool as a table.. we used to throw folding chairs in the pool and serve dinner on the coping... We had a big screen TV within eye-shot to watch our favorite sports shows while dinning half submerged... your pic reminded me of those days...

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

What Fred didn’t tell everyone is. When he started this project he had a full head of hair, was thin-n-trim, and his left eye wasn’t twitching.

My left eye always has twitched.....

Let this thread be a warning to all that might be thinking of building a pool in the Tucson area!

Or doing any sort of major project....

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

So.. I just got the warranty registration e-mail from Hayward. I have to thank the builder for showing the date of purchase as July 2nd... so we lost a whole three months of warranty that way versus when it went online....

But the "official" calculated amount of water is 12,925 gallons... I could never get that value from them, but they sent it to Hayward... So my measured 13,500 (with the round up to 14K) is probably actually 13K-13.5K... from the liquid chlorine measurements, I am incline to agree because the 14K number in pool math seems like it's dosing Liquid Chlorine a little high based on test results... I might change it in pool math and in my signature.

But I guess they are done. Anyone need an advertising sign for target practice? They forgot to pick it up....

 

[proavia]

I'd get ahold of Hayward and tell them the actual date the equipment was started up. You can point them to this thread for proof.

@Hayward Pool may be able to assist