Houston, TX Pool Build Diary - From Design to Dive-In

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I know! It's totally bumming me out! We're supposed to have a pool party with all of our exchange students on Friday and a pool birthday party for my twins 7th birthday on Saturday. Rain rain go away!!! Plat needs to finish his pool and we need to play!


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platipus said:
OK so this is the newly found pool nerd in me but I thought it was pretty cool.

Our builder had an idea about the pool fill water source. He hates auto-fills as many people do, but I think they are neat and convenient. Until they break... But I still want one. He had this great idea that he has been doing for a while to put the fill line on a sprinkler system zone so it can only come on for a set amount of time each day or every other. It seemed pretty ingenious to me. I thought when he said that, well, let's do that to the auto-fill line. If the auto-fill is working, I'll only get water when I need it and if it ever locks open, I'm looking at basically running as much water down the overflow as a single sprinkler zone which is not bad.

Then he kicked things up a notch. He spoke to Hayward (we're going with an OmniLogic system) and they are pretty sure their relays can operate a sprinkler solenoid. That being the case, I could use the OmniLogic to set the fill schedule and even control it from my phone app if I wanted to. If it doesn't work, we'll just put it on a yard sprinkler zone.

Otherwise, there is a lot going on today. The equipment pads have stuff on them and a truck showed up with a mountain of PCV pipe on it. I'll try and grab some pics once things calm down and post them.


plat.
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I think it might be difficult to set a fill schedule - but definitely worth a try. Now that my pool is up and running, one thing I would like to add is a flow meter to the autofill - it will give a good idea on how many gallons I am losing to evaporation, leak, splash overflow etc.

Secondly, I wish the overflow opening can be temporarily closed when we are splashing around in the pool - I think we are losing a lot of water through that ( based on my very high water bills ). I have made a temporary plug to close the opening and drilled 2 holes in the plug so that its not totally closed. So far that is working well.

I also wish I could harvest some of the roof rainwater thats currently getting piped out of the property via an underground drain. Would have loved to use that for lawn irrigation or even pool fill if chemistry is ok.
 
philboyj said:
I think it might be difficult to set a fill schedule - but definitely worth a try. Now that my pool is up and running, one thing I would like to add is a flow meter to the autofill - it will give a good idea on how many gallons I am losing to evaporation, leak, splash overflow etc.

Secondly, I wish the overflow opening can be temporarily closed when we are splashing around in the pool - I think we are losing a lot of water through that ( based on my very high water bills ). I have made a temporary plug to close the opening and drilled 2 holes in the plug so that its not totally closed. So far that is working well.

I also wish I could harvest some of the roof rainwater thats currently getting piped out of the property via an underground drain. Would have loved to use that for lawn irrigation or even pool fill if chemistry is ok.
Click to expand...


The fill schedule is the easy part I think. It's just a scene in OmniLogic that will run on a fixed schedule to turn on and off daily or every other day to run for however long I want it to. Same as any other water feature or lighting it seems. In this case though, I will have the auto-fill valve there that will stop water flow if the pool is already full.

If you really want to know how much water you are adding (excluding natural rain), then plumb one of these into your fill line:

https://www.amazon.com/GARDENA-WATER-TIMER-SMART-METER/dp/B007NHRSOY

I have one on my koi pond and can speak to it's accuracy. I bought another and will be adding it to the pool fill line. It not only allows you to see how much water has been added with two memory fields so you can do things like keep a yearly running total on one and then a monthly on the other one, but also your flow rate from your water source in a gallons per minute calculation. Once you know your flow rates and then how many gallons per inch your pool fill takes, you can calculate fill times. In the koi pond world, this is really helpful because I do weekly water changes and is tells me how long I can step away for while it is filling (which is typically 2 - 3 hours).


The overflow shut-off is an interesting idea and I have seen other posts about people wanting that. Seems like it would be pretty easy to put a valve on that, but you'd have to remember to re-open it too. If we put an actuator valve on it for us we could tie it to an OmniLogic scene for "using pool" and have it close while it was active or possibly even have it time out after 2 hours so it just opened back up again without having to think about it.



plat.
 
platipus said:
If you really want to know how much water you are adding (excluding natural rain), then plumb one of these into your fill line:

https://www.amazon.com/GARDENA-WATER-TIMER-SMART-METER/dp/B007NHRSOY

I have one on my koi pond and can speak to it's accuracy. I bought another and will be adding it to the pool fill line. It not only allows you to see how much water has been added with two memory fields so you can do things like keep a yearly running total on one and then a monthly on the other one, but also your flow rate from your water source in a gallons per minute calculation. Once you know your flow rates and then how many gallons per inch your pool fill takes, you can calculate fill times. In the koi pond world, this is really helpful because I do weekly water changes and is tells me how long I can step away for while it is filling (which is typically 2 - 3 hours).

plat.
Click to expand...

I will be interested to see how this works for you. Many of the reviews speak of having a minimum flow volume ( 0.5 gallons / minute) to get the unit to register the flow. I am assuming that an autofill will always be at a trickle rate - since the flow of water is relative to the float position.

This will however be an awesome product to use on my sprinkler system - that being the major water user in most homes with a sprinkler system.

I am assuming that your koi pond filling was always at full blast - which makes it a qualified application.
 
platipus said:
The overflow shut-off is an interesting idea and I have seen other posts about people wanting that. Seems like it would be pretty easy to put a valve on that, but you'd have to remember to re-open it too. If we put an actuator valve on it for us we could tie it to an OmniLogic scene for "using pool" and have it close while it was active or possibly even have it time out after 2 hours so it just opened back up again without having to think about it.

plat.
Click to expand...

Seems like a lot of technology - but if it works correctly, its golden!!

My low tech solution works great so far ( I should get some pictures soon). For this week with all the rain, my pool filled up till 1 inch from the bottom of coping - the two small holes drained water fast enough. I turned the stopper with the drilled holes so that the holes were in the middle of the opening rather than at the top and water level is at 2.5 inches from bottom of coping. At 1 inch, a lot of water was spilling over the coping while swimming or splashing in the pool.

My auto fill is supposed to kick in when it is around 4.5 inches from below of coping - holding off as long as possible for a rain fill :)
 
philboyj said:
I will be interested to see how this works for you. Many of the reviews speak of having a minimum flow volume ( 0.5 gallons / minute) to get the unit to register the flow. I am assuming that an autofill will always be at a trickle rate - since the flow of water is relative to the float position.

This will however be an awesome product to use on my sprinkler system - that being the major water user in most homes with a sprinkler system.

I am assuming that your koi pond filling was always at full blast - which makes it a qualified application.
Click to expand...


Really good point on the flow rates. It had never even occurred to me about the reduced flow rate... Now I am wondering if we just leave it off....

Thanks!
plat.
 
DoubleD said:
Any updates Plat?
Click to expand...

Gas lines for the tiki torches went in yesterday. Plumbing is basically done. Travertine going in next week it sounds like. After that, it's plaster.

We had a small issue with one of the floating steps. One of the corners was cracked/chipped we noticed when it first went in. When the crew did a cleanup, it chipped off even more. Fortunately though, for whatever unknown reason, the cast concrete company shipped 4 steps instead of 3. The 4th was just sitting around, so they swapped it out and the steps look great.

We're working through the waterline tile issue trying to decide what we want to do.

We have a big party set for Sept 18 (we're hosting the September Houston Koi Club meeting), so everything needs to be finished before then except for same final landscaping items possibly.


plat.
 

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Pavers went in yesterday. They were able to line the pattern up with the existing patio tile (offset subway) which was awesome. In hindsight I wish we knew the exact paver and size we were going to use before the design because I could have just shifted a couple things by a few inches and it would have been seamless. Because we didn't have that selected that far ahead, this created a skinny section of stone (about 1.5 inches) where it fits up to the pool coping. The paver crew made it look like a trim work feature though, so we still think it looks great. No complaints there at all. They did a great job.








Here's a view of the back side plumbing for the waterfall wall. The big box is the controller for the swimjet.





So word is right now that we may get plaster on Monday if the weather holds!!!

plat.
 
pooldv said:
Looking good! Ties in with the patio nicely! That plumbing on the wet wall needs to be redone to look like a stick figure! :)
Click to expand...

Maybe I'll use it as a frame to espalier a lemon tree....




In all seriousness, I have wanted to espalier a tree for a while and I really like this one. Trying to see if we can include something like this in the landscaping.


plat.
 
Pool prep/cleanup happened Saturday morning. We're also in prep mode for the Koi Club meeting we are hosting next Sunday. This is the event we're now in a race to complete as much as possible for as far as landscaping.

We're going to do a Low Country Boil (Frogmore Stew) for the event. It gave me the final reason I needed to pull the trigger on this bad boy:


Bayou Classic 102qt Stainless Steel boil pot with basket. This thing is a monster!!!!





Looks like the jet boiler is up for the challenge. I filled the pot to about 3/4 full so about 18 gallons.

0 minutes 87 degrees
10 minutes 122 degrees
20 minutes 151 degrees
30 minutes 190 degrees
40 minutes Rolling Boil!!!


Can't wait to get ma' shrimp on!!!


plat.
 
I may have found an upgraded robot to the last one I was considering. You may remember the old model I was considering:





New version. Comes with two beer holders and runs on shrimp or brisket. What do you think?





plat.
 

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