Intex 18x52 New Build

[Thrillbilly]

Roughly one month ago, my wife said “let’s get a pool”……………..so here I am. I wanted to share my newly built pool since TFP was so incredibly helpful to guide me, with the hopes that it may be useful to someone else and help them while planning to set up their own DIY AGP. This pool was dreamed up, purchased, and built in one month from scratch.



The foundation - I used free material from my creek banks that is a sandy loam and has great compaction like a select fill, since I have around 7” of fall across the pad. I screeded this down and allowed extra couple of feet beyond the 18’ dia. of my pool to give room to walk around and add a landscaping border. Topped it off with 1CY of masons sand to fine tune the leveling. Sidenote: I debated on the foam insulation sheets and in a rush to save a few $ and move forward I didn’t put them down, in hindsight this is one of my few regrets. Will most likely add them after this season.






Next I stood the pool up and began filling. I made sure that once I had just enough water to give it some weight I started working the both the inside and the outside from edges to work the wrinkles out...wait too long and you wont be able to move the liner, it doesn't take much. For my foot pads under the legs I used short treated 2x6 blocks. After a lot of back and forth I decided to place them on top of my pad rather than dig them down level with my finished grade. I saw and read tons of projects with it both ways and for me I cant say I've noticed any negative impact. As the pool was filling I used a level on the legs and adjusted my foot pads so that they did not contact the pool did when full. Part 2 will follow soon...

 

[Thrillbilly]

Once the water level reached just below the suction ports I started my plumbing modifications. I cut out the existing suction ports and installed two 1.5" Hayward bulkhead fittings. These have internal threads that give me options both inside and outside of the pool as well as increase my diameter for better flow with the larger pump upgrade I purchased. Once installed I screwed in a threaded 1.5" plug on the inside of the pool and continued filling.

When the water was just below where my skimmer cut would be, I marked it and started cutting. I opted to attach the skimmer without the gasket, cut it to the exact ID of the housing, them removed it and reinstalled with the gasket in place. It was quick, easy, and hasn't leaked a drop. I can 100% say that this upgrade has been the best time and money spent for my pool. Its proven to me to be a workhorse for catching bugs a debris off of the surface before it sinks, and with the additional skimmer basket socks it keeps a ton of trash from entering the sand filter.

I hard plumbed a section and and added union ball valves but decided to keep some of the flexible hose to allow for the pool wall movement while swimming. The 1.5" NPT to Intex thread adapters were purchased from amazon (Grey fitting on the Hayward bulkhead fitting) this allowed me to use the Intex factory hoses. The grey box next to my filter is an outdoor electrical box for my extension cord connection that keeps it nice and neat and adds extra protection on top of the GFCI plug and GFCI receptacle that this is powered from. Part 3 coming soon...

 

[Thrillbilly]

I let the well water used to fill set for a couple days then used my TFP Pro test kit to get my baselines and start adjusting. I added my salt and made the necessary adjustment to lower PH, raise my FC, etc. First time with this new test kit and it was money well spent.

And finally - the deck and lighting. I went with a simple 10'x10' and with the falling grade plus the pool height it ended up giving me a nice space underneath to store pool floats and other pool items. I decided to not build the edge to the radius of the pool and allow it to extend over the edge a little, just personal preference I guess. I used a router to round off the edges of the deck boards that extended over the pool. A little more amazon lighting and now just waiting for sunny weather and cold drinks.

 

[Isca]

Thanks for sharing your build - looks awesome and gave me some great ideas for this year.

Love the pup helping out

 

[hyperionguy]

Thanks for sharing. It looks great! I like the deck and lighting all around.

 

[hyperionguy]

Why two suction ports in addition to the skimmer? On my previous pool with the Hayward skimmer, I only had one and didn't even use it very much. It seemed to work better for us to leave suction as almost completely skimmer. But, the pool was setup right at the drip line of a live oak, so we got a lot of junk that needed skimming.

 

[Newdude]

Congrats TB and SWEET build !!!!! Thanks for sharing.