Making my pool shallower. Am I doing this right ?

[calnavy]

We have a pool in Palm Springs. The quotes we got were so outrageous that we're going to update the pool ourselves.

I have a 8 foot deep pool that I want to make shallower to about 4.5 feet.

Here's what we're going to do:

1) We will raise the drain and add dual drains

2) Fill in the deep end with Sand. I heard sand is best to use. I have extra "soil". Can I use that ??

3) We will then add rebar with 12'' or less in space between the rebar. What size rebar should we use ?

4) We will then epoxy the rebar into the existing shell.

5) We will then pour 6'' of concrete to top off the debt

6) Lastly we will replaster the pool

Do I have the right idea here ?

 

[ajw22]

Welcome to TFP.

The sand needs to be packed in sandbags and stacked in the bottom.

Loose sand or soil fill can never be compacted enough and will settle and lead to cracking.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Are you absolutely sure you want to go to 4.5ft from a depth of 8ft?? Sure, I can see an 8ft deep pool as not being fun in some regards but 4.5ft is worse in the opposite sense — not enough water to swim in and it’s going to return into a bath from solar heating.

As @ajw22 said — big no on loose sand fill and EVEN BIGGER NO on random loose soil. Soil is not the same thing as sand used in construction practice. Soil is full of clay, caliche, loose sand and stones, organic matter, etc. None of that is good for structural fill purposes.

Also, you are going to want to strip the existing plaster out down to the gunite shell and you need to really prep that existing cement surface (bead/sand blasting might be a good idea) so that you don’t create a weak cold-joint between the new cement and the old gunite.

Also, this isn’t a job for bagged cement mix. You should figure out how much cement you will need and then have it delivered and poured from a truck. Mixing up little batches of cement and dumping them into a pool is not going to be easy or efficient and it risks having cement placed in batches with different compositions.

 

[mknauss]

1) We will raise the drain and add dual drains

Re consider this. No real need for drain, especially in a shallow pool.