Hi all at TFP. First post 
I live on a ranch in the hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. We have plenty of surface water ponds, but they are all too gross to swim in (weeds, brown water, mucky bottom).
My wife and I both love swimming and usually drive 1/2 hour to a huge lake with a beach that unfortunately is really cold until late summer.
I've been wondering about a simple and cheap setup to let us swim or at least cool off in the yard. Namely a 16' or 18' diameter 48" deep Intex pool, perhaps with a tethered swimming system.
Anything plastic left outside here is rapidly destroyed by the massive power of the sun, of which we get the most in Canada. Don't even think of going outside without sunglasses! So I was thinking of sinking an above-ground into a hole, which also would look much better than a big water bag in the yard.
Reading up on burying above-ground pools, anything involving steel in the ground inevitably rusts away. So the Easy Set is tempting as it has no metal involved, and would make a really cheap "liner" at $250. Even though I would really prefer a rectangular pool. I'm no earthworks expert, but it looks like backfilling it when full of water could actually help support the walls and keep it stable? Once buried with the inflatable ring sitting on top of the ground, it might even be possible to do something like fill the ring with sand, so that it doesn't have to be watched for air leaks all the time.
Removing the water would probably result in an unavoidable collapse as the base is wider than the top, so it would have to remain full through the winter, at which point it would probably freeze solid (ice grows to 3' on ponds regularly here) - deal breaker?
I have a tractor with front end loader, it's not the best at digging but at least I can dig for only the cost of fuel. How does this sound, just like a dumb hillbilly idea?
I live on a ranch in the hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. We have plenty of surface water ponds, but they are all too gross to swim in (weeds, brown water, mucky bottom).
My wife and I both love swimming and usually drive 1/2 hour to a huge lake with a beach that unfortunately is really cold until late summer.
I've been wondering about a simple and cheap setup to let us swim or at least cool off in the yard. Namely a 16' or 18' diameter 48" deep Intex pool, perhaps with a tethered swimming system.
Anything plastic left outside here is rapidly destroyed by the massive power of the sun, of which we get the most in Canada. Don't even think of going outside without sunglasses! So I was thinking of sinking an above-ground into a hole, which also would look much better than a big water bag in the yard.
Reading up on burying above-ground pools, anything involving steel in the ground inevitably rusts away. So the Easy Set is tempting as it has no metal involved, and would make a really cheap "liner" at $250. Even though I would really prefer a rectangular pool. I'm no earthworks expert, but it looks like backfilling it when full of water could actually help support the walls and keep it stable? Once buried with the inflatable ring sitting on top of the ground, it might even be possible to do something like fill the ring with sand, so that it doesn't have to be watched for air leaks all the time.
Removing the water would probably result in an unavoidable collapse as the base is wider than the top, so it would have to remain full through the winter, at which point it would probably freeze solid (ice grows to 3' on ponds regularly here) - deal breaker?
I have a tractor with front end loader, it's not the best at digging but at least I can dig for only the cost of fuel. How does this sound, just like a dumb hillbilly idea?
