New Pool Installation Part 1

New Pool Installation Part 1

You might remember that I told you we were having a pool installed. (Some of you asked to see it, so here goes.) We have never done this before so it has been an interesting process. We had an idea of what we wanted from several of our friends that have pools. 

We started with our plain back yard. As you can see in the picture below, our yard doesn't have much grass. That is because we had to disconnect the sprinkler back there when we had the new patio put in last fall. We have 2 sets of fence, one around the perimeter of the property and one inside of that where the pool will be.

All of the white sand is from digging up the sprinkler across the back. Now most people when they put their pool in, place it parallel to the back of your house. I didn't want that, I wanted it to go out from the patio toward the back. 

We interviewed with about four contractors and when we told them the size of the pool we wanted, they just looked at us and said "that is really a big pool".  Here was the problem, 2 of our best friends pools are 25 by 65 and 20 by 42.  We thought that 20 by 40 was a good size. We had laid it out on the ground and it seemed quite nice. Little did we know that a pool of this size was a lot more than we wanted to spend. They kept bringing the size down until it became 14 by 32. The 14 is a little off since we have a sun ledge on one side. 

Here comes the contractor with the wood to lay out the pool.

He laid out all of the framing for the pool. Even after he had laid it out, we still thought it was too small. However, there is only the two of us most of the time. In this picture, you can see were the pool juts out (on the left) - that is were the sun ledge will be. At that point it will be 17 feet wide.

Next came the digging of the pool. The equipment came in and they got them selves in position and then talked about it.

Now it was time to begin digging. They started with the sun ledge. 

As they dug out the dirt (actually, mostly sand), they saved some of it and the rest went into dump trucks. 

Here is the pool completely dug out. 

The next two days were spent adding in the rebar in preparation of the gunite that would be sprayed into the pool.  Also, we had to have three different inspections: electrical, plumbing and rebar. There will be lots more inspections to come. 

Keeping the dogs out of the pool area was a problem, so they put up a fence. However, they learned to get under it. The little buggers. 

Next step is the gunite and the forming of the pool, the sun ledge and the steps.  It does look a little bigger but still wish is was larger. 

They assume that the pool should be done by the end of April. Some of the other contractors said maybe the end of June. We definitely wanted it before then. 

Stay tuned for part 2 of the pool installation. We have been so lucky with the weather and no rain so they have been able to get so much done.  All of this took less than 2 weeks. The inspections took a couple of days themselves.  

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