Water, water, everywhere
06/12/06 22:14 |
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The next big stage of
“project House” is now underway :-)
The image to the right is one of the reasons I bought this house in the first place - it has a huge back yard. Behind the garage, there’s this area the previous tenants used as a play-area for their kids, but from the get-go, this was marked down as where the swimming pool was going to go :-)
Basically I’m after what is known as a ‘lap pool’ in the US - long and thin. There’s a perimeter limit of 120’ after which you start paying extortionate amounts of cash, so it’s going to be 50’ by 10’.
So, on Monday the final measurements were taken, and they promised to be back on Wednesday to start digging. I had to take a half-day off work on both days, just to be there and give final approvals etc.
The digging crew turned up on Wednesday (6th Dec), and you can see what they’d managed to do by the end of the day. This photo (left) is actually from early on Thursday morning before I left for work - it’s too dark to snap photos at the end of the day. They’d cleared all the concrete slabs, and started on the main earth-removal for the pool.
Unfortunately they had to rip out the sprinkler-system control-wires (so that’ll have to be re-laid) and the internet-connection to the garage went along the same pipe conduit, so that’s gone too. I’ll have to get both of these reinstalled when the concrete gets laid.
I’ve also lost a fair amount of sod due to the heavy machinery they use while excavating, but I expected that.
By the end of Thursday (7th Dec), the pool was excavated properly, (photos immediately above) and it was really obvious what it was going to look like when it was all finished. They’s also dug out the hot-tub hole, which is not connected (again, for perimeter-reasons) but is only 2’ away from the deep-end. I’m looking forward to that :-) The pool ranges from 3.5’ deep at the shallow-end, to 6.5’ deep at the deep-end on a gradual slope.
The next thing that’s supposed to happen is for the lattice-work of iron supports to be installed. I was hoping that would be done on Friday, but they didn’t come. It started raining towards the end of Friday (and has continued throughout the weekend!) so perhaps that’s why. Regardless, I’ll be keeping this up-to-date online as things happen ...?
Can’t wait for it to be finished. The estimate is for late Jan, early Feb... :-)
So, it’s now the end of the week (15th Dec). The plumbers came on Monday 11th, and put in all the drains and piping, There’s a load of pipes sticking out - it looks as though they’re far too far out, but I’m guessing that’s just a safety margin. I think they’ll be trimmed once the gunite has been sprayed on.
The next day (12th Dec), the steel rebar work was done - you can see the mesh of steel that’ll supply structural strength to the concrete. This was milestone 1, so I had to cough up 25% of the cost at this point. It was time for the first county inspection as well - I’m assuming that went ok, I’ve not heard aything different...
I’ve got the cement contractor coming on Monday, to talk about the gunite process...
Monday came and went, but on Tuesday (20th Dec), the gunite crew turned up and started work on padding out the raw steel layout you can see in the above photos into a more-real swimming-pool and hot-tub structure.
This took them about 7 hours, starting at ~7:00am and finishing at ~2:00, at which point they left to do another pool... Take a look at the below photos to see what it looked like when they were making the walls, and a close-up on the tub - it's hard to get scale on the hot-tub, but from outer-wall to outer-wall there is 8' across :-)
The next things to happen were the coping being put on, the gas and electricity being installed, and the solar-power heating system being installed on the roof of the house... No real photos to show here - I'll post some up when the concrete is being laid...
So, now (Feb 5th) the coping has been laid down, the electric has been installed to the deck next to the pool, and the hardcore has been laid where the cement is going to go, with the rebar being placed, ready for the pour. We had the inspector out today, and she passed the pool ready for the pour - hopefully on Friday :-)
You can see lots of white pipes sticking up out of the hardcore - these are mainly drainage pipes (because there's a lot of cement coverage here), and you can just see (next to the fence) an extra drain I asked them to put in - in case I decide to put a shower out here to save traipsing into the house all the time...
I'm going for a brownish stamped-concrete look around the pool, which ought to go well with the burgundy coping. The next stage will take some time though - a couple of weeks for the concrete to cure before they come back to seal it. Waiting... Still waiting....
So, it's mid March, the concrete is down, and they've done a really nice job on the stamped finish, you can see where they've installed the pump and heater on the right-hand-side image below:
So, all that was left was to fill it with water... The larger images (click on a preview) look a lot better than these previews, there appears to be some aliasing on the previews, and running a blur-filter over the image doesn't really make it look better (different, but not better...). Anyway, first the pool from the perspective I've been using, and then from down low - that's what it looks like when you're swimming lengths...
and then the spa ... This is set to be at 102˚F when it's switched on :-) It's gorgeous :-)
If you look, you can see the 'Ray-vac' cleaning the bottom of the pool (it does this all day :-). It's strangely fascinating to watch this completely non-alive object running around at the bottom of the pool, climbing the walls, swishing its 'tail' after it. It looks really (no, really) alive...
The only thing left to do now is get the solar heating array linked up (it's on two sides of the roof of the house, the S and E slopes). This has to wait until the pump has run for a while, to get the first pass of all the gunk out of the pool (mainly gravel). The heater also needs a new gas-meter, it's a 400,000 BTU unit, and the (somewhat limited) gas supply can cause it to not start properly sometimes. That's in-progress too.
I also want to landscape the far rear of the garden, put in the shower/changing room where I had the drainage extended to, and then I can finally stop spending money on this :-) It's well worth it, though :-) It's taken about 3 months to get this far, and sometimes you wonder if it'll ever finish, but now that it is (more or less), I'm a really happy camper :-)