What a great homesite!!! It looks like your backyard goes forever!!!
Congrats on the new pool, you'll really love the large size.

See ya,
Kelly

Beautiful property! We just dug this week and I prayed we wouldn't hit rock because that would have added $2500 to our cost! We didn't, but the excavator told me that pools set in rock are much more stable, so I guess your pool is going to be really stable. Ours is also a diving pool, but smaller than yours (16 x 38).

Coincidentally, that's about what the ledge removal is costing me. You can see in the first picture how much rock there is behind the pool site, so I knew this was a possibility and made sure I had some extra money in the budget to cover it.

The walls are up now. Concrete collar will probably be poured tomorrow with coping to follow. If all goes well the liner will go in next week and we'll have water in it before Christmas.

Walls before assembly:

Looks like a pool now:

It's looking good!!

Are they putting anything on the bottom? I know here in FL the only Vinyl people we have talked to use gunite on the bottom, and we had Vermiculite under ours in CA.

Man, i'm so ready for a pool - NOW!!!! :D

This Saturday the builder got about 90% of the vermiculite bottom done. He couldn't finish the deep end because he discovered the main drain assembly was missing.

Here's a closer pic:

Here's one taken from inside the deep end (I set an extension laddder in there so I could install the bonding wire in the light niche):

The rest of the plumbing should get installed tomorrow, with the liner going in Tuesday or Wednesday and water right after that.

Looking good!! So interesting to see this as Im strictly shotcrete.

Natural1, where are you located? As I understand it, vinyl pools don't typically get built in warmer climates. I'm in Connecticut, and we see a mix of gunite and vinyl around here. I was set on gunite until I found the vinyl builder that I went with. So far it's been a very positive experience.

I just had to post here given your user name. Nice pool. Hope you enjoy it. Wish I could talk trash about football, but, well, I really can't. :)

Hoostat,

Thanks for the compliment. Don't feel bad; when I was an undergrad (graduated 1991), we stunk on ice. Although one of the highlights was convincingly beating UVa the year they'd been ranked #1 for a week or two.

What with the holidays, I've been lax in updating this. We had water by Christmas, and we backfilled the following week. The pool and patio span a pretty significant elevation change, so we had to have 10 tri-axle dump trucks of fill brought in to build up the low side. We had to have a gravel "road" dropped over our back yard due to the mild, rainy weather; that will be quite a headache to get rid of in the spring, but it might allow the concrete truck to get back there for the patio pour rather than having it pumped again.

I've included a link to my photo album of the whole process to date.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pool Album

Thanks for the update. Did anyone become a member before closing? :-)

Bump to show pics of retaining wall and patio forms - we're finally getting close to swimming!

Materials for retaining wall:

Retaining wall in progress:

Steps through retaining wall:

Patio forms (at retaining wall):

Patio forms (other side of stairs):

The link to my photo album (back a few posts) is also updated with more photos. I'll post again once the concrete is poured.

Dude, this brings back fond memories of the spring 2004 for me...at least in retrospect, they were fond memories. When we were building the pool, it was a pain in the arse!

I decided to blast out our rock rather than rent a track hoe and hammer it out. We dug down to 42" and it was all easy digging - we had some decent boulders, but nothing that I couldn't get with a backhoe and some shoving and pushing. Then when we dug the hopper, we hit rock. 18 sticks of water gel later and some more digging, we hit rock again! Another 20 sticks of water gel, and that took care of it. And left my wallet about $3,500 lighter. Ouch.

I notice you have a temp fence around your pool. I didn't have the heart to do that. My daughter was jumping in the thing the minute that I had a couple pieces of plywood put up to the edge :)

Temporary fence is required by code, and the town inspector pays close attention to this. Also, as the pool has been in the ground and full of water for 5 months now, having no fence would have been a recipe for disaster with all the woodland creatures we have in our area. I think a stricken deer could do quite a bit of damage to the liner...

Hi,
Nice pool!

I don't see gravel underneath your rebar. is that normal? I am having a new deck poured and was wondering what the proper procedure is.

thanks

~jv

JV,

I believe it's dependent on site conditions. My pool was dug during the winter, one side of the patio is pretty much hardpan, the other is backfilled with very dense clay, and the whole area had 5 months to settle. They spread a thin layer of gravel around to level the area out and filled in areas where rain washed out the soil. Also, in addition to the rebar they will be laying a fiber reinforcing mat.

hokiematt,

where can you get this fiber mat and how much does it cost? is is that much more beneficial for the decking?

thanks for answering my ???'s.

~jv

JV,

I misspoke. It's not a mat, the concrete is reinforced with "fibermesh", which is a fibrous material that is mixed into the concrete. It's primary purpose is to control cracking; basically what happens is as a crack begins to form it hits one of the fibers and is stopped from progressing any further.