Category: Pools

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This Old House, Pool Deck Replacement.

This blog does a number of things for me, one of which is my own personal time capsule or library.  When we try to remember when we did something we often turn here.  With that in mind this year we decided to replace our pool deck.

We have our own special FAUX in-ground pool.   It’s an above ground pool built into the side of what was at one point the Summer kitchen for this 1800’s farm house.  From there a deck wraps around it.

It was here when we moved in, and quite frankly needed replaced about two years after we moved in.  In 2009 we had our pool replaced, you can see how bad the deck was in the photos on that post here.

Part of the problem was that the new pool wasn’t put as close to the deck as the old pool, so we had to build up a little extra trim to get by.

In 2010, instead of tearing up and rebuilding the deck we used “Restore” deck paint, which was awesome and got us to where we are today.  That product worked so well we intend to put it on this deck from the start, or next year.

Over the memorial holiday weekend this year (2018) we gutted the deck, rebuilt a bunch of the foundation, and replaced the surrounding fence too.

The fence still needs painted and will be in the fall.

Final results:

Lumber and materials were purchased at Menards, though if I had it to do over again I might try Lowes or HomeDepot.  I ordered online, and they delivered it pretty quickly.  However, I didn’t go pick out the wood and there was a lot of low-quality wood in the decking that got delivered.

 

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Premature Pool Closing

Well, it wasn’t by design.

Bear in mind that I wasn’t there so I’m relaying this third party. Apparently Claudine went out to investigate why the level of the pool was lower than usual. She went to check the pump area, the area where normally a hose pops loose or something of that nature.

There she discovered, water bubbling up from under the pool. We had our very own chlorinated spring. She was able to feel up under the edge of the pool and feel a hole about the size of her finger and she called me and asked me what to do about it.

I said “Patch it???. Go to the pool store, they sell underwater patches.

So off to the store they went. Apparently Claudine couldn’t stay underwater to get the patch applied so she sent Michael into the pool. He got the patch on the hole. As he climbed out, Maggie screamed something to the affect, “It’s getting bigger!??? and away it went. The hole just grew until…

Well, I haven’t seen it yet, but apparently it only took 30 minutes to drain the pool. That’s not a good thing.

Apparently the moles decided they didn’t like living under our pool anymore and came up for air, as the liner fell into a mole run, they decided it was in the way and poked through it causing the hole, something like that.

Photos later.

Perhaps next year or the year after, we’ll go with an in-ground pool, something with a harder liner.

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Draining the pool

After two weeks of having “Perfect Chemicals” and putting in clarifier, and running the filter to no avail, and still not being able to see the bottom.  We’re giving in.

The draining process has begun.   By this time tomorrow we shall see what lives beneath the murky depths (if anything).

We had to do this a couple years ago too.  Rather than chase the water for months to get the chemicals right we just dumped half of it and started over.

(It’s just easier if you ask me.).

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Opening the pool, ARGH!!!

[tag]Opening The Pool[/tag]

Every year this is so much fun, not. Every year it’s always a treat to discover which gave their life trying to navigate the frozen lake in the middle of winter. We’ve had squirrels, and cats, this year it was a possum bigger than Monty.

I’ll spare you the pictures.

We’ve tried pool covers; we’ve tried no pool covers. We’ve screwed pool covers to the deck, we’ve held them down with water jugs. We’ve never found success.

We gave up on pool covers a couple years ago, but since we got a new liner last year though we would return to them.

We lost our pool cover oh, around February if I recall correctly during a bad storm. For some reason we get high winds where we are and, well I didn’t screw it to the deck this time and it got sucked in, then blown out.

So we left it.

We’re now working on the same process we start every year of converting the ‘pond’ to a crystal clear ‘pool’.

It’s all about the chemicals. With some luck it will be cleared up in 48-72 hours 😉

But at least this year the only major parts replacements are the skimmers (the manual ones) and a couple hoses. No pumps, filters or anything big. (Whoot!)