Finish Coat on Pool

The Mexicans shot the gunite, the Cubans did the screen house and finally the finish coat on the pool is done by a group of overweight white guys. The finish coat is cement with fine shiny blue particles in it. The guy in the truck is mixing it and the guys in the pool shoot it on the wall and smooth it out.

There is one guy shooting it and three guys smoothing it out. First guy gets it roughly the right thickness, second guy gets it level and last guy puts a smooth finish on it.

They all wear spike shoes so when they start doing the floor of the pool they only put four little holes in the finish instead of a big footprint.

The last guy smooths out the spike holes on his way out.

Some extra tiles that were used around the top edge of the pool were cut into small squares. These were set into the finish coat for decoration on the steps going down into the pool. The step edges were trimmed with a deep blue cove tile as a finishing touch.

I mentioned that the finish coat had little blue speckles in it but you don't see them as it is being applied. After the pool is filled they will throw 6 gallons of acid into the pool water. This will etch the surface of the finish coat and the little blue speckles will show up.

Speaking of filling the pool, I started last night at 11 PM (as per their instructions). I got up once in the night to check the filling and noticed that the well pump was red hot - I turned down the fill rate so it wouldn't have to work so hard. The next morning, I was surprised how little water was in the pool (looked like it would take 2-3 days to fill) so I hooked a hose to our second well and started it up. But it only had a small (4 gallon) air bladder pressure tank on it. This caused the pump to turn on and off every 20 seconds or so as it tried to keep up with the pool filling. So I went to Home Depot and bought a bigger bladder tank and a whole bunch of PVC fitting - and back again twice more for parts I forgot to get the other times. It is working good and the pool fill rate has improved (should be filled by tomorrow morning).

Landscaping

It's been a slow week on the pool - I guess pool builders do Thanksgiving too. Seeing there weren't too many workers around, we got started on landscaping the front side of the pool. I got my slave to move all the leftover pavers into the outside passageway to the pool. She loved sifting the stones out of the old flower beds to use to fill the gaps between the pavers.

We took advantage of the landscaping to correct some previous planting errors. These Bromeliads where on the south west side of the house. I cut down several trees on that side to open up the sunlight to the pool which exposed these to full sun and they didn't like it. They slowly changed from a dark green speckeled with red to a pale yellow. Hopefully they'll  like the cool North side of the house better.

Another fix was to move some sun loving shrubs (Gardenia, Hibiscus, & Hydrangeas) from the shadows (most were where the Bromeliads are now). A few new plants were added in between
the old ones.

Completing the Screen House

The roof is next to go up - They sure use a lot of screws to make the roof beams

The beams are assembled on the ground

And then after the screening is attached on the top, they are walked into the pool area

One end is lifted up and a single screw is placed into each rafter so the entire roof can be pivoted around that edge.

The other side of the roof is then lifted into place and now they go back and rigidly attach all the roof rafters to the screen house uprights.

All the screening and cross-bracing is completed.

They even put in a door for Kayla - anyone know how to teach a cat how to go out through it?

The next day the screen house is all done and ready for use.

Come on in, the water is fine - not quite - (that's Kylie and Bowen - Amy (my daughter) and Dan Baker's off-springs)

Screen House Going Up

The pool guys took down the cement forms around the pool and turned it over to the screen house guys.

The screen house guys are Cubans and Bob the Builder says they work to a different schedule and he was right, they don't show up until 1 or 2 and then work till 6 or 7 every afternoon. This is their work bench for cutting the Aluminum beams.

They quickly remove the outside wall of the Lanai and set up the beams for the walkway to the pool.

They assemble and partially screen all the wall sections while they are laying on the ground. Neat tool the guy is using - it has a roller on one end which he uses to push the spline in and the other end has a razor knife which he trims the screening with --Very fast.

They then pick them up and carry them over to the pool.

Where they bolt them to the deck and the last wall pannel.

This is the end of day 2 for the screen house guys

It looks like they are going to put up the roof beams next.

Soft Water and a Hawk

The house is 11 years old and had all it's original appliances. So when the dishwasher didn't clean the dishes very good, I just figured it was old, looked up a replacement via Consumers Report and bought a new one - No major improvement. That was last year. This year I attacked the water going into it. I normally have to change the water filter every month and when I change it, it is black. I'm told this is from the sulfur in the water. The water system already has a spray tank where the water is aeorated to release sulfur gas before it is pumped into the house but apparently this isn't enough. So we just had a water softener installed. And it worked - the dishes are clean and not spotted - our hair is much more manageable after a shower - Wow, what a difference.

We were sitting outside enjoying the 80 degree weather the other day and much to our surprise a hawk flew in and landed in the tree right next to us. There are a lot of hawks in our area (and not many small birds - surprised). Most of the ones we see are Red Tailed Hawks but this one is a Sharp-shinned hawk. We figure he was checking out Kayla to see if she was something it could catch and carry away.

Hydroponic Gardening

The soil in Florida is nothing to rave about so instead of putting in a regular garden we opted for a hydroponic garden. Here it is all set up.

The Styrofoam containers are all filled with a 50/50 mixture of vermiculite and perlite. The vermiculite absorbs and holds water. The perlite is just a filler and is the little white balls that you see in most store bought soil. 

The nutrients are mixed with water and stored in a 44 gallon garbage can. A submersible pump is placed in the bottom of the garbage can and connected to a timer which turns it on three times a day -  morning, noon and evening. You adjust the time that it is on until you get 1 quart of nutrient filled water per column per feeding. That's 3 gallons per day or about 2 weeks per garbage can.

We started with Home Depot plants - One tower (far left with two containers) has tomatoes, next is lettuce, next is strawberries and the nearest has herbs. The base units have bigger plants like broccoli, cucumber, brussel sprouts, etc.

I looked up what plants I could put in this time of year and found I could put in anything - only restrictions is during the summer when some plants can't take the heat like lettuce.

Still Working on the Pool

Someone asked where the pool is relative to the house so here is a shot from the backyard. The screened-in portion of the house is the Lanai. The screen section next to the pool will be removed and the big screen house that will cover the pool will have an ell which will attach to the Lanai.

You might have noticed in the first picture that the edge of the pool now has tiles. When filled, the pool water will come up half way of the tiles.

On top of the tiles is a nosing being grouted here. The pool deck will come right up to this nosing.

See I told you, they now have poured the concert deck and walls for the pool. My daugther Ina and her family are visiting so we were with them at Disney World this day and I didn't get any in-progress shots.

But here are Carter, Brady and Ella - the first ones to hang their feet into the pool.

More Pool Stuff

The next day the Gunite was hard as a rock. Bob the Builder's guys backfilled the dirt they had dug out all around the pool and vibrated it to make it solid.

No sooner than they finished compacting they started to dig it out again to lay in pipes.

 
Sure was a lot of pipes.

They did an overnight pressure test and then filled it all back in again.

Sure looks impressive.

Dug out the dirt again. This time to make a space for the outside wall and room for the forms.

They were expecting rain so they covered everything that might wash away with plastic - it didn't.

The county inspector has to come and check everything next but it's moving along.

We'll be swimming soon

A little over a year ago I gave Elite Pools a deposit on an in-ground pool. Bob Smith (owner of Elite Pools - we call him Bob the Builder) said it wouldn't take more than 3 weeks to complete it so we'd have it before Christmas. When he went to get the permit, the problems started. First we had to move the location of the pool in relation to the house but after a couple of tries, that problem was resolved. Most of our lot is in a flood way - that's different from being in a flood plane. Most of Florida is in a flood plane but a flood way designation is much tougher. It was established by FEMA about 8 years ago. The flood way is the area where the 100 year flood will drain off the land and out to sea. If you build something in the flood way, they don't want that structure to raise the flood water level and thus back up the water and make it deeper. The structure can't raise the flood water level by more than 1/8".

In my case there are drainage ditches on two of my borders. To find out how much I'd raise the flood water level, I had to have a topographical survey done on my lot and a civil engineer (whom I hired) had to run a series of computer programs to get the answer. This was the first time the civil engineer I hired did something like this and he had some problems running the computer programs. When he finally got an answer the county building inspector told him he had to submit it to FEMA to get approval. He finally found someone in FEMA to send it to. They took a month to respond and told him they don't handle small stuff like someone's swimming pool, they only review big commercial stuff, and he should submit it to the Hillsborough County office for approval. He then took it back to the county office which took another month to review it and finally at the end of September they approved it and this October they gave Bob the Builder a permit to build the pool. By the calculations  the pool would raise the flood water level by 0.001".

So on Monday of this week, they brought equipment in and dug the hole for the pool. It was early in the morning, you can still see the outside light on in the background

Hole is dug and they start hanging the cement backer (yellowish looking paper) unto which the Gunite will be sprayed. In front of that they tie in the reinforcing rod for the pool walls.

Here's the completed pool wall with seats shaped and drain lines in place.

Then they start spraying the Gunite.

It is coming from a truck which holds a dry cement mix. Water is added in the mixer just behind the truck and pumped via a hose to the pool.

As the guy sprays it on another starts leveling it out. There is a wire stretched along the top of the frames so the guy leveling the gunite also gets it in a straight line.

They sprayed and leveled until they got the whole thing done. The tarp on the left hand side is to protect the house from overspray.

They didn't start until 2 PM so when it got dark I switched on all my outside lights - they didn't finish until 8 that night. It was too dark to take a picture so this one is from the next morning.

You can see a slight imperfection near the bottom of the pool on the right hand side. It's called a slump and occurs if too much water was mixed in. They'll fix it when everything is dried up hard. I will have another progress report in a few days.