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.