Anyone have any experience at doing this? My brother in MI (also a contractor) is thinking about it, specifically www.polarpools.com . Any thoughts or experience mucho apprecianado…or something like that.
PaulB
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The grounding of pools, pool equipment, and the area around a pool is a matter getting a great deal of attention from building departments these days - especially when the pool is made using one of those liners.
In other words, you can't just dig a hole and drop it in. The part of the NEC dealing with pools has been completely re-written in the 2008 edition.
So,,, I'd say a visit to your town's building department is in irder.
When I first saw your post I was thinking concrete. I grew up with a nice concrete pool. Someone said it was dug by hand with horse and wagon. But you know how old rumors are.
Our inground pool is constructed nearly the same as what is shown at the web site you linked to. I didn't DIY though... but I watched every step of the way...
What are those panels made of? The only diff between the web site and ours is that with ours they installed a footer - or at least that was what they called it. I'd say it was more like maybe 1' deep of concrete backfill around the panels Then it was backfilled with dirt. I let it settle for something like 6 weeks, watering it with soaker hoses intermittently during the settle time before the concrete deck was placed. Maybe 7 years and so far, so good.
Oh - and here is the quote: "it's not much work for my husband at all" :-) Actually though, definitely get an automatic pool cleaner.
Any specific questions - just ask.
I've been around cement pools all my life. In fact I take care of the local community pool each spring.
My comments are
Easier said than done. The walls look not too bad, but they don't talk about the floor. I would guess it's a sand base they want you to have. The transition between the base and the walls might not be as easy as they say.
The "8 foot diving" pool gives me the creeps. all new pools around here (Montreal and quebec) must be at least 10 feet for a "backyard board" and 12 feet for a 1 meter diving board. The older pools must be 10 feet for a 1 meter and anything less than 10 feet and your insurance may have something to say about a diving board of any kind.
Vinyl inground pools are a pain in the *** to change the liner. Which you will have to do at some point in the future. And never empty the pool completely to clean it. the liner will shift and cause problems.
Anyone have any experience at doing this?
From long ago and far away. Not liner-ed pools though (would be terrible in our local soils). My very brief niche was in free-form pools gunnited in place. Only worked because I was bad at business math, had access to: a soils engineer cheap; a backhoe cheap; a start-up gunnite contractor; and really, phenominally, cheap plasterers.
Now, some ofthose pools were very cool. Walk in sloped 'beaches'; specialized lobes for whirlpool plumbing; "natural" waterfalls and the like.
What I learned the hard way was that it was not a product well-suited for 1/4-acre tract lots (or, more specifically, the budgets of owners of such lots).
Hi Paul,
I spent seven summers in the 1970's, installing vinyl liner in-ground pools, most of them in New York's Mid-Hudson Valley. Around one hundred installations total, almost all subbed from pool dealers.
There's a lot of acquired knowledge that goes into a good installation. I can give you some basics but honestly I'd prefer to be on site, watching and coaching beginning to end. It's not that you can't do a good job of it, just that it's one of those skill sets that's hard to acquire, except by experience. As I'm still in Golly-4-knee-ya with Arnold and Maria, I'm not able to super anyone's pool job.
First thing to consider is the water table and soil conditions. It amazing how often the water table shows up at seven feet, six inches when you need eight feet.
The next immediate problem is avoiding any kind of rain storm during the installation. Depending on soil conditions, it can be disasterous to have a heavy rain shower during the days between excavating and dropping the liner.
There's usually a lot of pick and shovel work to be done, shaping the hole after the excavation is completed and the pool walls are installed. That's necessary because it's hard to get a really accurate excavation, even when the installer has been through the process many times.
Most back hoe operators aren't used to working to close tolerances and usually don't have the patience or the skill to get it right. Overdigging can lead to serious problems, particularly when it rains, so it's better to leave the excavation a few inches shy of perfect.
That few inches amounts to as much as eight-ten yards of material that needs to be shaped with a mattock, then thrown over the pool wall with a long handled shovel.
I used to allow one full day for me and my helper to shape the pool, and it was definitely one of the hardest day of the job. Hot sun, no air moving down in that hole.
That's true for the following day, mixing and applying the pool base. Very hard day.
So you have one day to excavate, one day to install the walls and pour the concrete bond beam/footing surrounding the wall, one day to shape the hole, one day to mix and apply the pool base, then drop the liner, another day for backfill and plumbing. That's four days of no-rain before the pool is safe, then backfill and finish.
Of course there's the concrete walk to be formed and poured but that can be later.
What I'm saying is that this is a job for younger men who are in great physical condition, can work hard two-three heavy days in a row for ten-twelve hours. Then you need co-operation from the weather or you're SOL, have to pump out the hole and try to re-shape it before applying the sand/portland pool base.
In the end you may have saved a few thousand dollars but you'll have nothing much else to show for it. You probably won't want to do it again, unless you find yourself looking for work in hard times.
That's how I got into it...the economy was so bad that I had no choice. It wasn't a bad way to make a living, just brutally hard work, even for a guy in his thirties.
If you're still interested in looking into this, e-mail me and we can get on the phone to talk about it some more.
Edit: For most people, including me, an above ground pool is a better idea. They're fairly easy to install, will last ten-fifteen years and can be easily removed when the kids are grown up or have lost interest in it.
In-ground pools are not always a plus when the house is sold. Many people don't want them so they don't add much to the home's value.
Any kind of pool requires daily maintenance and chemicals. I've never owned one myself for precisely those reason...and because they have almost zero charm for me as a place to swim. I much prefer a river or lake.
P.S. If there's interest in some tips on installing above-ground pools, I'll be glad to share what I've learned about them in a separate thread.
Edited 5/7/2008 4:25 am by Hudson Valley Carpenter
Just thought should say that it would take me a number of days to write a good synopsis of how a vinyl liner in-ground pool should be installed, point by point. It wouldn't be much good without photos too.
I appreciate all the good advice... I emailed my brother a link to this thread and he is grateful as well!PaulB
Glad it helped, even if it wasn't what you wanted to hear. If you have any other questions about pools, I'll be happy to talk with either you or your brother.
Think outside the box. I've got a 30x15 - 3/16" thick steel pool. Approx 50-60 yrs. old. We just, for the first time ever, put $20,000.00 into refurbishing the steel. It's been a wonderful, and well used part of our home. Much more durable and less care than gunite over time.
I prefer to swim outside the box me self. ;-)
I went with a shot crete pool but I subbed it out and saved a lot of money. One company dug and shot the shell, another guy plastered it. I did the plumbing, deck and tile, set all the equipment and did my own electrical. It was about 12 grand and another 8k for the screen cage in 2005.
As the other poster mentioned, there are a lot of bonding issues. Basically you bond every piece of metal (rebar, lamp shells, ladder cups etc) with 8 guage solid copper wire. You also need a ring of 8 ga copper around the deck adjacent to the pool if you are not using rebar in it (bonded).
Most places also require a fence, 53" tall latches on the self closing gates and door alarms on doors leading to the house.
Cool it, GF, it's a 4-year-old thread that got zombied by a spammer.