John Hathaway

adventures of a gay geek in paradise 
Tags


Filed under

pool

 
October 5, 2009

The pool's finally (mostly) done!

The pool's finally done! Well, enough to swim at least. 

Of course there was a fair amount of drama involved. The finish coat of the pool has to be done all at once and then have the pool filled within 24 hours. Our guys came pretty early in the morning to get started, fired up the mixer, and got one end of the pool mostly plastered when they decided that they weren't sure that they had enough material to do the whole thing. Now, this is Vieques, so there's no just taking the truck over the the pool supply place to pick up a couple extra bags. We had to abort.

The pool guy went over to the main island the next day, bought the rest of what we need, and brought it back on the cargo ferry himself. The following day they're set to go again, but decided that instead of starting first thing in the morning, they'd wait until the late afternoon and work into the cooler evening. Which they did. And as evening was approaching it was clear that they weren't even close to done. They ended up having the cement mixer going (loudly) until 11:00 and didn't actually finish until 1:00 am. I'm sure we're now at the top of our neighbors hate lists.

But finally we can swim again! The pool looks great. I really love how the steps and bench came out. The pump house/laundry is also mostly finished up and I'm loving the new washer and dryer. (We've actually not had a working dryer for about a year. We'll continue to mostly line dry things, but it's nice to have some backup for rainy days.) We still need to get some touch up on the pool surface, a railing on the deck, landscaping, new furniture, the pool light hooked up, and I'm sure 100 other little things, but it's very satisfying to have things to this point.

                     

Filed under  //   pool  

Comments [1]

September 1, 2009

pool update week 7.5

The deck's looking great. It got sealed with a new super-high-tech finish: diesel fuel with a little motor oil in it. 

Most of the work this week has been on the steps and bench, which are AWESOME!! It really changes the feel of the pool and is going to make for a great place to relax with a rum punch to enjoy the view. Note the Medalla can in with the fill. I'm sure there's not a wall in Vieques without at least one in there somewhere.

The other activity has been the footing and columns for the wooden deck and getting the top edge of the pool prepped for tile. The tile will go in next. Then the finish coat on the pool and water! I'm travelling through Sunday, and there's a chance that it MIGHT be done by then. We'll see!

             

Filed under  //   pool   Vieques  

Comments [0]

August 26, 2009

pool update week 6.5

I missed the most exciting day of pool work so far. They poured the finish coat for the deck on Friday while I was back in San Francisco, so Chris had to deal with the drama all by himself: one contractor early, the other late; running out of concrete three (?!?) times, etc. But the final results look great.

This week so far they've done the finish plaster on the new pump house roof and inside. I'm really glad we added the glass blocks. It brings in a ton of light. And they're working on the steps, both from the deck to the pump house and in the pool. 

Our pool guy had the idea of reorienting the steps so that we have broad steps all the way across the shallow end where the new deck is. There will also be a bench on the one side where the old steps were at the level of the top step. I think it's going to look amazing and be a really nice place to sit and chill out and take in the view.

The wood framing you see in a couple shots shows where the wooden deck is going to go.

With any luck, we might have water in the pool again next week! 

               

Filed under  //   pool  

Comments [1]

August 15, 2009

pool update week 5

 

This week has been an interesting one with the pool. The concrete for the new pump house roof and base layer of the new deck were poured at the end of last week and now they're starting on the prep work to do the finish layer. So do you like the blue color we've chosen to paint the deck?? Just kidding, this is a bonding agent that help the top coat stick.
             

On Tuesday we went with our pool contractor on the ferry to Puerto Rico to pick out tile for the top edge of the pool, buy a new skimmer, and order the finish plaster (Diamond Brite in Tahoe Blue) 
We took the first (6:30) ferry and made it to the pool place, Costco, and the tile place all in time to make it back for the 1:00 return. (The next ferry to Vieques isn't until 4:30, so missing the 1:00 makes a big difference!)

We actually have two contractors working on the project. The one doing most of the work is really a few guys that work together more than a real building contractor firm. We thought that was fine for this scale of project and they've been doing good work, are easy to deal with, and actually show up for the job consistently. But none of them was experienced in doing the pool surface and since we've heard many nightmare stories of botched jobs on this, we have another guy who's doing that part of the work. 

The edge of the pool will have a slight overhang that's being poured as part of the finish coat of the deck, so this is the point where the work of the the main contractor and the pool contractor intersect, and setting up the forms for that has been a major point of contension this week. The pool contractor is VERY fussy about how this needs to be set up, which is appropriate because this edge is the most visible thing in the project and any imperfection will be clearly noticable. The other guys had been approaching this more like the form for the outside of the deck where things can be less perfect. After several rounds of the pool contractor trying to get the other guys to get it up to his standards, we finally all agreed that it would be better for him to do it himself. So the other contractor ripped out their previous work and the pool contractor has just started over now. 

They're saying they'll be ready to do the pour for the finish layer on Monday, but I seriously doubt that's going to happen. Current forecatsts are putting tropical storm Ana right about on top of us at that point (with Bill following behind), so I think the pool is going to have to wait a bit. (Stormpulse is a great place to see what's going on with this.)

Unrelated Bonus: While I was up on the roof of the house to snap the first pic, I took the last one of our flamboyan tree with Mosquito Bay and the Caribbean in the background. Last year we cut the tree WAY back, so this is the first time we've seen it be flamboyant. Pretty!

Filed under  //   pool  

Comments [0]

August 7, 2009

pool update week 4

Wow, things have really moved along since last week! 
The first pics are from Thursday when everything was ready to pour the cement and the last are from Friday afternoon after the pour. We decided to add 4 glass blocks to the pump house roof to let in more light which should brighten it up in there. (This is also our laundry room, so we're not just trying to cheer up the pool equipment.)
The old cement and new cement along the formerly curved wall make an interesting Yin/Yang effect, but that's only temporary. This pour brought the new deck area up the the level of the old. There will be a new finish layer poured over the whole thing. (Hopefully next week!)

                         

Filed under  //   pool   Vieques  

Comments [1]

July 31, 2009

pool update week 3

Well, we're now 3 weeks into the pool project and have continued to make good progress since last week.
The cement roof of the pump house had been poorly constructed and has been leaking profusely, so it had to come off to be replaced. And the surfaces of the existing deck and the pool both had to be chipped off. So this week has been all about attacking cement with little pneumatic hammers (think mini jack hammer) and the noise has been driving us (and I'm sure our poor neighbors) insane. In fact, Chris is currently at the little cafe at the airport to get away from the noise for a conference call. Thankfully I think there's probably only a half day of that left before moving on to relatively silent rebar work. 
All the rubble has been used to fill in where the new deck will go, so not only will we not have to haul anything away, but we're going to need hardly any additional fill.

           

Filed under  //   pool   Vieques  

Comments [0]

July 28, 2009

starting on the pool

We knew when we bought the house that we were going to have to resurface the pool. And only 21 months later we're actually getting around for it.
Since things were going to be torn up, we decided to enlarge the deck too. There was only deck on 3 sides of the pool and none of it was very wide. So we're expanding the cement deck on 2 sides and adding a wooden deck angled off the far corner toward the great view of the bioluminescent bay and the Caribbean. 
They started 2 weeks ago on the day I left for a week and a half business trip to San Francisco and this is the state when I got back. I'm pretty pleased with the progress!

             

Filed under  //   pool   Vieques  

Comments [0]