Rain!!!!

The cistern is finally full again! (It was almost empty after three weeks of no rain and lots of new landscaping that needed watering.)

One Week Later....

The pool is such a lovely color and clear and sparkling - so inviting! I just want to jump in every time I see it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to start doing yardwork in a swimsuit so I can just jump in when it's too hot.
The PB's guy, Jeff, has been stopping by to check the pool chemistry and add stuff. We can't start up the salt chlorinator for another week, and then I think they're going to give me a lesson on how to maintain the pool and hand it over.
We got a couple of bids for hooking up the gas heater, which is going to require coordinating with TECO to upgrade the meter to 2psig and then a reducing regulator for the line into the house. That'll hopefully get done next week.

The week we first started up the pool was relatively cool, with temps in the mid-80's, low humidity and cooler evenings. So, at 84 degrees, the water was a bit chilly for sunset swims (see picture of chilly kid).

But after a hot weekend, the pool has warmed up to 87 degrees which is just about perfect, especially in the evenings. The other night my nearly-16-year-old went out for a dip and swam some pretty good laps - need to get out there and take a real measurement. I did a few breast-stroke laps last night (no goggles handy) and it was wonderful. Definitely did not feel too short across that diagonal.

Boys' First Swim

First Swim...Night Lights

On Tuesday, after the pool was full, I tried out the pool lights. There's a simple on/off switch on the lanai, so I don't know how we're supposed to control the disco light programs. The first time I switched it on, it changed from blue to purple after a minute, but stayed purple. From that time on, I've only gotten it to be blue, which is fine, but I figure one of these days I'm going to have to figure out the whole program. The picture above is a hand-held photo from the first night.

Meanwhile, on that first night we managed to find a few minutes to jump into the pool just before bedtime and check everything out. I thought the temperature was nice, but it was a bit too cold for my husband - I figure it was probably in the high 70's.

I swam around and checked out all the benches and steps and wanted to see if the height of the spa seat was good. I had dropped it from the standard 18" to 21" and it's perfect. Then I "slurped" over the spillway into the pool and it was just so refreshing. Until I got out and the night temperature was only about 74 and dropping quickly.


The rest of the pictures were taken Wednesday night, after the chemicals had been added and the pumps all started up. Obviously the spa jets were on full blast, but we can't get in until Thursday evening so the chemicals have time to disperse. It's forecast to warm up starting Thursday through the weekend - perfect swimming weather!

"Starting Up" the Pool & Changing Colors

So the pool filled up by Tuesday evening, so the PB sent his guy, Jeff, out to "start up" the pool on Wednesday morning. He brought out buckets and jugs of stuff and started flipping switches and priming pumps and adjusting valves and installing plastic things in the holes around the pool.

First he turned on the regular pool pump. This pumps water out through four outlets around the pool and also somewhere out of the spa, which makes water spill over. Apparently there's just a tiny bit of dish soap in the system that the PebbleTec guys used to clean up, so at first there's just a bit of foaming around the outlets.

While the foam is still around, I can see the two skimmers sucking water in, so that's working, too.
Can't put the Navigator vacuum cleaner in for a week - that's how long the PebbleTec guys want it to cure before having something running around the finish.

After starting the spa jet pump up, he installed the jet valves and they really put out power. The air valves are open in this picture, so you can really see it go.

And of course, I can still see some sparkly "Shimmering Sea" abalone shells in the deep end. Alas, nobody else is going to notice them but me.

With the jet pump going (right switch on the lanai), the spillover is going strong. It's nice having just a little bit of a waterfall and it makes a pleasant white noise in the backyard. Hadn't really thought about that in the planning, but it's very nice.

Jeff dumped in some granular stuff and chlorine tabs into the skimmer, and then walked around distributing a gallon jug of muratic acid in the water. And after about 30 minutes, I realized that the pool had really lost a lot of that green that was in it. Wow. It's really a gorgeous color now. This is around 10am.

Cool. It's really turning blue. Of course, I think the color right now clashes with the waterline tile, so I'm hoping it continues to turn.

And this is a few hours later, maybe around 3pm. More blue, but also the sun angle has changed quite a bit.

And this one is around 5:30pm. Very pretty blue this time of day, when we'll be most likely to be using it. Right about now we really want to jump in, but we've got to give the chemicals 24 hours to do their thing before it's safe.

Around 8pm or so, somewhere near the 3rd or 4th inning. Blue LED night lights are on, but need to wait until it's darker to really see the lighting effect.

Fences & Gates

Meanwhile, the aluminum gates and fences have arrived, so we took the trailer to pick them up in Pinellas Park and brought them home for the next project.

This is a pool safety requirement, so the fences have to be a certain height for non-climbable (chain link is considered climbable) and the latch for the gate has to be a certain height, which is why a lot of people get those vertical latches that stick up above the gate and you have to pull up.  The gate also has to be self-closing and latching.

We aren't crazy about those stick-up latches, so we have a regular latch on a taller gate, and so that wouldn't look weird, we got a taller fence.  So we're going to be more than legal.

Also, I've read unofficially that the fences are supposed be up before the pool is filled, but the PB doesn't seem to care, so he's pressing on. Anyway, we do get the right gate up before the pool is filled, and there is a non-latching short gate on the left side, so we're good enough for now.


One afternoon was the right fence, but we ran out of time so the gate is just held up with yellow line in the picture at the top. We attached all the hardware and hung in the next day. The span is just over 9' and we wanted to get close enough to the neighbor's gate post that the separation would be "legal".

The fence is light but sturdy and the gate swings very nicely.  Not sure if the dogs are as fond of it as I am, because there will be no more roaming the neighborhood anymore. (There has never been a fence on this side of the house.)

The third day after work and late into the night, Matt installed the left gate, which was a little trickier with the plants over there.  I had to put protective measures on my Golden Hawaiian bamboo plant there behind the fence, especially the giant new culm that was coming up on the fence side of the plant, of course. (A culm is a new "stalk" of bamboo that is coming up from the rhizome, or roots, under the ground.)

Anyway, the gates are great and it's nice to be able to let the dogs out back without watching them.

Last picture is just to get an idea of what the right side of the house looks like now (with the air conditioning until moved up from the back before we started the pool project.)

Fill 'er up!

Monday, after the muratic acid wash, pressure wash, touch-ups, scraping, rinsing, installing lights, and general clean up, the guys closed the plugs, screwed in the drain covers, and started filling up the pool! The PB's estimate is 26,000 gallons, which he figures will take just under two days to fill. The water started to fill around 12:30-1:00pm-ish.

Upon close examination, the PebbleTec finish is just awesome. The owner of Sierra, Steven (I think), which was the PebbleTec installation company, had been out to check the site and was telling me about the origin of the various pebbles in the Blue Lagoon mixture. The white were from some country and the tan were from another, and the black from another - all around the world - and I know he said New Zealand and Australia for some of the colors. I just can't remember, sorry. But anyway, if you look closely at the steps you can see a couple of sparkles from the "Shimmering Sea" abalone shell that was added to the finish. I think it would have been nice to have about twice as much sparkle because it is pretty sparse, but too much shell (which is not warrantied) might not be good for the finish long term. It's pretty nice but I don't know if anybody would notice it if they weren't looking for it.

I decided to go ahead and add a second hose. The water pressure inside the house is noticeably lower than usual and the dishwasher is making weird noises so it'll have to wait until later. It is nice that every time I go out back to check on it, the water level is visibly higher.

By the time the both boys were home from school, around 4:30pm, the deep end was full, at least full enough for Sophie to take a swim. Unfortunately, she tried crawling up the walls instead of walking over the exposed "beach". Dumb dog.

Now this is a bad picture, but it was late - probably after 8pm - and it was raining - but I wanted a picture that showed the entire bottom of the pool covered. Matt & I went out there and waded around (after it stopped raining) and it was ankle deep in the entire shallow end, almost up to the shallow pool light.

We turned off the second hose overnight while we slept, mostly so we could take showers in the morning. At 7am on Tuesday, the water was almost up to the swimouts and second step/bench level.

And I can still see sparkles in the morning sun in the deep end (they're in a horizontal row just below the reflection of the fence vine).
I put the second hose back on around 8:30am, forgetting that my middle-schooler still hasn't taken a shower. I hear about this later.

By just after noon, the water is lapping up on the top steps. The green is normal for city water, at least that's what I've been told. It should turn blue after the water is balanced out. The pool is filling up a lot faster than everyone expected, but we do have a secret weapon...the water line from the house main that goes out to the dock is 3/4" vice the 1/2" for the rest of the house. And the main filler hose is the dock spigot. We're only about 24 hours of filling at this point, and it's going pretty fast - I'm surprised every time I go out back to check on it.

And by about 3pm, the water has reached the bottom of the waterline tile. Three inches to go and trying to figure out carpool plans because I have to leave the house at 4pm to pick up - this is going to be close.

Right at 4pm, I determine that the pool is full (1/2 way up the 6" waterline tile) and toss the first hose into the spa, turn off the 2nd hose, and run out the door to pick up carpool. Upon return, the spa has been filling up pretty quickly.

I keep a pretty close eye on it...and here it is, right around 5pm, the water is just about to spill over the granite! The pool is officially filled! (Note: about 28 hours to completely fill pool and spa)

Acid Wash & Touch Ups

Monday morning, the acid-wash guys start to work on touching up all the through-hulls (so to speak) in the shell. They chip out all the extra gunk built up in the light canisters, pull out the plugs and trim around all the outlets and skimmers. I hadn't realized it, but they install the lights and will fix any dings in the finish.

I had an appointment and missed the actual acid-wash (muratic acid), but arrived home when they were power washing it all down. There was just the one section below the bench that hadn't been washed down. The PebbleTec looks absolutely beautiful now.

The waterline tile has also been cleaned up, so it's looking nice. They spent quite a while going over and over each section and the sump pump is still going strong.

The touch up for the ding looks perfectly blended. We'll never notice it. I think it was this guy who had to run two houses over and rescue our neighbor who got stuck on her roof. They never mentioned it, but I found out later on Facebook.

Then he went over the surface with a trowel to pick off any loose or rough pebbles. It was sort of a nails-on-chalkboard kind of sound and left rust all over the pool, so he had to rinse it down again with the hose.

Sophie came racing outside at the sound of a hose and bounced around the pool while he was trying to rinse down. She was just going bonkers but very, very careful not to accidentally fall into the pool. That dog is crazy.

But doesn't the finish look just gorgeous in this picture?