Measuring

I think it really does get deeper at high tide. This is looking pretty deep to me. I need to check at low tide, if I can remember to look and compare pictures. But it's time to measure all the steps and benches to see how crazy the marker tiles will be. Note: Our rescue dog, Sophie, hates tape measures. It's something about that metallic sounds they make. All the pool workers have been warned about this and she has to be locked inside when they are using them. You can imagine how many guys were using tape measures when they were framing. Sophie was barking her head off.

Here's how my measurements came out near the edge of each area:
.....Entry steps: 1st top tiny sunshelf - 8'8"
.....2nd step - 9'2" plus bench 7'6" = 16'8" total
.....3rd step - 11'6"
.....Swimout at deep end - 5'10"
.....Right spa step - 2'11" plus swimout 7'4" = 10'3" total
.....Left spa step - 2'11" plus swimout 7'1" = 10' total
.....Spa bench - 2 x 1'4" width plus 12'6" around = 15'2" total (roughly)
.....Grand total: 42'8" step & bench markers, plus 38-40' swim lane

Hope I did all the math right! I realize that the step & bench markers do not necessarily have to match the swim lane markers. If I went cheapo on the swim lane, since it's 3.5' to 6.5' deep underwater, and splurged a bit on the much shallower steps, I'm not sure would look really bad. Or maybe it would look like I was trying to do it on the cheap. Hmmm.

Now, here's the interesting thing I noticed while I was out there checking things out. Take a look at the left side of the spa (from the house) which is along the thicker pool beam wall. The odd triangle there is completely filled in with shotcrete. This was a discussion item while they were shooting, and I was pretty sure I heard them say that they were going to completely fill those two weird angled spots.

But here's the right side of the spa, along the fence line. That wall was built at a 90 degree angle around the step, and by design, it should've been a 45 degree angle (before the spa was placed there). But that angle would've made the step oddly shaped. Either way, it makes an awkward gap, and I thought it was going to be filled in flush with that side wall of the spa. The difference will be that the left side will be raised and surrounded by coping, and the right side will be ground level pavers, which match the coping. The missing part of the equation is where the steps are planned for this side of the pool. Perhaps this is part of those steps. Need to ask PB about this.

Tile, continued (#4)

After our pool survey on Friday, the designer and I went back to the office to regroup. I just need to check with hubby, but I'm pretty sure we'll be getting the PebbleSheen Aqua Blue with the Shimmering Sea pool finish and the Luv Earthview Blue 6" tiles for the waterline. We might use some of the 4-section mosaic pieces to pattern the spa a little bit, but I haven't quite figured out how much spa will be exposed for tiling, so that can be decided later.
I'm still trying to like a step marker. I love Lightstreams, but they are very expensive at something like $20-30 per linear foot. Artistry in Mosaics has a new by-the-foot product with starfish, sand dollars, and scallops in navy blue for about $10 per linear foot. I really need to go out there with a tape measure and figure out exactly how many feet I'm dealing with. The glass tile generally runs under $20/sqft, but each 12x12 sheet will give me 4-6 linear feet depending on whether I go 2 or 3 tiles width. The designer will check with PebbleTec to see if they'll run a deal on their new tiles, but I'm not sure how much I like their tile products. I see later that they have a Gemz pool tile collection that is similar to the Lightstreams, so I'll have to find out if those are budget-breakers as well. Still open to possibilities.

When the PB showed up at the office, he remembered another similar surplus glass tile that they had in the back storage, and brought out a very nice multiple-blue iridescent glass tile sheet with some copper-like highlights. It's darker than the previous glass tile sheet, and is also plentiful. I think that one will work nicely, but I'm going to keep asking around. So here is a picture of the Artistic Pavers Shellock Tan that will be used for the coping, the Luv Tile Earthview Blue for waterline tile, the PebbleSheen Aqua Blue for the the pool finish (Shimmering Sea to be added), and the no-name surplus glass tile for step markers and swim lane, all taken mid-day with the good camera, roughly in position on the spa. And the good news is that after several hours in the direct sun, the paver is just warm, not hot, as advertised. I went next door and stood on the neighbor's red concrete pavers, and they were maybe just a bit warmer, or it was in my imagination. Who knows?

Meanwhile, back at the house, the bobcat guy, Victor, was filling in the giant crater end of the pool. Much better. The ground water has been filling in the entire deep end, to about a foot deep, maybe. It seemed to come in at high tide, but doesn't seem to go back out at low tide. I'll need to keep a closer eye on that to see if it's in my imagination or what. It's nice having the giant mound of dirt on the side of the house all leveled out, and the concrete-tie rod "sculpture" that has been decorating the front yard for the past week is finally gone.
We do have quite a bit of repair work to do. The other night, I could hear gurgling water in the front yard and realized that the neighbor's sprinkler line was busted and running down the street. The pool guys had capped off both ends, but didn't have an elbow and connectors to fix it. We weren't sure we wanted it fixed anyway, not being sure if any more heavy equipment was going to run down the side yard. The only thing we can think of is something to carry those heavy pavers, which run something like 2800# per pallet. But the PB reassures me that the machine that can carry those is too wide to fit along the side yard anyway, so the paver guys will have to dolly those from the front yard to the back yard by hand.

Saturday morning, my hubby and I were trying to sleep in a bit (or a lot) but we could hear digging sounds in the backyard. Hmmm? Sure enough, the tile guy was out there prepping the shell for his work - digging a little trench around the outside of the shell, digging big holes for the two skimmers, and even better, grinding down all the nails that have been sticking dangerously out of the shotcrete. He also bent a lot of the rebar back and buried it, which he says the electrician won't appreciate, but it's nice having them out of the way.

It's sure nice to have even just that tiny bit of color in the pool. The gray is pretty boring. It was about 78 degrees today, so I'm looking longingly at the neighbors' pools on both sides. Beautiful blue water, so inviting. I'm so ready to swim now, and I honestly have no idea when the pool will be done. Everyone keeps asking me and I hadn't bothered to ask. I must be crazy.

Tiles and Pebbles and Coping ....... Oh My! (#3)

So I stopped by the PB office to drop off a big check (2nd installment due when shell complete) and pick up the tile sample that came in - the MasterTile Desert Canyon Rainbow Green (I hope this link works, but their website is not very friendly.) It's very pastel with less green than I imagined (and hoped). Since I was there, I took a few minutes to browse around the samples and start looking for the two tiles I liked from yesterday, just to see the variation. Couldn't find the Bicio Papao Blue, except a single tile on a giant board from another company, and that sample has a weird green streak in it. So the office guy, Drew, called the designer to find the Luv Tile sample, but it was never there, of course, because I had forgotten about last week, when I had nixed that series tile based on the other colors because of the plain, flat ones.
It turns out that Erin was 5 minutes away on her way to the office, so I waited and we started talking tile choices again, and she told me that after thinking about it, she really likes the Luv Earthview Blue for our pool, too. She pulled out those same glass tile sheets for step markers and the swim lane, but I'm still not crazy about them (See "Scraping" post for the first look at these). I'm pretty sure I want something more iridescent, and these tiles only have little bronze streaks in just a few of the dark gray and white pieces.
Bottom line is that I've just got to see what it looks like underwater with the pebble color, which I'm leaning toward PebbleTec Blue Lagoon. So she makes a phone call and we're off! (Note: I was leaning this way because of this posting on the GardenWeb Pools & Spas forum that pictured a perfect pool.)

I thought I was decided on Blue Lagoon, but wanted to see the "Shimmering Sea" abalone shell additive, but when we got to the pool, well, it just wasn't all that blue, in my opinion. Uh oh. This isn't what I was hoping for at all. I still detect a hint of green, and I don't think it's being influenced by the large tiled sunshelf. The abalone sparkles are barely visible and certainly not noticeable with the water rippling (windy day plus fountain plus wall squirters going). And scraping my foot on a step, the PebbleTec seemed rougher than I remembered (it has bigger stones in it) but it definitely has that pebbly look that the hubby likes. Hmmm. Not all that excited about it, but we take pictures of the various tiles up against the water (and some submerged in the water) just to see what they all look like.

As we drove back to the office, I talked to Erin about our original PebbleTec Blue Lagoon vs. PebbleSheen Aqua Blue dilemma, and she realized that she did another pool nearby using PebbleSheen Aqua Blue with the Shimmering Sea, so a few phone calls later, we were on our way. One look at the pool, and that's BLUE. Gorgeous. It's perfect - love it.
I know pictures are tough because of lighting and camera and monitors and just too many factors to truly compare. Since I hadn't planned this trip at all, I only had my cell phone camera handy. But these pictures were taken within 30 minutes of each other and at approximately the same angle off the late morning sun. The designer was just happy because I had an immediate positive reaction to the color.

Erin held up the various tiles that we had brought along to see how they would look against the water, and they all looked pretty good to me. The coping on this pool was a similar neutral to the Shellock Tan coping that we'll be using. Unfortunately, the position of the sun put almost all the waterline tile in shadow under the coping, except for the sunshelf end, where the pool color is much lighter, of course.

I realize that these camera-phone pictures are pretty bad (perhaps I should've wiped off the lens?), but you get the idea. The first tile pictured is the MasterTile Desert Canyon series Rainbow Green tile, which looks very neutral because of the pastel coloring. The second tile is the Luv Tile Earthview Green, which is my top pick at the moment.

Since the Bicio Papao was on a giant sample board, we couldn't exactly dunk it, so that picture shows the tile near the water. (Keep in mind that the waterline tile will be 1/2 submerged all the time.) It's the blue one in the middle of the bottom row - you can just see that weird green vertical streak in the middle of it (if you look at the samples in the previous post, none have anything like this). These shallow-end & step pictures are showing up greener on my monitor than reality - I'm blaming the camera-phone for the distortion.

But I took a close up near the first step anyway, for the current top pick Earthview Blue, and I think I really like the deeper blue. I like that the brown-gold accents aren't really streaky because streaky tiles seem to end up looking like mis-matched stripes when they're stacked on the spa. BTW, that's one of the deciding factors in this, because the waterline tile is only 6" high around most of the pool, it will be stacked higher around the spa, and the patterned tiles end up looking like stripes when they are stacked. It'd be nice if some of the patterned tile collections had matching solids, but most don't, so if there's a spa involved, you'll end up with stripes.
It looks like this pool is using the MasterTile Rocky Stream series Light Blue in 3"x3" format (which I was warned against). So I can tell that the water is about 1/2" low. This is one of the series that I liked, and came in a pretty mosaic pattern with "solid" matching tiles in 3x3 or 6x6 formats, but I personally didn't want the mossy green that was in it.

On a side note, the chunk of granite that they found for the spillover is gorgeous. In the picture, it looks like a reflection from the sun, but that bright blue spot is a beautiful opalescent streak in the rock, and there are smaller streaks that didn't show from this angle. It's truly magnificent, and I don't even like granite, normally.

Next test is for the step markers and swim lane line. We had brought along a strip of the grayish glass tile (that I didn't particularly care for) and a sample of the new PebbleTec Finishing Touches Geometric Sky Tile to see how it looked underwater. Keep in mind that the swim lane is going to be as deep as 6 1/2' under, although I'll mostly be looking at it underwater with goggles on, not from above the surface of the water.

But we lay both samples on the first step to see how they look. In my pool, this is how it would look on the tiny sunshelf on the entry steps, and the two small steps on either side of the spa. And then we lay the tiles on the second step to see how that looks, keeping in mind that "2nd step" is also equivalent to the bench, the main swimout, the spa bench and the two spa swimouts.

Reaching down to the third step is up to my shoulder, so I got my shirtsleeve wet getting these in. We are now thinking about what happens when the glue holding the tiles onto the mesh starts to give out. And one of the Sky tiles does fall off and I almost have to dip my shoulder in to get it out. But my swim line is even deeper and I tossed the no-name strip in, hoping it might land right-side up (not sure if it did).

The gray and white tiles are gone, looking down from above the surface of the rippling water. Hmmm. Look right in the middle of that picture, and you can just make out a couple of royal-bluish spots. That's the tile strip. Not thrilled, but the price is right. (Turns out they have boxes of this stuff in their storage room left over from another project, so they will unload it at a very reasonable price, wink wink.) Good thing the net is handy so we can scoop the tile strip out. I think we got all of them.

No more pictures until I get a real camera. Check back tomorrow for the rest of the Friday adventure.

Tidy Up (& Tile #2)

Thursday was busy with small jobs. The weather has been terrific so I'm just about ready to start swimming NOW. The guys came and pulled all the wooden framework off the outside of the pool and spa. They also bent the exposed rebar inwards, so we could stop scraping our shins on them every time we walked around the pool (these will be used by the electrician to bond the pool).

The PB came over to check on the shell and convinced the bobcat guy, Victor, to come fill the crater on Friday after seeing how big it was. They pulled the plugs on the pool, allowing ground water to enter from the drains (otherwise it could theoretically "float") and shut off the de-watering pump. It is really nice not to have to listen to that darned pump all night long.

Next up is plumbing & equipment or coping & tile, or something like that. Panic sets in as I realize that I'm still not sure which tile I like. I know that the Shellock Tan is our choice for coping and pavers, so I lugged around the full-size sample paver that the PB gave me to compare with my tile choices. (I weighed it - that tan paver in the middle of these pictures is 18.4 pounds so I mean it when I say LUG) Did I mention that there is extra freight charge on these pavers because they are so dense? This is also supposed to mean easier to keep clean, no algae, and they stay cooler underfoot than concrete pavers.

I did a trip down to the Luv Tile showroom in Sarasota, because they have large samples of all the tiles that I'm interested in, and naturally I'm interested in tiles with "extreme shade variation". In general, this means that I only like about 1/2 of the tiles in each lot, because the other 1/2 are too brown or too plain or too something unacceptable.

I still like the Earthview Blue, which is very glossy to overcome looking too "stoney" (hope that makes sense, but if it doesn't, read the blog description at the top again - no rocks or stone, please). But I look at the gorgeous floor in the showroom, which is 18" Bicio Papao Nero - the website picture does not do it justice - it's a shiny black with rough colorful glazed texturing.

So I look at the Bicio Papao Blue, and I remember that I liked the samples that the pool designer had. But, I didn't like the 1/4 of the samples that were very flat & plain, with very little of the texturing, and she couldn't find her blue sample. The blue in the catalog picture looked very ice-blue or gray-blue, so that didn't appeal to me. I should've know how badly the catalog pictures looked, because the showroom samples were very pretty, and I liked the blue background of the flat, plain samples, enough that I could probably live with it (such as the middle one in the top row pictured).

The only thing that I don't have is the water color, which depends on the Pebble finish that I choose, the lighting, position of the sun, shadows, etc. Will be checking out actually pools with the designer soon.

Shotcrete Complete

These are a few pictures that I took throughout the day to check on the progress as the trucks cycled through. It's really fascinating to see it slowly take on form throughout the day. The PB stopped by and told me about the shotcrete: the truck is divided into compartments (gravel, portland cement, water, and sand?), and it is mixed on site (vibrated?) and shot down the hose at 5000psi. The curious thing is that it doesn't need to be watered like gunite in order to cure properly, which tells you how little I understand the chemical process. The shotcrete hardens pretty quickly, so the guys have to trowel it fast.

It's amazing to watch the guys use those simple strings as guidelines for the walls and steps and shapes. You can see the diagonal string in the picture to the left that delineates the end of the tiny sunshelf (1st step). The spa was going to be tricky, and the floor was shot last. I didn't realize until watching this that the steps are all solid shotcrete.

The rebar formed the benches (which are equivalent of the second step down) and the swimout, but the first steps and the third step are all solid and shaped by trowel. They did a really great job squaring the walls along the strings. That back beam wall is 12" thick since it will be unsupported, and the rest of the walls are 8" thick.

When they were finishing up, right before shooting the floor, I took a critical look at the diagonal entry stairs and decided that I didn't like how they turned out. The first (top) step is a tiny sunshelf, and the second step is extended along the lanai as a seating bench, and there is a third step leading down to the 3 1/2' depth of the shallow end.

The bench is 18" wide from the wall into the pool, but the treads for the 2nd and 3rd steps were only 12" wide, and I'd thought they were wider. Fortunately, the shotcrete was still in action and the guys were able to add 3" to each of the 2nd and 3rd steps without interfering with the shallow-end light. Whew.

That probably would have made me crazy if I hadn't gotten it the way I thought it was going to be. After discussion with the PB, I learned that the spa has a "keyhole" design, where instead of a circular seating bench all around the spa, there is a cutout at the spillover, so someone can hang out in deeper hot water and rest their arms on the spillover, or kids can "slurp" over it into the pool. This, I understand, so we stick with the design as is, with the staggered-height jets. The guys finally finished up around 5:30. Long day, but it looks amazing. I can really imagine this turning into a pool soon! It was almost 80 degrees today and relatively humid and I am so ready to jump in. (See my swim lane? This picture was taken just to the right of it. You can just barely see a pool jet just above the shadow at the other end.)

The Shoot Begins!

Moist air, then shotcrete at 5000psi. Woo hoo! Here's about how far the first truck went:

And after the second truck, here's what it looked like:

Ready for the Shotcrete

1/2 day of work today (Tuesday), finishing up the rebar and other fixtures, such as the lights. The guys wanted them to shoot today, but the Pool Builder (PB) knew that the concrete guys would want a full day to shoot five trucks of shotcrete (FIVE!?!) After the cave-in issues, I'm more glad than ever that we're getting shotcrete instead of gunite. I think the builders that said we needed it here were right, because of the fill used when building the canals. Also thinking that I have no idea when we get our first inspection, but I know the city inspector has to stop by before they start shooting tomorrow.

I was surprised that I hadn't noticed the lights until late yesterday. I had set a challenge to the PB to find us some white LED lights and it wasn't easy. Apparently the popular thing is to get these color-changing LED "disco" lights but that is not our style (nor in our budget) and Hayward (manufacturer of the rest of our equipment) doesn't make plain white LED lights, just halogen (hot and high-energy is also not our style). Turns out that Intellibrite makes one, so we got what we were looking for. The two lights are pretty obvious in the pictures. I'll need to go out and look for the one in the spa, because I just didn't notice it.

Talked to the PB about "Shimmering Sea" which is a sparkly additive to the PebbleTec and options for putting in a removable railing for stability when entering the pool at the stairs. Forgot to ask about the spa bench - why is there a cutout at the spillover? Would a bench there affect the spillover or circulation? Does nobody sit in front of the spillover? Or is it there to have a bit of deeper space in the water? Dunno. Will have to talk to him in the morning before the shoot.

FYI: The sound of that stupid de-watering pump running continuously is starting to make me bonkers after two days. I hope the pool equipment isn't as annoying.

The Cave-In Solution

Kraft paper? At least, from far away it looks like kraft paper. When they drop a roll of it onto the rebar floor with a resounding CLANG!!!, it certainly doesn't sound like kraft paper. Upon closer inspection, it seems to be some sort of brown waxy paper woven with nylon threads so that it won't tear, and then strengthened and stiffened with a wire grid (that's the pattern you can see in it). The whole deep end is lined with this stuff to hold the shotcrete that is scheduled for Tuesday. If you look carefully in the picture above, you can see the downspout on the corner of our house, in the upper right corner of the photo. And you can imagine that I'm standing right against the screen on the lanai to take the picture. That's how close the cave in got to our foundation!

But there's still quite a bit of rebar to complete throughout the pool and lots of PVC for the spa. The supervisor and I discuss the placement of the jets for the spa, and it turns out that there is not a lot of wiggle room. Even planning to drop the seats to 21" (standard is 18" deep), with a 6" waterline tile at the top and about the same at the bottom to accommodate the buttocks, there's only about 9" of height adjustment for the jets. So I ask him just to place them at random heights. Folks can move from seat to seat to find the jet that hits them at just the right spot on their backs. So if you're wondering why they don't appear level in the picture, it's because they're not.

Cave In!

We were gone for about 24 hours and this is what it looked like upon our return on Sunday afternoon:

Looks like they got quite a bit of work got done ... the rebar is really taking shape and the excavator only has a few hours' work in the deep end. I like what I can see of the bench we added to the walk-in steps, along the lanai, that you can see in the right side of the picture above.

Some of the spa drains and lines are in, the mesh around it has given it shape, and I really like the steps that we added on both sides. The idea is that someone can swim up to easily get out of the pool and into the spa. Or, someone could sit there and visit with someone else inside the spa.

Unfortunately, the deepest end wall appears to have caved in and the de-watering pump is working hard. It's a little bit scary how close the hole is to the foundation of the house. Part of the pool framing is dangling in mid-air. I can understand why the backhoe operator stopped digging. We'll find out how they're going to solve this tomorrow.

The Big Dig

I had a tough time enjoying the field trip on Friday, knowing that back home, my backyard was undergoing a big transformation. After school, my son and I had to help a friend move some trailers around the storage lot, so I didn't get home until after 2pm and WOW - that was one giant hole back there.

The did manage to dig out a pretty big hole for the cistern, but more importantly, they've got the shallow end and most of the spa corner dug out. The cut-outs for the bench and shelf for the spa are clear. The backhoe has to scoop, then swivel around and dump into the bobcat that shuttles the dirt along the side of the house to the dump truck in the street. Our side yard (and part of the neighbors') is now a muddy track, and we have deep treads across the front yard to the street.

Since it hasn't rained in a while, and none in the long-term forecast, I started troubleshooting he sprinkler system and .... nothing. New fuse is fine. Hubby fixed the timing valve that was shorting out. The electronics appear to be working and the control box thinks that the system is running, but no water. So I check the reclaimed water valve by the street and it's closed. Hmmm. After a query to the backhoe operator, I find that they shut it off for a leak and he points to the spot where the bobcat treads dig in a turn by our landscaping berm, which is right about where the troublesome sprinkler control valve is located. So that means I'm going to be hand-watering all the zones for a while. A long while.

There is also an interesting pile of mangled metal and concrete in the front yard - a closer inspection reveals that it's a couple of the old seawall tiebacks that were dug out. We had figured there would be two or three in the span between the new blocks, but unsure of how deep they were buried or the condition of the metal rods.

By the end of the day Friday, they've gotten about 2/3 of the pool dug out. Turns out they're working over the weekend so I'm going to miss even more because we'll be out on the boat overnight Saturday. I'm not sure why, but I feel compelled to watch every moment of progress.

De-Watering?

Thursday was very, very quiet at our house.

They were supposed to set up the pump and start pulling out groundwater, but nobody showed up. At least that's what the PB thought was supposed to happen.

So the only news today is:
- Affirmed that no permit will be required for the cistern (although now that the framing is in, I have no idea how that's going to get excavated, because it's beyond the pool)
- Large samples of Shellock "Tan" and "Cafe" (the new colors) arrived at the showroom, to help facilitate choosing tile
- Asked for a sample of a Mastertile called "Desert Canyon Rainbow Green" (which doesn't sound very blue, does it?) because the picture in the catalog looks interesting, and that was the only sample that the designer couldn't find in her showroom (which is pretty impressive).
- Started a blog

Digging is scheduled for Friday, but I have to chaperone a high school field trip and I'll probably miss a lot of it. Bummer.

Framing

Wednesday morning we can't see anything resembling a pool because they scraped off all the painted grass yesterday. But they will spend all day framing out the pool for the excavator on Friday. Right away we have a problem...okay, not really a problem...a decision to make.

Background: The pool is supposed to be level with the lanai. Because of the slope in the yard, the back (canal) length of the pool will be a raised beam wall with double coping, much like a raised spa. It's supposed to be about 18" tall above the decking to make a nice seat. The step-down stairs on the left side (viewed from the house) need to be wider width and with a wider tread, to allow someone using a walker to step down to the dock. The stairs on the right (fence) side can just be normal steps.

It turns out the slope of the yard is a bit greater than previously measured. This is a problem because it means the pool beam wall will be taller on the back side, and not such a comfortable seating arrangement at 24" high. We don't want to raise the deck on that side, because we don't want a sloped green area down to the seawall, even if it is only a few inches. Slopes just aren't good along seawalls due to the inevitable settling, especially with a new wall (like ours) where the soil hasn't compacted yet (we already have holes behind the seawall, normal, but soon we'll have plenty of dirt to fill them with).

So we decide to drop the pool deck 4" below the lanai, which the PB likes better for drainage. We'll have a 3" trench drain along the wall, but it'll keep even heavy stormwater out. It just means we'll have to step down when we go outside. No biggie.

Now the guys have to dig to get the frame in correctly, because the scraper didn't scrape down that far. It's not that bad. (I can say that because I'm not the one digging.) It's really looking like a pool now, and it's looking HUGE. I think the last guesstimate was around 650 sq ft surface area. We walk around inside the frame and realize that a lot of that area is going to be spa, so it's a reasonable size, but what do we know?

We've made some adjustments here and there. I didn't like how close the inside cut was to the corner of the lanai, so we pushed that out to 6' from the corner. Then I had to worry whether that would infringe on my swim lane, but they can't frame the one far corner because the excavator has to get in from that side. (I know it looks crooked, but keep in mind that the inside "cut" corner is not parallel with the swim lane, because the legs of the pool are different sizes. Look at the pool sketch and this will make sense.) It turns out that my swim lane might be as long as 40' which is awesome. I'm more convinced that I'll need something to mark the lane so I don't get lost.

With the framing I can better picture how the raised beam wall is going to look. I think it's going to look really nice and it's not that far around to the spa.