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.