Cistern & Spring Break

So things were pretty crazy those last few days before Spring Break started.  The PB had to have a big pow-wow with all the players and come up with a new game plan.  The plumbers obviously had to come back out and re-plumb a lot of the lines along the fence.  Basically, each line has four extra 90 degree turns in it now, directing it away from the pool and closer to the fence, where they won't be in the way of the curb for the pavers.  Hoping they're deep enough that we don't have problems planting there now.  We're planning a tropical screen along that side.  Also hoping that we don't have any pressure or return issues with the extra turns in the lines.  Shouldn't with the spa pretty close to the equipment.

Next was the cistern.  Matt took a day off work and used the big boat trailer to pick it up in Lake Wales and somehow got it off the trailer and next to the house.  With the help of many neighbors and some beers, we used rollers to slide it along the side of the house (thanks to the Egyptians that used this method to build the pyramids) and had to rig some plywood and grunt work to get it around the edge of the pool and next to the hole.

But the hole was still far too small since the excavator had not dug it out all the way.  So Matt dug for two afternoons/evenings late after work and made a lot of progress, but the PB owed us one so he stuck two of his guys in there and they dug it out for a few hours until the side caved in to the edge of the framing for the paver curb (see bottom right of picture below).  They had dug the hole far too big (wide and long) but just barely deep enough.  He was convinced that we needed to build some sort of A-frame to lower the cistern in.

Matt came home, dug it out and by Saturday morning he had the whole thing rigged up to slide in using some 14' long boards, levers, and some extra dock lines.  Matt and the boys and I were able to get it in by ourselves in about 10 minutes, and then filled it with about a foot of water.  There was quite a bit of dirt backfill to complete to stabilize that side towards the pool.

Unfortunately, the one big thing that we just didn't have time to do was connect the gutter drainage system to the cistern.  Matt still had to cut out the holes for the drain in and the overflow out (you can see the flat round spot just to the left of the "1150" written on the end where the drain line in will go - it's just a little lower than the white 4" drain line that is sticking out next to it).  We were leaving on vacation first thing Sunday morning but the weather was forecast to be good for the next 10 days. The PB told Matt that he would have guys on site the whole week, so if there was any rain forecast, he'd have them fill more water into the tank.

SPRING BREAK: Naturally, it stormed in the early dark hours on Monday morning, and the neighbors reported that water was gushing out the downspout drain line and had washed away some of the dirt around the cistern.  During the day, the forecast quickly changed and a strong cold front was expected Monday night. No water was added to the tank, however, as we expected. Tuesday morning (after two frightful nights at anchor), our neighbor reported that the cistern had floated part way out of the hole and there was water everywhere. Their screened cage had come off their foundation and kayak was inside their pool. Several neighbors had water inside their houses from leaking roof vents or windows or doors. So we were relatively well off, just very frustrated and very far away.
We found Gasparilla Marina (recommended!) to tie up for a few days until the next front came through Thursday night.  Matt asked the mason to have his guys pull the cistern out all the way out of the hole so that it wouldn't be stuck in mud at an awkward angle.  We also had them rig up a drain line from the downspout so that any more rain would drain out over the seawall instead of into the hole and mudding up the yard.
We managed to work our way home up the intracoastal waterway during weather windows with a stop at Sarasota Yacht Club and got home Saturday afternoon to see the carnage.

(I did note that Sarasota Yacht Club had recently remodeled and used the ivory Artistic Pavers around their pool, although used a different coping.  They said they were having trouble keeping them clean in the heavy traffic areas.  We'll never have the kind of foot traffic that they have, though)

Spa Tiling, Curbs & Footers............ uh oh

The tile guy, Rick, is still work methodically on the tiling.  He'd completed the mudwork on the spa, with just the tiling to go.

Here are the before and after pictures.

Pretty nice, huh?

What you can't see is that he ran out of tiles.
He's just three tiles short on the inside wall on the left, where you can't see in the photo.

A day or two later, when we were fishing debris out of the bottom of the pool, we found two whole tiles - still not enough to finish.

Meanwhile, the masonry subcontractors are forming the curbs and footers for the paver decking.  These guys are great, and one of the reasons we chose this pool builder, because the mason was the same guy who did all the concrete work for the house remodel a couple of years ago.

Unfortunately, they quickly found a problem near the equipment corner of the pool.  The plumbing wasn't deep enough. 

The curb needs to go 8" below the top of the frame.  The staked out horizontal section on the upper right side of the picture is at the correct height.  They can't frame this side until the pool plumbing is fixed.  And that also means that our drainage and sprinkler plumbing will need to be changed.  UGH!!!!  DH is pretty mad.

I will refrain from the details here because I don't want a lawsuit or anything, but the plumbing subcontractors are in pretty big trouble with us and the pool builder.






Anyway, the footers for the main steps look awesome and I'm starting to see how the deck is going to look.
Looks like the cistern is shipping in any day now and we're less than a week away from spring break with a plumbing mess, concrete on hold, and one giant hole to dig.

Cistern Plumbing - Before Spring Break

Now we've got to get all the drain lines in for the cistern.  I'm not sure if I properly described what we're doing here, so here's a summary.  We're hooking all the downspouts from all the roof gutters together, where they all drain down to a single point and collect in the cistern.  Virtually the entire roof will drain to the cistern except one from the furthest corner of the garage in front.

This example to the right is the downspout from the corner of the lanai, with Sophie posing inside the corner.

All these drain lines had to be routed on a not-to-interfere basis with the pool plumbing and (hopefully) before the masons arrived to pour the footers for the decking, which would be difficult to work around.

The second picture is the junction from the north side of the house (under Matt's legs) and the south side of the house from the bottom right corner.  The cistern is going to be several feet to the left of the junction.

The picture below shows how much of the hole that the excavator dug for us.  We had planned for him to dig the full size for us, but the rumor is that the contractor was worried about a cave-in and stopped him at maybe 1/3 of the size we need.  At this point, we're not sure how we're going to get the rest of this dug out.  Did I mention that the cistern is over 1100 gallons?

Plumbing - Before Spring Break

Note: The next few blog postings have been back-dated to the approximate date of the featured construction.  They were written about a month later, so accuracy and detail are approximate.

It's been a very long time since I was able to update this blog, but I'll try to capture the major events in the next few days to get caught up.  Since my last posting, we've had a few...ummm....issues.  I'll spare some of the details, but keep in mind that everything revolves around Spring Break, which was the last week of March, so the missing blogs fit into two phases: before and after.  Obviously, we spent the week beforehand getting ready to go, since we would be out of reach on the sailboat for a week, and then had clean-up upon our return.

It was great to see the plumbing go in.  I thought it would take forever, but they got it done in about two days.  Plumbing worries me because people with old pools are always having leaks and it's almost never the actual shell - it's the plumbing or where the plumbing and the shell meet, in places such as skimmers.  And we have two skimmers.

Also, I thought the plumbing would be a lot deeper.  I need to figure that this will be buried, and then sand fill for the paver base will be right up to the top edge, because the coping will raise the deck another two inches or so above that current top edge.

I still haven't learned enough about the pool to understand exactly how the water flow enters and exits the pool.  I'm pretty sure that the line shown above on the diagonal (above the skimmer line) is going to be where we hook up the vacuum cleaner (Hayward Navigator) because it's the most middle point of the entire pool.

The spa itself has an incredible number of plumbing lines.

There are six jets and in the picture you can see three of the air vents on the top edge of the spa that control the amount of air jetting out - more air, cooler water, less air, hotter water.

There's no plumbing past the spa on this side - the pool beam wall to the right out of the picture, paralleling the seawall that I'm probably standing on to take this picture.

Keep in mind that there is planned to be three feet of paver deck on this side of the pool towards the fence, and the three feet starts at the waterline.

All the plumbing leads here by the house, where it's under about 40-50psi pressure.  You can see the pressure gage at the bottom left corner of the picture.  The equipment will be located next to the wall on the left.

Okay, so now that the pool plumbing is all in, we can move in to get the cistern drains hooked up and the main sprinkler lines for the backyard all arranged.  I should mention that a couple of the neighbors made comments to us about the plumbing sub-contractors, but that'll come up in another blog posting.

Tiling - Yay!

The long awaited tiling has begun! And it's so pretty - I'm so happy!

On Monday, the tiling folks were here for a couple of hours. I wasn't even sure at first what they had accomplished, but taking a look at the pool in the afternoon, I could see that they had prepped the waterline for tiling, and done some work around the spa. Hubby called the PB to ask a few questions and found out that someone was picking up the tile that day. We've got to find out when some of the other work is scheduled so that we can work on the drains for the cistern. We've also got to figure out how to pick up the cistern, which is too big for our small utility trailer. We do have a close friend with a cargo Sprinter van and the cistern just might fit into the back of that, so it looks like we'll need to call up some favors.

The tile folks showed up first thing Tuesday morning and lugged the boxes of tile onto the lanai. They immediately began the mudwork on the spa. When I asked if any tiling would happen that day, he said no, just mudwork, but later I saw Linda sorting tiles and putting them in small stacks around the entire edge of the pool.

I laid out a stack of them just to see the variation that we got in these boxes. Very nice. Not as much of the dark blue swatches as I hoped, but I still think they're very pretty. Lots of glossy reflection in the morning sun. You can see the prep work that they had done on the waterline in this picture.

When I checked on them later, I found Linda setting the waterline tile while sloshing around in the deep end - and it looks great! She was pretty fast and methodical setting each one - it's easy to see how good prep work makes this part easier. Good thing she is tall enough to reach the top edge of the pool. It is so nice to see some color out there! Blue, blue, blue!
Very pretty and happy to see some real progress. I know that prep work is progress, but it's just so boring compared to visible finishing progress like this. I'm sure the grouting will be another dull process to watch.

They got the entire waterline done except the spa. I'm guessing that now that the top edge of the spa is prepped, it'll be another day to remove the framing and prep the waterline, and then another day to two before they can tile the inside and outside of the spa. I'm a bit worried about cost if this is the same prep that he has to do for all the step markers and the swim lane tile. And I have no idea how he's going to prep the swim lane since 1/2 of it is underwater. And it's supposed to rain on Thursday.
Can't complain about the rain - we need it so badly. Although our sprinkler system passed the two-minute test, when I went to run the full schedule for the first time, I discovered another leaking sprinkler head that appeared to be a bent riser problem. Easy enough to fix - of course NOT. Next sprinkler schedule - bigger leak (since there was still a big hole around it). Looks like a cracked 1" line, so I'm going to be looking for some parts and doing some PVC repair on Wednesday. Sprinklers - UGH!
At least the pool looks great!

Weekend Progress

THEIR WORK:

The tile guy and his assistant have been working here and there over the past three days. Pretty much, every day starts the same, with the dogs howling to announce their arrival. To get them to shut up, I let them out, and Buster & Sophie rush out to greet them as they set up their radio and equipment in the backyard. The dogs sniff, get their requisite petting, and then come back in, bored, unless there is a tape measure present. But all the workers have been warned before their arrival to stow away their tape measures if Sophie is outside.

On Friday, they spent several hours putting a smooth, level cap on the top edge of the pool, starting with the frame that they nailed around the entire inside of the pool shell. Then Rick went around setting and leveling the outside of the frame, while Linda mixed, poured and smoothed the new cap behind him.

It was a pretty warm and sunny day, but they managed to stay until mid-afternoon, right around the same time that I had to pack up and leave for Jensen Beach, on the east coast. (I was driving the entire Lakewood HS sailing team for a regatta all day Saturday.) Keep in mind that the backyard is on the west side of the house, so it gets direct afternoon sun starting around noon this time of year.

This is one of the reasons we are getting a light pebble color - a dark pool would get too hot in the summer.

Anyway, they were able to finish just over half of the pool edge, I'd guess, on Friday. But they'd be back on Saturday, while I was gone, and even worked an hour or two on Sunday morning to get the cap finished and most of the frame removed. The spa is still "rough" though. But the skimmers are in place.

OUR WORK:

Repairs. All weekend it was all about fixing the sprinkler system that (1) had been heavily damaged by the heavy equipment, including one of the neighbor's lines, and (2) was of a poor design, where the valves were located all over the yard and connected by buried wire that had been giving us problems.

So, hubby replaced all the feed lines for the reclaimed water from the street, and ran lines for all the valves to be placed by the house, which is the right way to do it in the first place. By Sunday night, he had four zones up and running (three for the front yard and one side yard) and we can finally stop hand-watering our newer landscaping in the front yard, most of which we just put in last year.

S..l..o..w..i..n..g.....D..o..w..n.....

Well, it's been very, very quiet in the backyard. No sign of anybody on Tuesday, but two big boxed skimmers appeared. Wednesday, nothing. Thursday, the tile guy, Rick, and his assistant, Linda, showed up and tinkered around for an hour or two. They measured the waterline around the pool and spa, and raised part of the spa, to order the waterline tile. Probably close to the same measurements for the coping. There was quite a bit of grinding and flying concrete dust where Rick was sharpening the corners. Sorry, nothing more to report.

Fencing Report

Monday and Tuesday - no change in the pool status. I spoke with John, the PB for a while and he's going to take a look at the spa-concrete triangles next time he's out here. The tile guy, Rick, will probably show up today - or he's headed up to check on his mom out of state - not sure exactly what his/her status is. Apparently there's some mud work that Rick needs to do before the plumbers can start. Since it was raining yesterday (yea!), no work.
John's going to order our coping and waterline choices, and he'll give us those glass tiles for just the cost of installation. Can't beat that. No more waffling on choices - we're done. Now just waiting on the tile guy.....

Stopped at a fencing place to check on how much the materials will be. Neighbors on both sides have pools and fences along our property lines (for the most part). Left side has the white plastic fencing, and we have a matching regular gate on that side. It's not self-closing and the latch is pretty old and rusty. The right side neighbors have chain-link, and our yard has always been open on that side. We would like nice aluminum gates and some solid sections to span the roughly 9'+ from the house to the fences on each side. The aluminum fencing comes in white, black and bronze, which is my choice (pictured, but sorry, only had my cell phone with me).

Of course we have to meet the pool safety code - minimum 4' tall, non-climbable, with self-closing gate ($$$), and latches something like 54" high. The bottom rail has to be at the bottom of the spindles, as pictured. If we get the 4' tall gate, then we have to get one of those standard top-pull magnetic latches that sticks up like a pole to the required height, and only comes in white or black plastic, and cost $75+ each, depending on color.

Neither of us like those latches. So if we want a regular self-closing latch, we have to get a 5' tall gate. There are some nice push-button latches, but of course, they only come in white or black plastic, and they have locks on one or two sides. (Pictures of the same lock from both sides, double-sided lock) Will need to check a couple of more fencing places to compare products and prices.