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)