#Thegreatpoolpondconversion - 191103
What a satisfying and productive weekend we had.
We hit some milestones (which we’re making up as we go) and accomplished some tasks that have drawn out way too long.
On Saturday we finally managed to lever the cactus out of the ground. A separate, supplemental story to come.
Sunday we found the floor of the shallow end of the pool and continued the lower / inner wall all the way around.
We used up all the bags we made last week and now we have a complete, if not quit up to height, lower wall.
A few spots are in fact up to level!
And thank goodness we aren’t trying to be accurate or exact.
Decatur Deb asked if we ‘designed’ the workflow so that everything is moving with gravity to it’s final position.
Well using the word design lightly, yes. We’ve also been careful not to have to pick up, lift or move stuff twice.
A while back we had to expand the curve of the lower wall in the deep end. Took about 20 minutes; it was nothing.
Ironically, this is the first weekend we had to move bags twice. Last week we were so clever after making the bags we pre-positioned them. Well they all had to be moved. 30 or so bags, not a big deal, just mentioning it. We haven’t had to backtrack much else.
This is the heavy lifting / construction phase of things and we do have a ways to go.
Move the rest of the driveway sand for both backfill and more bags
Order 20 yards more sand
Then it’s gonna change how we finish the lower wall, backfill (with pounding), finish upper wall, and backfill.
It’s gonna get a bit more complicated because we have less room to stand and move around the shallow end.
Room for sand, the bag making jig and two workers won’t easily be possible so we will be making bags in the driveway and carting them over.
Yeah we’ve analyzed the basic steps and it’s almost the same either way.
For a while it seemed forever, now we can see the end of this phase.
We are starting to think about ordering the liner and how we’re gonna wrangle it. (40’x30’ 365#)
That’s gonna be a major milestone and will change the tone and nature of the work and what comes next.
We’re maybe three or four weekends away, though yeah we can see the end in sight and are probably anticipating a bit.
As I said, we hit bottom in the shallow end.
We’ve been making bags from all the free sand that’s been there since the very beginning.
Remember when that initial delivery of sand was underwater?
We were also reminiscing about the tarp cover. The rains, the rafters, the learning as we went.
Even with the size problem, the ripping and shredding and duct taping, it’s never leaked.
Also, we’ve never been caught short in a rain storm either with the tarp off and the rafters moved. So we never had to scramble to cover it up.
And once the liner is laid, we won’t need to cover the thing any more anyway.
Rainwater on top of the liner is just the start of filling ‘the pond’.