#Thegreatpoolpondconversion - 200202
We dodged a bullet.
Friday night we got a weather alert - strong thunderstorms coming.
The radar picture covered all of Florida south of Orlando. There was a fair amount of oranges and reds.
It included severe downpours, hail, and 50-70 mph winds with possible isolated tornadoes.
It’s the wind more than the rain that’s a factor for us. The tarp cover can handle a lot of water coming down. Wind tears it up, causes sags and then leaks like we had in December.
We were about to go to sleep - what do we do? Hope/pray? If the tarp rips in the night we wouldn’t know, and what could we do anyway?
If it’s windy and the supporting rafters blow over, we wouldn’t know either. Maybe if we did know we could go out in the storm in the dark, get drenched and try to right it before too much water poured in.
We built it well and we were lucky. The tarp held and nothing happened. We are so close to the liner install and this no longer being a factor that another water disaster now would be…disheartening.
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On Saturday we shared a foot long hot dog with everything and a strawberry shake and we did some planning. For the last couple of months it’s been easy. Fill and place sandbags. Move and pound sand. After reviewing our notes, the “build the shelves and levels” document is closed. It took 6 months. Now we have to start thinking ahead because the tasks are smaller and shorter in the amount of time they’ll take. And we need the parts, supplies and deliveries ready at the right times.
Sunday we took it just a bit easier because we earned it and progress is kind of stalled until we get the water out.
So we hung the Kingfisher.
Then we weed whacked the outline of two wildflower beds we’re gonna plant in the field. You know, with the cactus, papaya, bamboo, etc.
We’re still taking out two buckets of water a day which is about 4-6 gallons.
If we bail in the morning, wait for it to refill, and again at night we get more.
So Sunday we took out probably 10 gallons.
We dug a little deeper into the well and pounded the wood frame slats down a bit further.
Then we measured and remeasured the dimensions for the liner.
This is a big deal because who wants to get this wrong?
Too small and, wow what a mess. Too big and it’s just a waste of money.
Specifying for this project is a bit unclear because there are so many contours and curves.
So we measured four times.
- A guesstimate way back at the start before the first shovel of sand
- A full set of contour measurements early in January
- another set of contour measurements today
- and an overall set of measurements to plug into the formulas that most of the liner sellers use:
- Pond Length + (2 x Max Depth) +2 = Length of Liner
- Pond Width + (2 x Max Depth) + 2 = Width of Liner
Call it belt and suspenders, or measure four times, cut once.
All four sets of numbers are pretty close so we’re confident we have it right.
Eventually the entire deck will be sealed and painted.
The liner comes up over the top of the pool edge and is trimmed to about a foot onto the deck.
It will then be covered with about a two foot width of rock to make a border.
Even though it won’t show we want to paint under where the liner and border will be.
It’ll be good practice and give us an idea what the product will look like when it dries.
We power washed that 2-3 foot border because it has to be painted before the liner comes.
Here’s an action shot:
Looking ahead; and this is planning subject to change, not predicting:
- ordering the liner
- wrangling it to the pool deck when it arrives
- painting the pool deck border
- using the last 3 yards of sand to fill in some of the ruts in the grass from the bobcat and reclaiming the driveway
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