Sunday we did some housekeeping.

The liner comes with a film of talc. So we rinsed that off last week.
This week we vacuumed it up with a shop vac.
No idea how effective or thorough. At least we can say we did it.
There are no pictures of this dirty and messy job.

It was a swimming pool and there’s a 1-2” overhang / coping at the ‘surface’.
We wondered how the liner would behave when filled with water.
Would it stretch into that air space?
So we tried to fill the void with a mold/form made of wood and expandable waterfall foam (like Great Stuff).
Didn’t work at all so we’re being philosophical.
There won’t be much sideways pressure at the surface so we’re not gonna worry about it.

The day before, Saturday we built the pump housing (that feeds the waterfall pool).
This is to do a bit of coarse ‘filtering’ and protect any future fish (or fish babies) from getting sucked in.

People do something like this - a scrubbie tie-wrapped to a pump.
Nothing wrong with that.
Not swellegant enough for us.

A paint can drilled with holes in the side and lid, boat bilge pump, screening, tie wraps and scrubbies:

See? Swellegant.

Also on Saturday we visited the rock yard.
We were there last year in June to window shop and plan what we’d be using. Sizes, colors, quantities, costs, that kind of stuff.
This was way before the first sand delivery! How far we’ve come.
And we hit a significant milemarker/landmark. We ordered 6.5 tons of rock and slate. Not all but most of what we’re gonna need.

5 Pallets were delivered Tuesday. We told Mark we’d make him famous, along with the liner guys, the UPS driver, the sand guys, etc.

Did we say 13,000 pounds? Which we will have to move, place and set pound by pound.
Still, it’s about 1/10 the weight of the sand.

After Mark unloaded he just had to see what we were talking about.

And we reached/received a second important milestone.

After measuring, remeasuring, doing the waterfall test, we finally ordered the stock tank that will be the upper pool. Then there were problems with cost, delivery etc. We settled on Amazon. Then they delayed. So Ace Hardware came through and a day early. We didn’t want to drive 16 miles with the hatch open so we ‘persuaded’ it into the Versa with no millimeters to spare in any direction - length, width, height.

Know what we didn’t do all week? Bail. That is so last month.

Stay tuned as we start to put the puzzle pieces into place.

Here’s an index of all the postings in #thegreatpoolpondconversion