Low Rent Renaissance

The little pool is finally up and running. I'm using a Remington Solar Ionizer, which you see floating in the left hand corner. Nice just to sit and listen to the waterfall.

I'm continuing work on the little pool. I finished two coats of Drylock Ultra blue on the inside and painted the outer rim with Drylock Coral. Electric outlets are working. The little pump house is made primarily of recycled goods -- old fence posts and wood from a lattice fence long ago disassembled. The sheet metal roof is from the old mobile home we took apart years ago. The roof lifts for easier access to the pump and sand filter.  Waiting to purchase a small ionizer before finishing the plumbing.

I'm sealing my Portland cement plaster with Drylock Ultra, purchased at our nearby Lowes. This is how far one $30 gallon went -- all four sides and a little of the bottom. Twenty years ago I applied one coat of Drylock over cement blocks, had a slow leak, and had to drain the pool and apply a second coat, which kept it sealed for most of twenty years. This time I'll just put two coats on. It's a nice deep blue. I like it. So far, I've stripped and replastered the pool walls, reset the pavers of the patio, rerouted the electricity for the pump and ionizer, started on a little "pump house," and built armatures for two totem poles that will overlook the pool. It's slowly coming together.

We thought about replacing the concrete pavers that formed the little patio around the pool with a wooden deck, but it was cost prohibitive. So we're recycling the pavers, but having to buy quite a few more because we're covering more ground this time. We're digging a fire pit in the back field, and moving the dirt to pool side to level the ground for the patio. Thankfully there is a lot of clay in the soil. We're using a tamper to pack the soil prior to placing the pavers. So far, each part of this refurbishing project has been "the hardest part."

I found this old image of our little pool in its most decrepit state, long after a raccoon had decimated our population of giant goldfish. Below is one of the pool when it is almost ready to plaster. I used an angle grinder to remove the Drylok Sealer. It was a awful, dusty job but neither paint remover nor the little sandblasting tool worked well enough. I am currently plastering with a mix of one part Portland cement to two parts Quikrete Play Sand. I'm wetting it with one part water, one part Pro Select Concrete Bonding Adhesive and Acrylic Fortifier -- all purchased at Lowes.

So I have to remove the sealer I used to waterproof the pool and make repairs to a few blocks. The little sandblaster works somewhat, but so slowly. Paint remover also works. But nothing cleans these blocks like an angle grinder. It's a nasty job, though. The idea is to remove the sealer, make repairs, and probably plaster the pool, though the beautiful blue sealer I originally used held up for many years. I painted that sealer over the raw blocks with no plaster or primer and had no leaks for at least ten years. Even now the bottom of the pool, where the sealer is intact, holds water. There is a lot of grinding yet to do. Tedious and incredibly dusty work.

 So...the little swimming pool was cool when I built it for my bride almost twenty years ago. About five feet wide by nine feet by long by four and half feet deep – a rectangular hole at the bottom of which I poured a slab. Then I lined the hole with cement blocks and painted it all with a waterproof sealer. It held water, which felt like a great victory for me. My dear ol’ dad had built a small pool for my sister and me many years prior. He used ferrocement – a better idea – but I knew nothing of ferrocement when I built my pool. The pool had a pump that circulated the water into a spillway that, when you stood beneath it, gave a nice massage but, alas, she wanted a bigger pool. And when we installed a big above ground pool, we turned my homemade one into a fish pond. The goldfish came from Walmart. They were tiny, but they thrived and, over the years, grew into giants. Then came raccoons, who gobbled them up. And that was that. The pool became a puddle of mu...