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| How to construct a Concrete Pool |
Before ordering lumber, consider your many needs for wooden
planking, over and above that required for the concrete forms. You may
have to build your own platform for mixing concrete. You will need a
number of pieces for bracing, and probably you will want to lay out a
plank track for the wheelbarrow to protect the lawn.
You will need cinders, and they are awfully hard to find in these
days of diesel and electric power. Any industrial plant that burns coal
for power probably will have a load it will sell you reasonably enough.
In estimating the needed amount of cinders, plan to cover the entire
pool floor with a foot of them, and then tamp them down to a 6-inch
thickness.
If you can't get cinders, then crushed limestone or gravel - which are
somewhat more expensive, will have to do. With these, allow a 7- or
8-inch thickness on the pool floor, before tamping.
When to Begin
Once I would have told you the most practical time to build a pool
was the fall of the year. The soil is easy to work then. A man's lawn,
flower, and vegetable gardens make few demands upon his spare time,
and the weather is cool enough for him to do heavy work in comparative
comfort. These advantages still hold.
My principal reason for recommending pool building as an autumn
job would have been in the interests of curing the pool. A tremendous
amount of free calcium in newly formed concrete dissolves in the water when the pool is first filled, making it fit for neither flowers nor fish.
We used to wash away this free calcium by filling the pool with water,
allowing it to set for two or three days, draining it, and then repeating
the process up to a dozen times. When a piece of litmus paper dipped
into the water finally told us it was no longer alkaline, the pool was at
last considered cured. You were lucky if you finished the business in six
weeks.
A simpler system was to build the pool in the fall, leave it uncovered,
and let the winter weathering take care of the curing - which it did
very well.
A few years ago, however, we worked out a system for curing a pool,
quickly and surely, within a few days. This system reduces the work
of pool preparation to a fraction of what it once was and enables a man
to start building a pool in midsummer and bring it into bloom for a
good part of the remaining season. In Chapter 4, this matter of curing
is discussed fully.
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