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| How to construct a Concrete Pool |
Excavating
The amount of work you will have to do depends upon the texture
of the soil in which you sink your pool. If the soil is firm enough for an
excavation to hold shape - a heavy clay, perhaps - you will need to build
only one form, the inside one, to hold the concrete. The faces of the
excavation can serve as the outer form.
If the soil is crumbly, possibly with a lot of sand or gravel in it, you
will have to build both inside and outside forms. In either case, it will
be wise for you to lay planks along the edges of the excavation as you
dig so they will hold up cleanly under your weight.
The length, width, and shape of the pool are up to you, but ideal
conditions for growing water-lilies, ideal for their well-being and for
your convenience, call for a water depth of 2 feet. This allows about a
foot for the containers of soil in which the lilies will be rooted and a
foot of water to cover the crowns of the plants. A pool this deep will
allow flowers and plants to grow comfortably, and yet it is not so deep
as to make the business of climbing in and out of it to plant, to rearrange flowers, or to clean, a difficult or awkward job.
Add another 2 inches to the height of the walls, because pools look
best when the water level is about 2 inches short of the brimming point.
Allow up to an inch of side wall to extend above ground level so as to
keep surface water from draining in during rainstorms.
Save the sod when you make the excavation. Set it out of the way
and give it a good watering now and then. It will be handy for patching up or for edging the pool when you are finished.
Depth
For a pool 2 feet deep, excavate to a depth of 3 feet. Six inches of
that extra foot are to be filled with hard-tamped cinders, gravel, or fine
crushed stone. The other six, of course, will be the layer of concrete
which forms the pool floor. An ideal thickness for walls is also six inches.
When you get the excavation down 2 feet or so, take pains as you
progress to keep the floor as level as possible. Slight irregularities in an
off-level pool bottom are easily covered over by the concrete. A big
irregularity is another matter, indeed.
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