In the morning we met with Rich (DC Enclosures) and discussed what we were going to do with the dirt being pulled out of the back yard. Much of it will go into leveling our driveway to make the top portion a bit handier for people who visit. Typically, anybody who parked in the “turnaround pad” found their car to be on a steep enough angle that opening the door and getting out proved to be somewhat of a challenge.
So we will be widening the driveway and making the bottom part of it somewhat steeper. This will allow us to bring the top part much closer to level. We also will not be nearly so aggressive in the slope that is built into the driveway (the side to side curve that will help redirect water where we want it to go – the reverse of a crown).
The pile of dirt in the front yard continues to grow and will grow even more tomorrow as about 3 feet of our driveway – at the side of the house – is broken off and then the underlying dirt is excavated in order to prepare a massive footing that will be required to properly secure the new retaining wall.
Our driveway is really taking a beating. When you combine the fact that it was already showing some signs of shifting with the removal of the support the old, rotting retaining wall provided and the pounding of the heavy equipment moving back and forth over it it is small wonder that it’s now sinking and cracking so much
I looked over at our neighbor’s house to check out their retaining wall which was rebuilt about 3 or 4 years ago and can see that it is already leaning noticeably. I don’t want to mess about with a half-assed job like that. We’re going with a properly engineered solution so that my investment in the new driveway and the security of both me and my other neighbor below this wall will be assured.
The pool dig is largely done. You can see the actual shape of the pool as the deeper hole inside of the larger hole. The extra room of the larger hole is for the rebar, support and drainage that needs to be installed around the pool.
The black panels are the walls of the pool from DesJoyaux. The big “grooves” or “pockets” that you see on the bottom of the smaller pile will be filled with concrete when all is said and done.
The blocks you see at the bottom of the pool hole represent the bottom of the finished pool. The guys spent a LOT of time working with leveling devices to carefully place these. These will assure that the rest of the pool is set up correctly.
This unit in the center of the picture is the filter unit for the pool (upside down). One of the appeals of the DesJoyaux system is that there is very little plumbing involved, no bottom drain, no skimmers beyond the one on the filter unit itself. So there is less to worry about breaking due to freezing or heaving. The filter is positioned to promote a clockwise flow of water. Because you’re not moving water around through an array of pipes, you don’t need as powerful a motor. The unit I’m going to have will consume between .3 kWatts and 1.6 kWatts depending on whether I’m using the high or low setting (that’s about .4 to 2 horsepower).