Because of delays we had to wait a day for water trucks to fill the pool. We decided at the start of the project to not fill from our well, but instead pay to have water brought to us and pumped into the empty pool. Of course it rained the day between finishing and filling, so we had a wee bit of a head start.
Based on the dimensions of the pool and basic math, we thought the pool held about 44,000 gallons of water. This was the estimate we gave to Bay Area Water Trucks, and since one of their trucks holds 4000 gallons of water, we expected it would take 11 loads to fill the pool. So when a truck arrived promptly on Thursday, May 25, the driver was ready for a full day of shuttling water up the hill. It turns out just one driver was needed for the whole fill-up, as after each load he’d head back down to a city hydrant, hook up his meter and fill up, then drive back to Purgatory and unload. Thankfully he didn’t need a long hose run since access to the pool is just a short walk off the main courtyard.
The driver was very experienced at filling pools and he taped an old pillowcase to the end of hose after suspending it with rope. This made sure even at the lowest pump setting the water wouldn’t damage the new finish. The first load was the slowest part of the filling process, as he didn’t want to really open things up until most of the deep end of the pool was covered by water and the hose was floating freely.
A few truckloads into the process, we realized that the pool holds significantly less water than basic math had led us to believe. Instead of 44,000 gallons, in the end we needed just 35,000 gallons of water. Still a lot of water and still a very big pool, but almost 1/4 less than we anticipated and we got it filled with just 9 loads of water–coming up fully loaded was not an issue as these sort of trucks are what help fight fires in the mountains.
We then had to turn on the pump to start circulating and getting chlorine in the water. Our regular pool people were booked up, so we learned how to do it ourselves, including servicing some of the equipment and learning how to start the chemicalization. After we got things circulating, a technician from Pool Covers Inc came out and reinstalled the cover rails and sorted out the rest of the cover apparatus. We didn’t remove the cover from the channel during the resurfacing like we did during the balcony tile replacement last year, but left the cover rolled up in its channel. A few days after the cover was back on, a crew from Sea Bright Solar came out to check the solar panels they had installed almost two years earlier and make sure everything was good to fire up. And fire up we did–a heat wave meant the pool went from 72 degrees to over 90 in just a couple of days. We backed off the solar and the pool is now at a lovely 84-86 degrees.
And just like that, we were done, and not since the septic tank project nearly two years ago has a major project gone so smoothly. The choice to go with Adams paid off and we’re happy that the project is done, within budget with just a few unavoidable delays, and best of all, the pool looks awesome. Sure, there were a few hiccups–finding out the main drain never worked properly since it had been blocked up by the POs before we bought the place, and a small disaster in the studio building again caused by the stupidity of the POs (an issue tangential to the resurfacing project and which will be covered in a post or two once the “solution” is completed).
We came across two little pencil sketches the tile crew had done on the coping to explain to one another how the * across the bottom should go. Since these will fade away soon, I made sure to get pics of them.
And finally, here’s a vid of opening/closing the pool with some stroke action in between: