Let's Build A Pool! - Gunite

Let's Build A Pool!

Part 3:  Gunite

(bless you)

Thursday:

I knew that the pool was getting poured on Thursday or Friday, but the early morning sound of diesel engines let me know real quick which day it was going to be. (Turned out to be both though.)  There's a pump truck (the one on the left) and then gunite trucks that just back up to the pumper one after another.  They lined up down the street.  There was a delay getting started because the city inspector hadn't actually made it out on Wednesday (you can see his truck in the driveway).  He stopped by, chatted with David, and gave the thumbs up.

 
When they crank the pump up and you see the stuff come flying out you'd swear they could fill the entire pool in an hour.  It actually comes out very fine though so it takes a long time.  The pumping truck is LOUD, but the spraying is just messy.

As gunite continues to be sprayed, there are guys working behind starting to shape the edges and features of the pool.  They also do some more steel work and set things where they need to be.  You can see that they've built a steel and mesh frame for the bar top and they've set the lights for the steps to the dry seating area.

They get creative however they need to in order to give you what you designed. They're building a table for the dry seating here.  You can see a laser emitting device to the left.  It emits a perfectly level laser "ceiling" so they can make sure the pool is level.  They walk around with a stick that has an attachment on it and place it on the coping edge as they go.  It works great.  They actually had to chisel away a couple sections on day 2 because they were too high.

Here's a guy starting to shape the spa.  It seemed more like building a sand castle than working with concrete.

The stuff does fly everywhere.  The crew was really good about putting up tarps and plastic to protect stuff.  It got our aluminum fencing though.  I'm hoping we can find a solvent or something to get them clean.

In the morning I was told that these guys can sometimes do two pools a day, but ours "would probably take most of the day".  It took all of two days.  The guys worked late into the evening but still had a full second day to finish ahead.

Friday:

I wondered how they were going to build the frame for our waterfall feature. They just built themselves a form that held up the gunite as it was sprayed on. It worked well.

By Friday afternoon the crew was finished spraying gunite.  It dries quickly so you can walk around in the pool and check it out.

Here's the in-pool bar.  They used these tubes to form the gunite - simple and effective.

I noticed that they had dug out a few holes in the bottom of the pool all the way through the gunite.  I asked David and he explained that when a pool is empty, if the underground water table comes up (heavy rain or something I guess) it can actually lift a pool up and damage it.  The holes allow ground water to come up without lifting the pool.  I never would have thought of that.

When they were done with Gunite, the area was a complete mess.  I was expecting it to stay this way for a while, but on Saturday morning a crew came out and broke out the forms and completely cleaned the place up.  They even washed the patio.  It's cleaner than it was before!

Now for the next week or so I've got one job - water the pool.  It sounds weird, but to help the concrete cure stronger I spray it down a bunch of times every day.  I've been doing it about 4 or 5 times a day, so this sucker should be strong.