Let's Build A Pool! Part 9: Landscaping...Part 1

Let's Build A Pool!

Part 9:  Landscaping....Part 1

I know, I know... It's been a year. I've been yelled at by more than a few people for not completing this series and our Guest House Build series. I just dropped the ball - sorry. Everything is done, and has been for some time, so I'll go through the pool real quick in a few posts and then maybe just some finished product posts for the guest house.

When I last left the pool build a year ago, we had just gotten our spraydeck on and colored and were getting close on being ready to fill the pool. The guest house was coming along nicely as well and I figured it was time to get rolling on the landscaping. 

I'm going to say two things right here real quick: 

1. When you're planning any kind of project, don't forget about or skimp on landscaping. It will make or break the look and feel of your house/pool/whatever. 
2. I used and continue to use Mickey's Houston Water Works for all of our landscaping and highly recommend him. His crew is great, he has stuck with me (he was the only contractor to call after Harvey to see if he needed to address anything) and his prices are unbeatable.

Mickey's guys had prepped the beds already before bringing plants out. What you're NOT seeing here is all of the underground stuff they did. We added a complete sprinkler system for all the beds and areas around the pool and also ran lighting wire. The biggest addition though was probably drainage. When you build, you have to think about the drainage plan. Water has to go somewhere, and as flat as it is here you kind of have to help it. We put underground drains all over the place around this pool and all the beds - more on that later.

The first thing they did is lay out all of the plants and make sure we liked it. We added a few trees right behind the pool just to frame it in a little. When they got the OK, they put everything in the ground.

If you look carefully here you'll see Mickey's crew taking refuge under the guesthouse porch. We learned (better now than when the pool was finished) that our drainage plan wasn't working. All the black stuff you see is mulch just flowing into the pool.

We made some adjustments to the drainage plan - basically adding drains and extending the 4" pipe that carries most of the water away - and then remulched all the beds.

The following pics show sort of where we were at this point - notice I said "were".

It was looking pretty nice but then we had a solid thunderstorm again and realized that we still had issues with the drainage plan.

Here we go again!

Clearly we weren't moving enough water away fast enough. Fortunately, again, we hadn't finished and filled the pool yet so no real damage.

The answer to the drainage problems ended up being two fold. First, we just added gutters - big ones - everywhere! We basically just controlled where all of the roofline water was going to go. Secondly we extended our drains all the way to the runoff area at the street. It was a big job but now we don't really get any water backup and our mulch stays where it is supposed to. 

That said, Hurricane Harvey and the unusual freezes we had this winter did a number on our landscaping. We've had everything replanted and it looks good so the finished product pics will show that.