Digging a Big Hole part 3

Into the second week of work on the pool and prepping for the gunite.  With the stakes installed over the weekend, today's work was centered around installing the upper edge forms and the wood used to hold them in place.  Since the grade on the lake side of the pool is below what the final grade will be, forms are needed to make up the height so the gunite has something to be sprayed against.  The form also sets the final upper edge shape and height of the pool.  The top edge of a pool shell is usually much thicker and is formally called the bond beam.  It's tied into the rebar of the pool wall and is usually as wide, or slightly wider than the pool coping stone.  Currently the forms are at the setback of the excavation so I don't know how the bond beam will be constructed until the metal starts to go in.

Probably about 80 percent of the forms were installed on the first day, but as you can see in the picture above, the lake side of the pool needs more height added.  The yard side of the pool is just above the current grade and about a coping stone higher than the string on the metal stakes.  The forms are made of a thin fiberboard material that can bend easily.  Somewhere in the curved forms, the skimmer boxes will be placed, or at least bucks for the skimmer boxes.  There will be 2 skimmers, but the exact location is unknown to me right now.

   Here's the reinforcing installed at the junction of the deep end and the swim out steps.  I think Eli mentioned that he likes to shoot walls thick, so maybe the bond beam at the top will be the same thickness as the walls.  A good amount of backfill will be needed on the lake side of the pool, but also consider that some of that fill space will be occupied by base gravel and paver thickness for the paver pool deck.

   Here you can also see the height differential between initial grade and what is expected to be final grade. Just like on the lawn side of the pool, the curved forms here sit a little above final grade, but not by much.  The rest of the space will be filled with the fiberboard sheets, cut to height.

   This last shot is from the shallow end of the pool.  The form supports still need to be installed in this location and I'm looking forward to seeing where the height of the pool will be here.  I think the sun shelf should be around 9-16 inches deep.  In water loungers often come with varying risers so you can sit in as much or as little water as you want.  The sun shelf will have steps coming off the right side so you'll be able to sit on the left side with your legs deeper in the water.  It will also make a great place for the youngest member of our family to play until they learn to swim properly.  There will be a little Jandy bubbler in the middle of the sun shelf.  They have a little light in them and push water into a short bubbling fountain, but not so high as to be intrusive.  The height can be controlled with a ball valve and shouldn't add too much aeration.  Often times people will install pools with a waterfall feature that churns the water enough to start affecting pool chemistry.

   That's it for today, but I expect I'll have another update pretty quickly with the rest of the pool forms installed.  No definite timeline on this phase of the installation, but I think all the prep work will take about a week, so just a few days left.