Over the past weekend, I came to the conclusion that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with my swimming pool repair project this year.

The moment of enlightenment came on Saturday, when I spent most of the day working on the pool. It occurred to me that to effectively re-bed my loose coping stones, I’m going to need to grind a lot more mortar off the bond beam than I was originally planning. Otherwise, the stones are either going to be uneven, or they’re going to sit up too high. Grinding the beam down is going to require a power tool such as an electric or pneumatic chipping hammer. And, it’ll make enough of a mess that I think the pool will need to be drained. And, that means it’s not happening this year.

So, I’ve elected to put off the major repairs until spring (probably late April or early May). This summer, I’ll make repairs to the deck and caulk the expansion joint in the areas where the coping is sound. I should be able to finish that up over the next couple of weekends. Then when I close the pool, I’ll tarp the areas where the coping is off. Then I’ll drain the pool next April around the same time I would normally start up the equipment.

This past weekend, I got most of the expansion joint cleaned and filled it with foam backer rod. I learned something about backer rod in the process: After about 24 hours in the joint, it “settles” lengthwise. My butt joints now have about 1/2″ of space between them. No problem, I can fill them with little bits of backer rod. But, I’m glad I didn’t caulk right away.

With the pool empty next spring, I’ll have the opportunity to do some maintenance, such as..

• Touch-up areas of loose or peeling paint
• Inspect and re-caulk around light niches, return jets, main drain, etc.
• Inspect and repair a return jet that appears to have a threadded sleeve stuck in it
• Patch skimmers where necessary
• Inspect shell cracks and re-putty where necessary
• Install an overflow line (maybe)
• And of course, repair the coping stones and tile in the deep end

Hopefully after that, I’ll be good for another 5 years.

I love pool ownership. Really, I do.

I swung by Lowes today to see what kind of mortar (and mortar ingredients) they carry. Neither they nor Home Depot seem to carry white Portland cement, so unless I go through a supplier or lumber yard, it looks like my only choice is gray mortar. However, I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing. Most of the stuff is going underneath the stones, where it won’t be seen. Gray Portland is cheaper than white Portland. What about using gray mortar to bond the stones, then filling in the gaps and other visible areas with white grout? That might be a plan. I just need to look into what kind of “grout” (I put that in quotes, because grout, mortar, etc. all seem to be basically the same thing, namely portland cement, sand, and additives in varying ratios) I would need to get.

Lowes carrys Quikrete products (Home Depot carries Sakrete). They have a bewildering variety of different Quikrete products on the shelf…

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The task now, is to go through all of these, check the Quikrete web site to see what’s actually in each of them, and determine which product(s) are appropriate for my job. Stay tuned.

Today I officially got the pool project underway, after 6 weeks or so of procrastination. After a week of foul weather, I finally got a decent day, so I took off work and rented the concrete saw. It did the job quite nicely, and quickly enough that I only needed a 4-hour rental.

It took a bit of time to get the hang of the saw, but it was very easy to use. The blade had no problem cutting through the entire slab. The water feed did a great job of keeping the dust to a minimum, and it probably sped the job up by keeping the blade cool. I was not able to cut any of the curved areas, which I sorta expected. Not sure how I would handle these. A 7″ angle grinder might work for the area around the steps, but the corners are a little too tight for any kind of rotary blade.

Next I need to clear the joint and clean up the mess, which figures to be more time consuming than the cutting. The wet concrete dust forms a kind of pasty mud, which sticks to the deck and won’t fully vacuum up. I’ll probably end up using my pressure washer to clean it off the deck.

With the joint partially cleared, I can see that a lot of the fill around the pool has eroded over the years, from water seeping into the joint. I’m not planning on doing anything about it, as I’d need to demolish the deck (that’s a job for the next owner of the house). But, once I caulk the joint it’ll stop any further erosion.

Once I’ve cleaned the joint I may go ahead and fill it (at least partially) with backer rod, to keep junk from falling into it before it’s caulked. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish prepping the joint over the long weekend; then I can focus on re-mortaring the loose coping stones.

Oh, and the stupid Tulip Poplars have already started dropping leaves, and it’s not even July yet. It’s going to be a long summer..