DIY Inground pool - Day 7.5

Another half-day effort in the books, mostly troubleshooting the walls bowing out when backfilling with gravel.  We did a lot of rework and added three turnbuckle supports to the step, this seemed to be the most vulnerable area.  After that we shoveled and carried a few more loads of gravel to fill everything to level (-2inches) and decided to practice a Pool Krete pour before tomorrow when we want to do it all.

Pool Krete is a ready mix product made of Vermiculite and Portland cement, along with some other fillers.  It is way softer than normal concrete so it is less abrasive to the vinyl liner while still supporting a lot of weight. Normal concrete runs around 3000 PSI while this mix is only about 200-300 PSI strength.  That is still a ton of weight so it is strong and light and perfect for this application. 

I found a local pool company in Murfreesboro that could buy it for me, called one day and it was ready the next, they used a fork to load into my truck so it was super easy!  runs about 20 bucks a bag and we bought 27 bags for our pool size.

The practice we did was on the step, luckily it was only 1' wide and 12' long, only took ~2 bags to complete, got to use the mixer for the first time too!   Bad news, about 10 minutes after we finished came a pop up storm that absolutely drenched my work, we tried our best to cover but couldn't get everything, looks like I will have some rework tomorrow. 

Electrician stopped by tonight in between rain storms to get a supply list.  I pulled the electrical permit today also.  Looking forward to hopefully knocking that work out tomorrow and getting the floors finished!

Here are some pics!







More tomorrow, stay tuned!

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