by Dan Empfield
7.22.02 (www.slowtwitch.com)
These pools can be placed indoors or out, free-standing or "hardscaped," and they can be above ground or below. Mine is going to be an outdoor pool with decking and what-not around it, and I decided to sink it halfway into the ground.
I did not get a deeper than standard pool—it is 4' deep. But I did have it built 9' wide and 16' long, which is 2' longer and wider than standard. The outside dimensions are going to be a foot longer and wider and longer than the inside. So I needed to dig a hole 10' by 17'.
Monty—Mark Montgomery, a longtime friend of Julie and I, and who is up here building a home next to ours—decided to dig the hole and execute a variety of other earth moving jobs with a dozer. He called up and rented a John Deere 550 something-or-other, which was delivered the next day.
Fortunately for Monty the truck which dropped off the dozer got stuck, and Monty had to use the dozer to extract the truck. I say this was fortunate because the fellow dropping off the dozer was forced to give Monty a lesson on how to operate it (otherwise the truck would still be mired in the sand). Without the lesson Monty, who had never before operated any sort of heavy equipment, wouldn't have known where to put the key into the ignition (and neither would I). And then there are all the levers, of course, which control various movements and make things go up and down, back and forth, etc.).
I showed him where I wanted the hole dug, and explained that since it was overlooking a 300' cliff he ought to have a good handle on forward and reverse prior to starting.
Monty turned out to be a natural. He was out there all weekend, and seemed to be enjoying himself. When he got done moving the dirt where he wanted it, he'd just push earth around the property. I ferried gas cans back and forth to town, and kept him topped off with diesel. I'd look out every now and then and occasionally I'd see a big set of steel tracks cresting a hill at a 30-degree pitch like Rommel surfing sand dunes in North Africa.
He dug me my 10' by 17', and it's probably deeper than the 18 inches or so that I asked for. Whatever. It is what it is. When the pool's in I'll find out how deep the hole really is, and I'll build my deck to accommodate it.
Today the pool showed. I had a little angst about this, because the whole Endless Pool shipment weighs, I don't know, about a ton maybe. Having been in the industrial field, as I was, you never know how something is going to arrive. I used to get shipments of wetsuit rubber in pallets so huge and heavy that our forklift wasn't big enough to unload them. The driver just looks at you and shrugs his shoulders, retires to his cab for a coke and a nap, and waits for you to figure out how to get your shipment out of his truck. With the Endless Pool shipment I didn't have a factory full of workers to help, it was just me.
Fortunately, the pool came in three containers, and the drivers—two of them—were prepared with pallet jacks and a liftgate. The pool is constructed and delivered in sections, and is rather modular, so I've got nothing to worry about (I think).
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