Rendering by Architect W. Brent Armstrong
Well, OK, I guess water leaking underground doesn’t actually go “drip…”
I have discovered one of those things in life that you always knew was a possible issue, but perhaps weren’t planning to have to deal with – or at least hoping that it’d be a while.
My new-to-me house here in Phoenix has a really nice, large, swimming pool in the back yard. It’s vintage 1971 and has held up really well over the years, having had one facelift back in 1989 according to the files.
It also developed a leak back in 1997 which was repaired.
The pool also has an in-floor popup cleaning system. 9 popup cleaning heads which keep the whole pool looking really nice in between weekly cleanings. Well, when one has plastic pipes buried under concrete 7 feet down under the weight of over 27,000 gallons of water …..
The pool has developed a new leak. The last one was fairly easy – it was located in one of the skimmers at deck level. No big deal – cut out the old skimmers, install new ones, good to go. This time, the leak has been traced to some place under the pool – in the cleaning pipe circuit at the deep end. A repair means completely draining all 27,000+ gallons, then jackhammering up the concrete, repairing the pipe, putting the concrete back and on and on.
The pool will be part of the house renovation. So, as part of that, its time to just flat abandon the in-floor cleaning system. Plastic pipe buried under there now for nearly 40 years – well, it’s probably the better part of valor to just eliminate it.
So now the conundrum is – shut down that one cleaning line, patch over the outlets and deal with it in a couple of years or get the whole pool project done first, before tackling the house? Somewhere along the way, the money has to be spent anyway, so my inclination at this time is to get the whole pool project done at once some time before next summer. It’s the single largest project in the mix that’s “all pro” as far as the labor and such needed to get it done. Many parts of the house (wall framing, demolition, plumbing rough, etc.) I can handle myself – I can’t tear down and re-gunite a swimming pool myself!!
I keep reminding myself that this renovation is going to be a marathon, not a sprint.
