Per the tiling post, the pool deck is being paved with the same ivory travertine used for the pool coping and the rear wall. The pattern will be quite different though.

When I designed the pool, I placed the entrance in the corner nearest the main residence. The elevation of the pool deck at this point is 1200mm below that of the wooden deck above it, which is at the same level as the house. Stairs are thus required. Once through the gate I wanted the whole area to feel open and so designed the stairs to descend in both directions. The alternative of stairs descending towards the pool with a rail on the side would look quite awkward, creating a wall on the deck side of the stairs.

With a plethora of manufacturers and models for pool solar controllers, it can be challenging to put together a system that just works, without resorting to sourcing everything from a single manufacturer and buying their overpriced controllers.

Once the core project is complete, we’ll be having someone install solar-thermal panels on the roof of the house. It’s the one job I’ve decided to outsource as I’m not keen on spending a few days on the second story roof securing them. I also don’t have the requisite safety gear to work up there and am not keen on buying it just for one job.

Around the pool perimeter we’re laying 30mm ivory travertine stone and continuing it onto the pool deck. The 30mm thickness provides a nice lip for the pool edge. The two main edging options for the lip are square edge or bullnose (i.e. rounded). Our stone tiles already have a square edge (bullnose edging typically costs more) and we’ll be keeping it.

As discussed in the last tiling post, we’re using a slate stacked stone to provide texture on the retaining walls and to give a nice dark contrast against the ivory travertine deck and coping. The texture of the stacked stone will also provide great shadows for the on wall lighting.

With all of the structural elements in place, we can now begin the work of making everything look pretty. The bulk of this work involves tiling all of the surfaces. Specifically:

Where there is water, there should be plants. To this end, the design includes a generous flower/plant bed at the shallow end of the pool. The design is such that the top 600mm or so is plant bed, while beneath that we have a large storage cupboard, accessible via a door from the lawn below. The final product should look something like this:

As discussed in the “How to avoid your pool turning into a boat” post, the project requires a great deal of drainage:

Our block straddles a a hill that slopes down towards the ocean. This provides tremendous views on the downhill side, but at the cost of providing the uphill neighbors an elevated perch from which to witness our summer frolicking.

I haven’t bothered to write too much about the landscaping efforts surrounding the pool itself as it’s not particularly interesting, but below are a few photos of the vegetable garden built on the downhill edge of the pool.

A beam of concrete around 200mm thick is typically poured on the ground around the edge of the shell, locking it into place. Something like this:

The original plan called for placing the skimmer on the deck side of the pool, simplifying the pipework and avoiding any interference with the retaining walls on the other sides. This also would have simplified the bond beam concreting for the skimmer, with the ground providing natural formwork.

There’s a lot of backfilling to be done. In addition to filling the gap between the pool shell and the newly built retaining walls, there’s also the rear retaining wall that can now be safely filled in. The graphic below shows the key areas in red:

The next step is to build the retaining walls that will enclose the pool on three sides. These walls are built upon the footings that were poured just before we broke for winter.

Once the inspector had completed inspecting our glorious temporary fence, it was time to finally get some water into the pool. A milestone to be sure.

After a long break over the winter, it’s finally time to get started again. In this part of the world even a pool that is under construction must have a compliant fence in place if more than 300mm of water is to be placed (or could potentially accumulate) in the pool.

It’s crunch time. After much effort spent excavating, building a base, making a mold, and filling it with steel, it’s time to fill it all up with concrete.