Isabela House (Construction Log 44) Swimming Pool Progress
A bulldozer was used to compact the driveway areas as much as possible so the 20 ton concrete truck could approach the back of the piping truck standing beside the pool supported by its extended hydrolic jacks.
Everything went well to begin with an then unfortunatley one of the concreting trucks experienced engine problems and became stuck in our front gateway. This caused all kinds of problems. They lifted the cab to work on the engine but despite several attempts it still lacked sufficient power to move. They tried pulling it with the dozer but this was also unsuccessful. In the end they improvised. They managed to reposition the concreting truck back into our driveway and then transferred concrete to the dozer, a bit at a time. It then operated a relay to the poolside and dumped it onto the floor of the pool. An army of workers then spaded the concrete into the remaining floor area and then started to slap it onto the side steel framework. The team wheelbarrowed the concrete to the areas where it was needed while others continued to build up the sides. Water was added reguarly to the concrete in the truck to prevent it hardening and the piping truck ran a clearance spray from time to time for the same reason.
What could have finished at around 6 or 7pm became a marathon exercise, working against the clock to spread the concrete before it hardened. To the team’s great credit they worked on until around 1am in the morning to finish the job. As darkness descended we turned on every possible light in and around the back of the house and extended table lamps to the poolside with daylight bulbs fitted to provide as much illumination as possible for the concreters.
Here is a series of photographs I took yesterday, the most recent at the end:
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Huge pool, Rich! My wife would love this. Maybe we can come over for a swim when it’s all done.
It gives us the space we wanted to be both a playpool for non-swimmers and an exercise pool for those who can swim. We obtained two quotes before going ahead and then did a bit of bargaining to get the cost down within the budget we had allowed, bearing in mind the UK pound was already down to around 70pesos. Effectively we got the contractor to share some of the downside in the exchange rate or we would have cancelled the whole thing. The moral of the story is don’t be afraid to bargain with your contractor, particularly in these difficult times.
Andy