This is what happens when you are naive and don't know that the land you live on is mostly rock.
http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...l/3e9f3230.jpg
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This is what happens when you are naive and don't know that the land you live on is mostly rock.
http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...l/3e9f3230.jpg
Wow! Whereabouts in Texas are you? The Hill Country?
The edge. We are an hour due East of Austin. We built our pool last summer and the rock sure made for slow going.
Giddings, I suppose? I've heard of pools that cost 35K here in Houston running Austin folks 60K due to the excavation problems.Quote:
Originally Posted by adillenal
Exactly. Good guess. The local pool builder would not even come to our house to look at the backyard and give us a bid. That should have been a clue but there is an inground gunite pool about 4 miles down the road from us so we never thought about ROCK. Closer to town and in town isn't as much of a problem. We just happen to be in an area that has a shallow soil layer. NOW I found out about that. The aerobic septic system swe have should have been another clue. No field lines and the treated water is attached to a sprinkler system.
In a previous lifetime I was a steel worker for a small rebar fabricator shop and delivered steel to several sites where the homeowners were actually blasting to excavate a foundation (well, they weren't, a hired professional was).
Seems like it's be a more efficient way to do this, but I've no idea the cost comparison....
C.
THe teenager in the picture would have loved the blasting idea. :D He is looking for fossils in the broken up rock. That was interesting. We found lots of leaf fossils. Kind of interesting.
so what's the game plan for that rock?
I have both blasted and broke many jobs putting in pipe, it is a slow process (not that I minded), and makes the entire job that much harder. Another fun thing, generally breaking rock makes a void for water to fill into. You would want a wellpoint or two put in next to the pool in case something comes up in the future.
The neighbor used a lot of it to build a road and for fill. I am hoping he will move the rest of the plain dirt to level his yard. He is building a new house.
What is a wellpoint?
A wellpoint is a vertical pipe reaching to the area under your pool (preferrably gravel) into which you can push a garden hose to the bottom of the pipe, then use a pump on the garden hose to pump out any water that could exert hydrostatic pressure on your pool. If you ever need to lower your water level for a repair or something, this comes in really handy.
Thanks MAtt. I learn something new everyday.