And the work begins!! YAY!!!

[NWMNMom]

Swimming has commenced! Panels are mounted, plumbed with diverter, the solar reel is mounted - solar blanket attached, pump timer attached, poolside shower is mounted and operating and we are left with only minor items to tweak and some fixes.

Out of the solar panels we have one from before, the rest are new. The old one has a small leak (wasn't properly drained - expanded/cracked) There is currently glue on that - they don't always require plugging if the leak. One old leak from before was touched up just in case. Some of the fittings had drips but tightening took care of that too. The panels should be operating today and we are expected to actually get sun today as well so the water can warm up (73 degrees now)

We need to backfill a bit more for better runoff and add rock around it for asthetics.

Our 13yr old son did swim yesterday and gave the big thumbs up - (too cold for us - brr) He was kind enough to vac the bottom while in the pool - with snorkel and fins no less - lol.

Once again, a HUGE thank you to the kind folks on this board who helped us along the way, provided great ideas (DIY solar reel), and cleared up my never ending confusion about fill (we actually had to bring in an entirely new yard to replace the low, wet area we had) and the 411 on patio blocks.... Now, we maintain.....

[denanbob]

Congrats! I'm jealous!!!!!! We are just in the beginning stages of assembling our used 15x30x52 oval pool. I'd love some more info on the DIY solar reel. Does that mean you got it at DIY (I thought those went out of business but maybe just around here they did) or you made one yourself?

[NWMNMom]

We made it ourselves because I didn't want one that mounted to my rails, we don't have a deck on it and I didn't want one that I had to remove and put somewhere else if not mounted- My husband welded 20' of steel pipe to ss bearings attached to steel pipes mounted into the ground/concrete which stand 5.5' high, all of it is about 2.5-3' back from the end of the pool - he put a nice sturdy handle/crank on it to manhandle the big solar blanket off the pool - he manufactured strap loops from seat belting riveted on the blanket and flexible glue - straps are screwed into the steel rod. Its a big thing but does a nice job - that solar blanket is HEAVY. The only thing I would have done differently is gone a bit higher up so the blanket doesn't drag and hang up under the top rail/caps - we fold the sides in a bit to get around this but higher up and it would have solved that I think - too late now, concrete is hard. Could be that other reels have this problem too...don't know, we manually removed/folded our old blanket on the 18' round pool.

[denanbob]

Thanks for that explanation. I'm going to show it to my husband (who isn't happy with me right now for questioning everything he's doing with this installation, but he's doing it WRONG). LOL! Anyway, thanks so much for the information! Do you have a picture of your DIY reel to share?