Doughboy with slurry or Johnny W with dirt?

[hrsdennis]

Hi, I do recommend the Doughboy pool but not the slurry or the way Doughboy says to do it. Any pool can be installed in the ground. When I do this I like to have between two and three feet extra area around the pool also dug out. This makes installing the pool much easier. Being able to walk around the pool is critical for my installs.

When the pool is up and full of water the ouside can be coated with roofing tar and backfilled with dirt. As long as you keep your pool water above the dirt level you should not have a problem.

That's the way we do them anyway. Best of luck, Dennis

[maureenc26]

Thanks everyone for the input so far!

A few things:
we live in Illinois, so we definitely deal with the freeze/thaw cycles! The frost line is something like 42" (at least that's the depth deck footings need to be to meet code.) Wonder how that will affect the pool. Now the kids are asking for a deeper end -- don't know if that's better or worse for potential pool "heaving" due to freeze/thaw cycles.


What happens if the liner gets a leak -- would the water just sit between the liner and the pool wall and begin the rusting process? Seems like it would be the same whether it's tar coating the outside or slurry. (BTW -- Doughboy installer said that, although not necessary, we could slap on some tar once the pool is up and filled, and before they come back to fill the 1' space with slurry.)

I'm wondering too if I should plan to lay some drain tile to catch any water from higher in the yard that otherwise would treat the pool buried 24 inches in the ground like a dam -- then i'd have connecting drain tile run away from the pool, still in the general run-off direction but to a lower point in the yard than the bottom of the pool.