Helllpp Fassssssssttttttt!

[posguy]

Now thats country living Matt. Beautiful piece of land! I get property envy when I see some of these pics. I was just able to clear the 7' setback limit on the back and sides for my 24'rd pool on my little .25 acre. Nice pool too.

Anthony

[hrsdennis]

Hey Matt, I did say glance at the instructions. Never more than that or it would not be very manly.

Yard envy, big time. That is really nice.

As for the walls, at least that is one thing Doughboy does right. They split the wall of all of there bigger pools into two sections.

Walls have gotten much heavier over the last few years. A while back all pools were 48" walls with few larger than 24' or 16' x 32'. Now it is not uncommon to see a 33' foot round pool with a 54" wall. Yes, they weigh a ton.

I have completely quit trying to lift these bad boys. I move them with a dolly and use a back and forth rock and roll motion to unwind the wall as I put it into the bottom rail. It is still a one man operation for me and does not really slow me down. A lot more grunting and groaning though.

Later, Dennis

[matt4x4]

Thanks for the comments - yes, we love our little piece of heaven, we've had the creek flood over in winter, then freeze and we have had as much as 2 acres perfectly skateable - a great neigbourhood skating party!
My dog's the real beneficiery of this place since he's home all day long chasing squirrels, digging up gophers and anything else he can find - he doesn't even like coming in at night anymore, a real country dog!

Dennis, yes, those walls do require a lot of back and forth, I did mine with all the sand in there, ended up just shoving planks under it and keeping a couple spares to move to once one set ran out - having a solid surface under it makes the unrolling job easier.

[NWMNMom]

Matt, we did ours exactly like you described with the planks. BTW, what is the wall pattern on your pool called? It looks almost exactly like ours....Mystic Palm it was called.

Beautiful yard - how do you mow all that? Must have a yard tractor with mower? We live out in the country too, but have a lot more woods surrounding everything - we popped our pool back into a nice protected spot only open to the west, but not too much (house is maybe 75' to the west) We get some STRONG N and S winds sometimes - but rarely feel more than a breeze at the pool.

Your solar reel was our inspiration for building ours. Nothing mounted to the rails of the pool, nothing to lift off and put somewhere else.

[matt4x4]

Thanks NWMNMom,
Not sure what it's called, I think Boreal according to the brochure http://www.piscinesvogue.com/_media/.../Impact_US.pdf

As for mowing, yes we have a lawntractor, we're working on woods, I have many baby maples in the field behind the pool, our place is pretty much surrounded with trees along the fences, and our driveway is lined with many maples, we have approximately 20 Willows of all sizes - they may be messy, but they're beautiful trees, and when you live in the country as you well know, a messy tree is not a bad thing as long as it's not near the house or pool!
We get good breezes at the pool due to it's open location, therefore teh need for the solar cover, it's actually more of an evaporation shield than anything else, our solar panels do the heating, the pool is usually 5-10 deg warmer than anyone else's in our little hamlet, even though almost everyone has a pool, the kids seem to swarm to our house for a swim.

[prh129]

Hey Matt,

Great pics. Nice job with your pool.

I installed my solar reel (24' round AG) the same way you did at one end of the pool. I find that I have to go back and forth a few times rolling it up to keep it from hanging up on the top rails and also to keep it rolling up evenly on the reel. It seems like a round cover just isn't going to roll up as easily as if it were rectangular. Do you have any tricks to make it easier or is this just the way it is?

Thanks

Peter

[matt4x4]

Hi Peter,
I don't have the problem with it hanging up because of the blow molded resin frame, everything is smooth without corners or edges for it to catch on, however, it CAN stress it a bit to get it over the hump at first, so what I do to avoid long term wearing is:
I pull the blanket towards the roller about 8-12 inches, making sure I've pulled it over the edge all around that 1/3 of the pool, then I start rolling it up, after 2 rolls, I stop, go to the other side and do 2 more, every time I change sides, i pull the blanket out perpendicular to the roller to keep it rolling relatively flat, other wise it bunches up on itself, once it's rolled up, I use 3-4 bungee cords to hold it in place. Takes me about 1-2 minutes.

When I unroll it, I get in the pool and just pull it towards my exit directly opposite - this is usually a 20 second job. I've placed a 3 foot piece of webbing onto it for pulling purposes dead center of the stairs and have cut slits with 2" holes where the poles of the stairs are so it all wraps around the equipment - works really nice and stops it from trying to spin/skew since it pretty much locks in around the stairs now.

The easiest way is to get my wife on one side, me on the other, I just have her hold the blanket at it's widest point and follow it to the roller while I do the same on my side and just keep rolling it up, saves me jumping from side to side and cuts the time down to 30 seconds.