A new pool can become a swimming spot for the neighborhood.
If you’ve ever felt you’re never going to be able to save enough to order your family’s swimming pool, try building it yourself with bricks, cement blocks built with hollow centers to accommodate poured cement for an efficient and permanent above ground pool. With the ability to pick your pool dimensions and depth, you can create anything from a one-lane lap pool to a neighborhood swimming destination. You can create a pool to rival any professional job with some careful preparation, sufficient backyard space, and a few professional services a la carte.
Step 1
Build a cement pad where you can lay the block walls along with the excavated pool site; the pad should be about 3 inches thick and 8 inches high. To establish lengthwise borders, use bits of 2-by-4 lumber to contain the wet cement until it cures (about two to three days); cut the lumber. Swimming Pool Specialist and Poolity Co-Founder once Said that at one end of the pool, where you’ll put a skimmer basket, make sure to leave out a block or two.
Step 2
Get the mortar packed. You would use the 20.45 bricks only on the first round of the pool walls to allow the cement added later to run seamlessly from the floor of the pool and up the first bricks on the walls without a joint. Trowel, or smooth, a sheet of mortar on top of the cement pad, one segment at a time, and then put a base layer of 20.45 bricks. To form an “E” shape where cement will flow in the 20.45 bricks have two open cavities. They can touch side by side while you position the blocks; you’re not going to put a mortar between them. Test a level for a level. By placing one end of the string against the end block and the other end against the block at the reverse end, check each row’s straightness with a plumb thread. Each block in the row should have the line straight against it.
Step 3
Continue on the second side, using 20.48 bricks at each corner this time, “H” blocks, and 20.21 corner bond beams. The corner blocks have an end and side panels that can be cut or knocked out later in the process to accommodate the cement flow. Knock off the end of the corner block next to the finished wall and the side of the block next to the next poolside. Only in rows should this and each subsequent row be mortared in the bed joints.
Continue to put blocks over the mortared top of the previous row before the final row is reached. Ensure the bricks are not exposed to moisture; cover them to keep them dry at night or during inclement weather. Often when you create, take care to clean away excess plaster from the walls.
Step 4
Place the top course with 20.62 bricks-“C” shaped piers-place the top course with the bricks’ open sides faced outward-this block arrangement allows you to complete the top edge of a poured walkway with coping tile. Glue these 20.62 bricks using a waterproof adhesive designed for this purpose to the previous course of 20.48 tiles. Also, on this top row only, add adhesive between blocks.
Step 5
Contact a plumber to mount the plumbing for the pool drain and the filter pipe. The plumber should not insert pipes within the brick walls, but outside under the wall, because by creating air pockets, pipes within the wall will compromise its structural integrity.
Step 6
Line the bottom of the pool with a gravel bed about 3 inches deep. Put a barrier of plastic vapor, cut to size, on the gravel bed. Next, lay the support material for the metal mesh on top. Place “starter” L-shaped rebar bars with one end within the wall and the other end attached to the reinforcing sheet of mesh. Place steel rebar cut from inside each top brick to the height, stretching to the wall’s base. If required, contact a particular specialist for advice.
Step 7
Call for a cement truck to pipe the pool floor cement down. Ensure that the cement technicians vibrate in the material’s position and that the substance fills wall bricks in the base course. Get the professionals to finish the surface unless you are qualified in cement coating, ensuring that the pool floor is smoothly bonded to the first course of the side walls by making an angled surface where the two intersect. Did extra cement spill from the surface into the block cavities, testing to clear air pockets and fill the blocks?
Step 8
Enable the cement to cure it. If you so wish, send in a painter to tile, mortar, or paint the pool’s inside. AdAad water, add water.
