Lakewood Concrete Pools

The day the concrete goes in, your back yard turns into a job site with a rhythm to it. A pump or a mixer parked at the curb, a hose running through the side yard, a nozzleman working the deep end with two people cutting and rodding right behind him, and a steady wall of noise from about eight in the morning. By mid afternoon there's a gray shell in the ground that looks close to a pool, and the crew is washing down.

People are usually surprised how quickly it happens after weeks of dirt and steel. That's the nature of it. The shell is placed in one continuous operation on purpose, because a cold joint in a water-holding structure is a leak waiting for a reason. Here's how the day runs and what has to be finished before we let a truck show up.

What has to be done before the concrete arrives

Excavation gets shaped to the design with the over-dig checked, because every inch of extra space becomes shell thickness and shell thickness becomes material. Then steel. A rebar cage tied in both directions, held off the soil on chairs and dobies so concrete gets completely around every bar, with extra bar where the engineer calls for it at the bond beam, the steps, and any raised wall. Our in-house structural engineer sizes that cage against the soil report and the pool's shape, and around here the report matters.

Plumbing goes in next and stays pressurized through the entire shoot. If a line takes a hit from a rod, we want to know that morning, not after the deck is poured over it. Skimmers and returns get blocked out, the hydrostatic relief valve is set in the floor, and the whole assembly gets walked before anyone mixes anything.

Shoot day from first truck to last cut

Sprayed shell against a shell cast in forms

Both methods make a solid pool and we build both. Spraying is what most residential shells get, because concrete placed at velocity against a steel cage follows a curved, sloped, irregular shape without anybody having to build formwork for it. Free-form pools with tanning ledges and carved steps are almost impossible to form economically. Sprayed material also goes in stiff and low in water content, which is part of why it performs.

Cast-in-place earns its place on straight-sided geometric pools, on shells that double as a structural retaining element, and on jobs where a formed finish is wanted. It's more formwork, more setup, and fewer crews do it well. On a Green Mountain slope, where a pool sits partly above grade with real lateral load on the downhill wall, our engineer sometimes lands there for good reason. Most of the time here, sprayed wins and the choice comes down to shape.

What has to happen in the days after the shoot

• Water on the shell daily for about a week, which is the single most skipped step in this trade
• Rebound and overspray cleared out completely rather than buried under the deck
• Plumbing kept under pressure until it's been inspected and signed off
• Hydrostatic relief valve confirmed working before anything gets backfilled
• Backfill around the shell placed in thin lifts and compacted, since your deck sits on it
• Tile and coping set once the shell has strength, then the deck, then plaster
• Fill and startup on the plaster company's schedule, not rushed to a party date