As we move along in the 2011 pool season we would like to let you in on some of our new pool installations around Massachusetts and Seacoast New Hampshire as they are happening. Today I want to share with you a pool installation currently going on in West Newbury, MA.
This is pool is a large lagoon style vinyl liner in-ground pool with steel steps, in-floor cleaning system and what will be a large paver pool patio.
Here we have a look at the house from the back yard at the start of the pool excavation. At this point we have no idea what we will hit as we get deeper into the dig but as you will see it was tough digging.
Something that is very important to point out regarding the in-ground pool contract and excavation. When we give a pool customer a quote or final contract the price of the pool includes one full day with the excavator and truck. In our extras clause along with gas and electrical costs it states that excavation beyond 1 full day will be $2,100 a day. Now why do we have to put this in here? Well unfortunately before we break ground we do not know for sure whats down there in the soil. If we hit ledge or just rocky tough digging soil it can significantly slow down the pool excavation, this can lead to an extra day or two on site which adds to the overall project costs. We always make sure our customers are well aware of this fact before hand.
This particular dig in West Newbury was a little extreme and we were on site with the excavator for 5 whole days! Now we did do a little extra work at this site for drainage purposes around the house but about 3 full days was taken up on the pool dig itself when we were only expecting to be there with the excavator max 2 days.
So what happened once we broke ground?
First we start digging down to shelf height or panel height. This is the level at which the steel wall panels sit. At this point the soil is rocky and consists of a good amount of clay but nothing serious. It is not until we start heading for the hopper depth that trouble arises.
Once the excavator started getting a little deeper it hit a “wall” or more like a boulder. The crazy thing was it didn’t just hit one giant rock it hit a bunch and this is when the dig day turned into dig days.
We hit a deposit of giant boulders not far into the dig that were the size of our bobcat. These rocks had to be scraped and pulled out of the ground by our excavator as they were obviously way to big to fit in the bucket.
Yet when faced with a rock problem we like to use the opportunity to be creative. The client is having us install a beautiful pave patio with this pool installation and the giant boulders would fit in nicely with the landscape. Using the excavator to place the large stones we create a nice natural backdrop to the pool area as seen below.
When it comes time to lay the paver pool patio here we will border these rocks with the paver stones and make a nice natural transition. AS you see in this picture we extended the patio to blend into the nature stone background.
This is one of the many additional on site services we can offer during the construction of any new in-ground pool. Every new pool should have something uique about it and this natural stone backdrop we provide just that for our client. More pictures to come from this in-ground pool installation in West Newbury Massachusetts wraps up in the coming weeks.
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