Cannon Ball

So a couple of years ago I was at my cousin Jacq's in Marfa and she had a stock tank in her yard that she was going to turn into a pool. I thought this was brilliant and filed that into my list of things I wanted to accomplish when I became a lucky homeowner.

Enter the heat.


Now that we have our own place and it's ridiculously hot, I decided it's time for our very own stock tank pool. I have done a little research online and a couple of people have already attempted to do this very same thing. The Brick House and Waldorf Modern  have a few tutorials on how they set up their pools. I am going to try something a little different.I am going to line ours with a pool liner so the salt water, if I decide to go this way or chlorine (yeah yeah I know, but I grew up in a chlorine pool and Im still alive, healthy and hey I'm weaning of the antipsychotics now as we speak) won't erode the steel tank. I also drank out of the water hose as a child. What what? I am going to add a pump and filter, so I won't have to waste water each time by dumping it out and refilling when the water gets nasty. The tank I bought today is ginormous at 10 ft  round x 2 ft high and holds 1100 gallons. Refilling each and every time or dying from some bacteria stowing away in the tank is out of the question. Gotta have a pump. 


How hard was it to get home? A pain in my ass honestly. Oh and my friend Jess's. He lovingly helped me haul this baby home.  He happens to work right by the place that I bought the tank from and when I found out they wouldn't deliver it to my house, I asked Jess to help with a favor. I think we both thought it would be easy. Just strap this bad boy to the back of his pickup and head home. Oh no. It's never that easy though. 

I mean it hung off the sides of Jess's truck say 2 ft each way, but I thought, "oh yeah, this is totally going to work." But I grew up in Louisiana and he grew up in California and he felt that this was a little too backwoods red neck of sorts. This big tank was totally going to blow off his truck and kill someone he figured. Reluctantly I agreed. Flash forward to us two hours later, in the sweltering 101 degree Austin heat today, finally finding a flatbed truck to rent. 

Loading it up 

So the plan in the next few weeks is to build a deck around it, add a liner, pump, and filter, fill it up with water, and enjoy for the summer. Thanks to Jess for helping as I couldn't have done it without him. 


Now, who wants to swim. We are having a pool party and everyone is invited. Just NO DIVING or RUNNING or I'm gonna have to blow the damn whistle.