Day 5 and 6

Wow. Did a shit ton in the past two days. 


The gravel was delivered on friday. The original plan was to lay the gravel down and then put the stock tank(pool) on top of the gravel. The guy who delivered our gravel put the breaks on that. He literally stayed  for 30 minutes offering some serious design advice and the most important thing he told me was a simple thing I never ever would have realized. In the long run it could have ended in a serious catastrophe. He informed me that the gravel with its sharp edges would eventually wear through the bottom of the tank and ruin the tank, especially with the weight of the water. Duh. How could I have not thought of this? He said I should either pour a slab, bring in some sand, or build a platform. On friday I spent all day hauling, raking, and leveling the gravel. My friend Mary came by for a couple of hours in the a.m. to help me. Thanks to her, we got a lot done in a short period of time.


Fast forward to saturday morning where myself and Claire are buying wood for our new cedar platform. This was not part of the original plan but I worked it all out in my head on friday night and we had to get to the deck store before noon on saturday before they closed so we could get started on the platform asap. I leveled the base out while Claire worked like a machine and did some serious gravel hauling.I was happy with the finished result of the platform until I woke up at about 6:00 am this morning in a panic contemplating how super heavy water weighs. 8.34 lbs per gallon to be exact. I realized that the platform was going to have to hold the weight of the tank, water, plus people, and that could top out at 8500 lbs. at least. 


I spent all day today reinforcing that bad boy. Seriously, you can probably set a semi-truck on the platform and it probably will not  budge.............................. I hope. We will see when I fill the tank up this week. 


All that is left is hauling more gravel and leveling it out a bit, installing the pool liner and saltwater pump, filling it up, and hoping it stays level. 


It's amazing what I can get done in a week when I'm not rotting in the box. Too bad I have to work 50 hours this week. Blah. 


A few pics of the almost finished project. 

Thanks to Our neighbor. He and a bunch of his buddies, in the middle of a brisket cook off, came and helped us move it onto the platform 

Patio, fire pit, pool on platform and a lot of gravel finally down