My own pool(s)

[heaviest]

I had a small pool that I never set up because of privacy issues. So, I got rid of it. But the neighbor solved the problem. I didn't want to put up a big privacy fence...but he did! And I was gifted a small pool. Two, actually.

One is an inflatable kiddie pool. Huge, though. Inside dimension 4x8 feet. About twenty inches deep. It's enough to float a single-wide air mattress. I've had that one out a few days.

The other is a one-piece 13-foot round pool, 33 inches deep, that is narrower on the top than it is on the bottom, so it's like a huge bowl of water, where the shape of the thing holds the water. This is like the one I got rid of, but bigger, I think. It even has a pump and filter, though I expect that thing to be noise as it is a cheap piece of crap. This pool will be big enough to float a double air mattress. It's too tall for Spry Girl and other large guests to step over, but I'm going to put it next to the patio, which will make that side easy enough to step over, and I'll have to rig something on the inside of the pool to step onto. I'll also have to level the lawn and lay a lot of sand.

Speaking of sand, I already bought that. I had sixteen bags that I use for stressing inflatables, and I bought another sixteen bags for the pool base, and before I use it for the pool, I'm going to load up an air mattress with 1600 pounds of sand, plus 600 pounds of weight plates, plus a couple hundred pounds of other weights, plus me. Because science!

It's been a cold spring. I have lots of the thermal pool cover material and I've used it on the kiddie pool and it works well. The public pools are still really cold, though.

[heaviest]

Re: My own pool(s)

Since I temporarily had 32 50-pound bags of sand on my hands, I put them all on a double air mattress, with 600 pounds of weight plates, 300 pounds of dumbells, 60 pounds of ankle weights. I left a big enough patch free for me to sit on. Over 3000 pounds. It was HARD under my butt. I was on it for about five minutes before I heard a rush of air and the thing went flat. Ripped around the ends of one of the inner baffles.

I've always wanted to load up the watermelon island float with all the weight on one half and see if I could blow an inner baffle on the other half. I couldn't fit all this weight on it like that, but I did get it loaded so that one whole radial segment was exposed, with both its baffles taking all the load. That segment bulged LARGE. I sat on it a while to feel how hard it was (very hard!), but then I sat on the sand bags to increase the load on the unloaded segment. But then it just gradually got not so hard and the thing was clearly leaking. Very disappointing end.

Next was an 18-pocket single-wide air mattress. I was hoping the inner baffles under the pillow would blow, but the very end of the thing blew a seam before I had all the weight loaded.

And a flimsy intex transparent mat. I've had well over 1000 pounds on these things, and the pillow grows and grows until it explodes. It takes ten-ish minutes once all the weight is on. I wanted to see what would happen if I just kept adding weight. The pillow exploded when I got to about 1500 pounds.

Next up a walmart single-chamber air mattress much like the intex transparent mats. I think these are less sturdy. This one exploded when I got to about 1100 pounds. I've had at least a couple hundred more than that on the intex mats for ten-ish minutes, so with a sample size of one, I've determined that the walmart mats are, indeed, less sturdy.

[heaviest]

Re: My own pool(s)

I got a patch of lawn adjacent the concrete patio leveled and covered in sand and installed the 13-foot pool there. Put a rubber mat on the patio next to the pool for slip-free pool entry, and a rubber-wrapped concrete slab sunk in the pool as something to step onto. Two metal rails along the edge of the patio with a 36-inch opening between them (Spry girl is a little wider than that but easily squeezes through).

Next project was to build a sun shade out of poles and mesh. Looks pretty cool. Angled kinda like the backstop fence behind home plate at some baseball diamonds. I nice bit of work if I do say so myself! Between it and the neighbor's privacy fence, there are a few hours per day my little pool has just filtered and indirect sunlight, and Spry Girl can float there without burning (she's very white!).

The 13 foot pool, which actually measures somewhat less than that around the top, is large enough for a double air mattress with lots of room to spare. It's not big enough for two of them. But I can mostly sink an 18-pocket single while Spry Girl floats comfortable on a double.

As I'm being stingy on the aircon this year, we're really enjoying the pool. Wish I had the budget for a larger one.