Putting in the Pool

Having lived in Hawaii for about five years and having finally accepted that the weather was indeed practically perfect year round, I decided it was time to put in a pool. There was plenty of room in the backyard. The grass had never really come in, and my feeling that “if it’s green, it’s ground cover” was rapidly waning in popularity. I had a little extra money from the sale of some property in Vermont, the timing seemed right.

A perusal of the yellow pages resulted in the phone numbers of three companies that installed fiberglass pools (I had heard too many horror stories about poured-in-place pools). One number was “no longer in service,” and another remained unanswered for several dozen rings. I considered it a good sign when an answering machine of the third installer took my call. After leaving several messages over several days (the answering machine and I were becoming quite close), I finally got a return call from Paul Puaai of Pomohai Pools (the names have been changed to protect the guilty). Paul was a really big guy, with a really big smile, and a passion for hyperbole. I must admit I liked Paul from the start, but I should have taken the hint when all my questions were answered with “well, it depends.” As it turned out, “depends” ran about $2000 extra and two weeks of additional construction time per each.

Things didn’t start out well. The “excavator guy” didn’t show up on the day construction was to begin, and after several more days of no-show, Paul decided to hire someone else to dig the hole. I should have been suspicious, when the new guy arrived with a brand new backhoe in tow--all the warning stickers still affixed--and an Owner’s Operating Manual in his back pocket. Needless to say, the final size of the excavation bore little resemblance to the original size of the pool. Nonetheless, the pool sat very nicely in the hole: sitting level, we later learned, not so much. After the pool was full of water, it had to be drained and “adjusted” and refilled. The adjustment was successful, more or less. That is to say, the less water in the pool, the more successful it appeared.

The pool was finally set firmly in the ground and the pool deck area was prepared for the pouring of concrete. The preparation was uneventful; the pouring was an event worthy of ticket sales. On the day the deck was to be poured, the concrete trucks didn’t arrive until nearly 4:00 pm. It was summer and sunset wasn’t until nearly 7:00pm, but there was definitely not enough time to pour and properly finish the concrete before darkness fell. This fact escaped Paul and so pouring commenced. It was about 7:30pm when Paul asked if I had any high intensity nighttime construction lights available. Surprisingly, I didn’t. I suggested he drive a few cars around back and shine their lights on the work site. He did, and surprisingly, it worked pretty well.

I was beginning to think it might all turn out okay, so I headed in for a little delayed dinner. It was then that I heard a very loud splash, followed by an even louder, “OH S**T.” When I rushed back out to determine the cause of the outburst, it became abundantly clear that dinner, delayed or otherwise, was no longer on the agenda. Unfortunately, neither was finishing the concrete. The huge, gasoline-powered, concrete-finishing trowel, rented specifically for this job, was sitting peacefully, upside down, on the bottom of the pool. “No big deal,” Paul assured me, “Hand troweling works better anyway.” As it turned out, hand troweling, in the dark, of concrete well past the finishing window of opportunity, was a bit of a big deal. “No problem,” Paul assured me, “we have special state-of-the-art coatings that will make it ‘smooth as a baby’s butt.” True enough, it turned out, if the baby in question had a serious case of diaper rash.

How did the pool look in the end? Well, it depends. If you’re looking at it at dusk, on a day with a spectacular sunset, and squint a bit, and are not standing on the pool deck with bare feet, and the water level is a bit low; not bad, not bad at all.

01-17-11