Pool floor

The floor of the pool was poured last week. I haven't heard how things went, but the floor is in place. That's a whole lot of concrete. The mechanical room has also seen more concrete. We expect the building floor and other concrete work to continue over the next couple of weeks. One piece at a time..

Tying the bar

With most of the bar on site, the Pool Company spent the end of the week tying it all together in preparation for concrete on Tuesday. Imagine winding twist ties on a few thousand bags, except stooped over in a hole, in the rain, at 32 degrees, all day. I think that's pretty much what it's like.
It is moving along though.

Like molasses in January...or December as the case may be.

When it rains it pours...and when it doesn't it freezes solid! That's Oregon weather for ya.
The cold weather and delays in getting the rebar for the pool bottom made for a few slow days on the job site recently. The bar has since arrived and the guys from The Pool Company are working fast to have the mesh in and ready for concrete early next week. Freezing temperatures also made earthwork difficult. Plumbing continues on the building and the surge pit walls continue to rise in preparation for concrete delivery. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and warm up enough to allow the concrete to be laid down.

Gift certificates now available!

We now have gift certificates available for anyone wishing to purchase a brick form someone else. Bricks make great gifts!

Mud (the good kind)

Payne construction worked over the weekend to have the rebar in place to pour concrete in the surge pit today. The pit holds all the water that is displaced by bathers and is basically a big concrete tank. At 20" thick, the slab took several truck loads to lay down. All placed by a pump truck with a boom remote controlled by the guy standing on the left edge of the pit.

Nice to finally see some concrete going in. The main pool will have bar laid down this week and the slab will be poured late this week hopefully along with the foundation for the building. Things should go pretty fast after that according to project manager Nathan Payne. At least rain and groundwater won't be so much of a worry once the slabs are in.

Forming

The construction crew got a break in the weather today as they begin laying the forms for the concrete. The bottom of the pool is poured as a single slab with the walls added later through a "shot-crete" process. That should be interesting to see. Groundwater is starting to come up and over the weekend covered the white drain pipes in the bottom of the pit. John from The Pool Company came in over the weekend and pumped it down so that the guys didn't have to deal with it today. The pit with all the rebar sticking up is the surge pit, which is where all the water that is displaced gows when people get in the pool. It's basically a big concrete vault below ground level.

I'm impressed with the skill of the track hoe operator. Gerald of Payne Construction has amazing control over that huge machine. Take note of the gray pipes coming up all around the bottom of the pool. With only inches of clearance, he manages to move around and get things done without destroying anything. Fun to watch.

Next week, the slab!

Fundraising update

Thanks to the following generous donors:

Darrell Carmen

McDougal Bros.

Fern Ridge Chamber of Commerce

Mona Lindstromberg

Janet Lewis

Linda Boothe

Heidi Lyons

John and Cheryl Podpeskar

Meg Otto

Territorial Sports Program

Ethel Smith

Mary Ann Morton

Twinkle Morton

Kelley's True Value Hardware

EGR Engineering

Craig Harbison

Sherwood Pines

David and Christine Rider

N4RG

Tim Brooker

Lee Taylor

Mark Shequin

Gambill Insurance

Underground work week of 11/16/2009

Here's some photos of the excavation of the bottom of the pool. The pits are for the underdrain system to pump water out from under the pool, and for the pool drains themselves. Groundwater is still not much of an issue, though the pits do fill up at night. Notice the 14' of solid clay in the side walls. Ever wonder why things don't drain well in Veneta?

We got word this week that the surveyor mistakenly used a wrong control point for the survey. The looks around the table when he dropped this bomb were not good. You don't really want to hear that the survey is busted AFTER you dig a giant hole and plumb it in. The surveyor didn't look like he'd slept much. Thankfully, it looks like only minor changes to the plans will be needed to compensate, much to everyone's relief.

The next step to is backfill and compact the rock, and begin forming the slab for the pool bottom. Stay tuned!

Week of 11/9/2009

Site Prep

Here's a bunch of photos of the site clearing work. The pool is significantly bigger than the old one and has a much larger footprint that required removal of quite a few trees. Unfortunately, there where the best trees in the park. It really changes the character of the park. We'll be doing a lot of tree planting around the site, hopefully with something other than doug fir.

Demo video

Here's some video of the pool being taken apart. The whole thing came down in about 20min! I wish things went up that quick.

The Problem

As most of you know, the pool floated out of the ground in 2006 after being drained for repairs. Long story short, the contractor was late wrapping up the job and we got caught by a storm that dropped over 2 inches of rain in 24 hours. Groundwater came up, and the pool floated out of the ground by 4 feet. Pretty impressive site actually, but we all could have done without this particular physics lesson.

Here's a bit more background. What we have is a $3.2 million project. The City hired RSA to design the new pool facility and released the construction contracts in September of 2009. We had to allocate additional City funds to make it happen, but we are not ever going to see a construction environment like this again. We had to take full advantage of all the hungry contractors.

The bond measure passed by Veneta voters in 2008 (THANKS EVERYONE!) funded only 1/3 of the total project costs. To be able to release the project for construction, we had to remove the kiddy pool and spa, though they will be plumbed in so they can be added in the future. At this point, we still need an additional $250,000 to be certain we can open the pool for summer 2010.

This blog will follow the construction of the new pool and our ongoing fundraising efforts. I'll post pictures of the construction process, and give recognition to those who gratiously contribute to making this project a reality.

This is an open forum, so please feel free to post comments, questions, etc. I'll try to respond to anything that pops up.

ENJOY!

New Pool Designs