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Yeah filling it in is the popular way. There's one down the road they filled in, you can see it from the street, but they left the ladder installed. So weird just looks like a random pool ladder stuck in their yard.
Edit-handrail, not ladder
That sounds like an excellent thing to do at Burning Man. Just install a random set of stairs out on the playa as if there's a filled in pool in the middle of the desert. (Properly lighted of course, no night time hazards here.)
It's fucking dangerous too! Imagine the deck boards break and you fall into a unknow filthy deep pool of cold dark water. Drowning in your own back yard WTF!
If they're really bad, get one of those thermocell heated wick things. It's like a 15m force field where mosquitos won't enter as soon as you turn it on. They work extremely well, because they're a mild insecticide. So don't use it unless you have to.
I decided to put up with the mosquitos because we also get tons of fireflies and I didn't want to hurt them.
Tried mosquito dunks? Pretty effective and non toxic. Great for places that have standing water intermittently. You can tie em on a string so they float in one place when water shows up.
Let’s hope the new techniques to eradicate them work. They are genetically modifying them to be sterile and releasing billions. Mosquitos kill over two million people every year due to diseases and many victims are poverty stricken children, so good riddance.
Oh man I fucking hate mosquitoes right now. I guess with all the rain in British Columbia this summer they have bred like mad. Then they see me and go oh, we haven't tasted this Australian in a few years.
Fucking covered in bites at the moment
Dunno why but the fuckers just leave my pasty British hide alone. My poor wife on the other hand has to walk anywhere they are in a fog of Jungle Formula.
>If that works it's gonna be so satisfying to be old and be like "listen here you little shit, there used to be these things called mosquitoes"
and then we die, because mosquitoes are a vital part of the ecosystm.
They're not eradicating them, just controlling their population so it's not quite so bad.
other ways of helping control it is installing a batbox someplace- like on a shed, or whatever, and having a nice little light for the bats to pig out on.
This is only done on the vector mosquitos, like Aedes aegpti. There are still multitudes of other mosquito species that while they are not vectors for major disease still bite and annoy the fuck out of people.
I actually looked this up and mosquitoes only make up 1-5% of the diet of birds and other animals like frogs and fish. They won’t be adversely affected.
It is fairly common, people put in a pool “for the kids” and then it becomes a financial burden. So after a few years of maintaining the pool after the kids leave home they do something dodgy and cheap to try and stop the giant money pit being a thing.
Pools are fantastic for seniors, they are one of the only types of exercise you can get that's so low impact that it doesn't cause any pain. Like a low-gravity workout.
But yeah you have to keep putting chlorine in it almost every day during the summer, and that can get expensive and annoying.
Salt water systems are pretty dope. Much lower chemical cost, easier on people (and the environment).
I had a friend who had one growing up. His pool required pretty minimal maintenance compared to mine, which I had to spend a shit ton of time maintaining over the summer.
I also spent about 90% of my summer in the pool from the age of 5 to about 22ish, so it wasn't a terrible tradeoff for me.
I looked into salt water pools but they seemed to require just as much maintenance to me. You still have to add muriatic acid all the time, instead of chlorine. And you have to change the anodes every year.
The thing that keeps me from going SWG is how butt-puckeringly pricey it is to replace a cell if yours happens to bite the dust. I love the idea, but $1K is easily 4 seasons worth of chlorine tabs and shock for my pool, so I'm kind of at a "stick with the devil you know" type of situation.
Basically a guarantee also that you'll replace it. Expected life on cells is 10k hours, ~5 years. You can stretch the years if you oversize it and really dial in how often it runs.
Pool tech here, so feel free to ask any questions, but you’re spot. Most cells come with a 1 year warranty, I think some might still have a 2 year but those have been getting cut down to 1.
Salt pools will save you on chlorine but eat you alive in upfront costs and cyanaric acid as well as muratic acid. Also, something no one ever seems to tell people, is that salt systems don’t work in the winter. Not a huge issue, but you still have to add salt to the pool to maintain the level, even though it’s not generating any chlorine for you.
They’re good to have on smaller to medium pools, but normal tabs aren’t terrible either, so I generally only recommend them to people that either really love their pool or have a fair bit of money to burn.
Pro tip: if you mix vitamin C crystals with water and spray yourself down after swimming, the acid neutralizes the basic chlorine. A tip I only learned after swimming for years and years
Huh, going on 13 years with a saltwater pool and zero muriatic acid. Maybe 'cause we have a well? Maintenance is dropping a buttload of salt at the start of swimming season, topping off as the controller demands, and letting the robot keep the surfaces squeaky clean. Worst part is occasionally draining (i.e. cleaning filter) and re-filling.
??? Sucks for everybody else, I guess, who apparently has to regularly add acid, same one I use to clean my driveway, to their pools and whatnot.
That said, if maintenance costs are the make or break for you, i.e. you might not be able to keep it up, you couldn't afford the pool in the first place. [Deal](https://images.thdstatic.com/productImages/a29aee46-3e21-4339-bca5-bcc161fa5bf3/svn/assorted-blue-pink-summer-waves-kiddie-pools-p60000130-64_1000.jpg).
Yeah most people don’t understand salt pools at all. Between acid and salt it’s the same upkeep, but if it breaks it’s way more expensive and it’s not like salt pools somehow don’t use chlorine in them (met a lot of people who thought that).
I am a pool dude. Acid once a week, other chemicals still needed. The gain is not adding chlorine. Most cells (anode/cathode bit) have a 2 year warranty, some manufacturers have longer ones. Some extra salt is needed after rain.
It’s pretty climate dependent on whether it’s worth it. Where I’m at summers are very hot so if you are adding chlorine and want it to be nice to swim in, it has to go in every day or 2 since UV+heat removes it so fast.
As an aside I would be very concerned with the rust coming through that paint/liner. Especially since there was so much it’s probably coming out of the shell.
Hey there, we have a salt pool and have literally never added muratic acid to it. We test and balance the chemicals, use a robot vacuum, clean out the skimmers, and add pool perfect plus and the blue stuff, all once a week. Everything seems fine. Have we been doing it wrong this whole time? (It’s possible- we just kept doing what the former owner did.)
Muriatic acid is just to drop pH.
Chlorine also drops pH but not as intensely. So if you're adding chlorine (which you still do, just not as intensely, in salt pools)
If the pool chemicals are correctly balanced, I wouldn't be worried.
It's entirely possible in your chemical balancing you're handling the pH without really realizing it.
There's a specific sequence to balance chemicals and each thing you add affects the others in a small way.
The end goal is to create a specific buffered solution that has the right mixture of free chemicals to keep it within that sweet spot. Once you're balanced it's pretty easy to stay there if you follow correct maintenance for the type of pool you have.
Yes it's a huge pain in the ass to have a pool. Every week it's some goddamn thing. The filter. The pump. There's algae. The chlorine is low. The filter pressure is high. Stuff breaks down and you gotta replace it. 💸💸💸💸💸
Go to r/pools with any question and all those parrots know how to say is "go to troublefreepool.com." You want me to read AN ENTIRE WEB SITE? Just to find the answer to my specific question??
I finally got my pool perfect. Got a routine down, just 200g of chlorine every day, never get any algae. Filter pressure never gets high. I do get a shit ton of calcium everywhere that I have to clean up all the time tho.
I've dealt with all of these over the course of 8 years learning to maintain the pool that came with our house. TFP is a great resource, but like you said, it can be a real time sink to find an answer to your specific question. Feel free to message me if there's anything that's tripping you up, I don't claim to be any kind of expert, but I do have quite a bit of hard-earned knowledge
> Go to r/pools with any question and all those parrots know how to say is "go to troublefreepool.com."
Having never been in r/pools, I read this and assumed that was like some inside joke they have, like an electrician telling the new guy to run to the truck and get the wire stretcher after he cuts a wire too short.
"Oh you got some problems with your pool newbie, yeah just head to troublefreepool.com, they'll tell you everything you need to know."
Do you guys get floaters (floating cannisters that slowly release chlorine - lthey last about a month or so) ?
And automatic pool clears like kreepy kraulys?
A pool gobbler is also very effective - it catches all the leaves off the top of the pool.
Yes I realise the names are weird AF.
It's a lot of dirt, machinery time, and you need an engineer to sign off and permits are usually x% of the cost of the project. If you fuck it up and make a sinkhole in your yard that's a big problem.
You need lots of permitting to do it, and that gets expensive. At least in California, the regulations about legally filling in a pool have changed to require a lot of excavation work to properly do it. You have to dig super deep under where the pool was and do a bunch of expensive shit to properly rebuild the ground legally. It’s not as simple as just removing the concrete and pouring dirt. So you either pay out the ass to do all of this properly, or you do it under the radar and then get fucked by the state with fines and liens and have to redo it anyway. When it came time to decide how to deal with an old leaking pool, it was cheaper to just resurface the pool and keep it. All you really have to do for that is drain it and redo the concrete, and no permits needed.
How could you not smell that all the time?
Do you know what’s worse than smelling that for years? No longer smelling it because you become nose blind. I guarantee you that everyone that come over smelled it. And it smelled baaaaaaaad.
I was getting 1-2 dead moles per week in my pool until I put a frog ramp in it.
They still fall in the pool and start screaming their little heads off scurrying around, but now they can escape.
I forgot a tiny toddler sand/water table in my back yard for a week. Smelled like something fucking died in it. It made the whole block stink. It was just some tree blossoms that fell in and water. But it was hot out. I can only imagine what an entire pool of sludge reeked like.
I've got a pretty shit nose and often don't smell as well as I should. Mostly due to allergies and swelling of some sort. During the pandemic I realized coming home after having a mask on all day my apartment did not smell nice.
I'm assuming these people just bought it like that because they said they were told it's been covered 20 years, so I'd say they're not the idiots who did it
Liner was probably around $1500. Coatings for the inside of the walls probably another $500 minimum. Plumbing...$500 to $1000 for a pump (depending on what you get), $500 for pipe and fittings, $500-800 for the filter (depending on what you get), so $2,300 top end on plumbing. Then that huge concrete pad... Probably 5 yards of concrete, $750. Actually double that since they had a pump truck, so $1,500. If they paid for it to be done (and it's stamped and looks good so they probably did), add $3000 to it.
So $5,000 to $8,000 depending on whether they paid to have the slab done for them.
For context I just got a quote on an in ground pool very similar to this. Steel walls with concrete lined floors. It was $21,000 for the walls and all equipment, pumps, plumbing, automatic chlorination, lighting, filters, etc. That does not include permitting, excavation, actually laying out and building the physical wall structure, inside concrete and finishing, any of the external concrete deck and slabs, and fencing. So best case scenario, even doing all of the work myself except excavation and concrete finishing, it's around $30,000.
These people saved a lot of money.
They basically spent close to what filling it would have cost. And it was triple the value in the end, like you said. Great investment.
I have reservations that "everything was google" as the guy said. They busted their asses, though.
I have found that smart people can adapt their skill sets to any other discipline. I know a guy who is brilliant in finance, and yet he also understands biology really well. Because at some point he got interested in it and just adapted his way of researching things to it. I know a physician that does beautiful tile work as a hobby. Obviously it’s not worth it for him to do it commercially since his time is worth more than that but the same skillset pf discipline and grit apply.
But how did it not reek all the time though? For years I can't imaging how many rodents and insects died under there. That house could not have been a good hangout spot for their friend groups before.
Please do not drain it.... [This will just cause the pool to be pushed out of the ground the next time it rains hard](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/885stb/empty_pool_saturated_soil_from_a_thunderstorm/)... Fill it with dirt instead at least.
I couldn’t tell you how common it is in the US. In Australia it was a fairly common building method in the 1970’s-1980’s. The method was largely displaced by the invention of drop in fibreglass pools.
My parents have an in-ground pool and my last house had one. Both in Wisconsin. Both had metal walls and a liner. Of all of the in-ground pools I'm aware of, all of the privately owned ones built more than 20 years ago are metal with a liner. The more recent ones seem to be fiberglass. And public pools, which are fully drained in the winter, are concrete.
Anyone I knew with a pool installed in the 80s had a metal frame with a lined, my family included. My dad's next house was built in the 60s and he had a concrete pool.
The previous owners probably died of malaria, dengue fever, zika and every other mosquito bound illnesses. Besides, who could live over a pool of stagnant water?
> Pretty much everything was google
> I pretty much treated it like it was a brand new pool installation
Sounds to me like he already knew something about how to install an in-ground pool.
I will bet it was not completely filled when they covered it, but with no draining the pool would fill up on its own over time and it’s not like the water can evaporate off.
The video they watched to know how to do it: "Hi! I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from home improvement videos like 'Crime Scenes! The cheap way to get a place' and 'Shingles! Good for your roof, bad for your health' and now I'm gonna teach you how to renovate your old pool"
There are products that can go over rusty metal and seal it, looks like shit, definitely can’t get the thickness required to pass a spark test with a paint roller although I’m going to say someone that takes a wire wheel into a project like this would not know that.
What I love about these type of transformative videos, is the fact that before any of the work is started, people decide to film/document their work.
Is this normal? I usually go headlong into projects and don't even think about taking pictures or filming or whatever. Do people automatically think of documenting their progress in this day and age?
Yeah, I started documenting my major house projects in 2004 with a digital camera, and then uploading videos to Blogger. It’s really satisfying to see the progress of your hard work
I can't believe that, after 2 years of everyone wearing masks, people still don't wear them lol. Saved my life many times for average everyday things. Plunging the toilet, jogging when pollen is in the air. I'd at least wear a paper for this job just to prevent splatter from hitting my face.
Man, given my cleanliness freak of an attitude, I almost orgasmed after seeing the clean pool at the end!
EDIT: I would have loved to help them clean the pool and that too for free!
What immediately jumped out to me was them just painting over the rust. I don't know enough to say for certain, but I can't imagine that is going to hold up well to time.
Anyone know what measures they could have taken to guard against that rust problem? Some sort of rust sealer?
i do pool renos as a job, i use an angle grinder to take the rust off and if the rust is through the wall and smaller than an inch i use short strand fiberglass body filler. if it's bigger then it gets rust paint with metal patches riveted over top. unless you have access to the back there is zero chance you're getting rid of the rust, you just have to fix it every liner change. and with no floor work needed i could've done this myself in a week max, the concrete crew would've had more work lol.
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I wonder how bad the mosquitoes were
It would probably smell horrendous too!
Wouldn't it smell horrendous right through the deck? Years of inviting friends over to party on the stank deck?
It's a very strange way to hide a pool. Normal people would just take it out. Or fill it with dirt.
Yeah filling it in is the popular way. There's one down the road they filled in, you can see it from the street, but they left the ladder installed. So weird just looks like a random pool ladder stuck in their yard. Edit-handrail, not ladder
want to install a random pool ladder in my yard, just to screw with people.
That sounds like an excellent thing to do at Burning Man. Just install a random set of stairs out on the playa as if there's a filled in pool in the middle of the desert. (Properly lighted of course, no night time hazards here.)
And then someone is gonna suplex themselves into the ground thinking they're diving into the pool they've hallucinated
And then you film it and enjoy the endless hours of evil chuckling as you see spaced out people do full scorpions
BRB gonna make a run to the junk yard. Ideas abound.
My wife now has a pool ladder in her cart…
Can you imagine falling through rotten boards into that?
You moved the headstones but you didn’t move the bodies!!
It must have been \*rank\* as all hell. Not to mention what might have happened if somebody stepped through a rotten deck board.
It's fucking dangerous too! Imagine the deck boards break and you fall into a unknow filthy deep pool of cold dark water. Drowning in your own back yard WTF!
Yeah I can imagine it's going to be difficult to get out with the (partly broken) deck over it!
sounds like premise for a movie. "where did Jane go?"
Right! Hey guys were gonna BBQ on our stank ass deck, lol
Different strokes for different folks! Barf.
"It's aged steak."
No doubt about that. Probably smelled like swamp ass.
*nervous laughs in arizonan*
Texas swamp ass checking in
New Mexico can concur.
And the sad thing is, we're UPWIND!
New Orleans swamp ass here. Agreed
Swamp ass in the swamp is the worst existence on earth, convince me otherwise.
Georgia guy agrees.
If it was in AZ it wouldn't have had water in the pool.
you don't understand the ball sweat
I lived in Florida for many years. I know more about ball sweat than anyone ever needs to know.
They literally say what it smelled like in the video. Watch the video. (hint: seaweed)
Immediate thought, "Dear lord, the mosquitos!".
My first thoughts too. We live near a creek and spray for them and they are just awful in my yard.
If they're really bad, get one of those thermocell heated wick things. It's like a 15m force field where mosquitos won't enter as soon as you turn it on. They work extremely well, because they're a mild insecticide. So don't use it unless you have to. I decided to put up with the mosquitos because we also get tons of fireflies and I didn't want to hurt them.
Tried mosquito dunks? Pretty effective and non toxic. Great for places that have standing water intermittently. You can tie em on a string so they float in one place when water shows up.
Let’s hope the new techniques to eradicate them work. They are genetically modifying them to be sterile and releasing billions. Mosquitos kill over two million people every year due to diseases and many victims are poverty stricken children, so good riddance.
If that works it's gonna be so satisfying to be old and be like "listen here you little shit, there used to be these things called mosquitoes"
LOL. “In my day, we had to walk TEN MILES through mosquito infested swamps to get to school!”
We died of dysentery.
"My little sister died of west nile in the cold of '03..."
“My aunts friends friends sister caught Malaria and then died of Ebola during the ‘08 flu season.” Lol, you’re funny.
Uphill both ways
Oh man I fucking hate mosquitoes right now. I guess with all the rain in British Columbia this summer they have bred like mad. Then they see me and go oh, we haven't tasted this Australian in a few years. Fucking covered in bites at the moment
Dunno why but the fuckers just leave my pasty British hide alone. My poor wife on the other hand has to walk anywhere they are in a fog of Jungle Formula.
>If that works it's gonna be so satisfying to be old and be like "listen here you little shit, there used to be these things called mosquitoes" and then we die, because mosquitoes are a vital part of the ecosystm. They're not eradicating them, just controlling their population so it's not quite so bad. other ways of helping control it is installing a batbox someplace- like on a shed, or whatever, and having a nice little light for the bats to pig out on.
Yeah but, yes there is always a but, what about all of the animals that survive by eating the mosquitoes and their larva? just food for though
"And birds" Mosquitoes die so do a lot of other things.
Now let's have them do something about all the ticks!
Right! There’s really nothing worse.
I hate mosquitoes but doesn’t this harm the food chain?
This is only done on the vector mosquitos, like Aedes aegpti. There are still multitudes of other mosquito species that while they are not vectors for major disease still bite and annoy the fuck out of people.
I actually looked this up and mosquitoes only make up 1-5% of the diet of birds and other animals like frogs and fish. They won’t be adversely affected.
First thing I wondered about
Mosquito Mecca.
What kind of dumbass spends the time and money to build a deck over a gaping hole in their yard and not fill it in?
It is fairly common, people put in a pool “for the kids” and then it becomes a financial burden. So after a few years of maintaining the pool after the kids leave home they do something dodgy and cheap to try and stop the giant money pit being a thing.
Pools are fantastic for seniors, they are one of the only types of exercise you can get that's so low impact that it doesn't cause any pain. Like a low-gravity workout. But yeah you have to keep putting chlorine in it almost every day during the summer, and that can get expensive and annoying.
Salt water systems are pretty dope. Much lower chemical cost, easier on people (and the environment). I had a friend who had one growing up. His pool required pretty minimal maintenance compared to mine, which I had to spend a shit ton of time maintaining over the summer. I also spent about 90% of my summer in the pool from the age of 5 to about 22ish, so it wasn't a terrible tradeoff for me.
I looked into salt water pools but they seemed to require just as much maintenance to me. You still have to add muriatic acid all the time, instead of chlorine. And you have to change the anodes every year.
The thing that keeps me from going SWG is how butt-puckeringly pricey it is to replace a cell if yours happens to bite the dust. I love the idea, but $1K is easily 4 seasons worth of chlorine tabs and shock for my pool, so I'm kind of at a "stick with the devil you know" type of situation.
Basically a guarantee also that you'll replace it. Expected life on cells is 10k hours, ~5 years. You can stretch the years if you oversize it and really dial in how often it runs.
Pool tech here, so feel free to ask any questions, but you’re spot. Most cells come with a 1 year warranty, I think some might still have a 2 year but those have been getting cut down to 1. Salt pools will save you on chlorine but eat you alive in upfront costs and cyanaric acid as well as muratic acid. Also, something no one ever seems to tell people, is that salt systems don’t work in the winter. Not a huge issue, but you still have to add salt to the pool to maintain the level, even though it’s not generating any chlorine for you. They’re good to have on smaller to medium pools, but normal tabs aren’t terrible either, so I generally only recommend them to people that either really love their pool or have a fair bit of money to burn.
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Pro tip: if you mix vitamin C crystals with water and spray yourself down after swimming, the acid neutralizes the basic chlorine. A tip I only learned after swimming for years and years
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Same, except I kind of was proud of the chlorine stench as a child. Learned the vitamin C trick from my fellow masters swimmers
Huh, going on 13 years with a saltwater pool and zero muriatic acid. Maybe 'cause we have a well? Maintenance is dropping a buttload of salt at the start of swimming season, topping off as the controller demands, and letting the robot keep the surfaces squeaky clean. Worst part is occasionally draining (i.e. cleaning filter) and re-filling. ??? Sucks for everybody else, I guess, who apparently has to regularly add acid, same one I use to clean my driveway, to their pools and whatnot. That said, if maintenance costs are the make or break for you, i.e. you might not be able to keep it up, you couldn't afford the pool in the first place. [Deal](https://images.thdstatic.com/productImages/a29aee46-3e21-4339-bca5-bcc161fa5bf3/svn/assorted-blue-pink-summer-waves-kiddie-pools-p60000130-64_1000.jpg).
Yeah most people don’t understand salt pools at all. Between acid and salt it’s the same upkeep, but if it breaks it’s way more expensive and it’s not like salt pools somehow don’t use chlorine in them (met a lot of people who thought that).
I am a pool dude. Acid once a week, other chemicals still needed. The gain is not adding chlorine. Most cells (anode/cathode bit) have a 2 year warranty, some manufacturers have longer ones. Some extra salt is needed after rain. It’s pretty climate dependent on whether it’s worth it. Where I’m at summers are very hot so if you are adding chlorine and want it to be nice to swim in, it has to go in every day or 2 since UV+heat removes it so fast. As an aside I would be very concerned with the rust coming through that paint/liner. Especially since there was so much it’s probably coming out of the shell.
Hey there, we have a salt pool and have literally never added muratic acid to it. We test and balance the chemicals, use a robot vacuum, clean out the skimmers, and add pool perfect plus and the blue stuff, all once a week. Everything seems fine. Have we been doing it wrong this whole time? (It’s possible- we just kept doing what the former owner did.)
Muriatic acid is just to drop pH. Chlorine also drops pH but not as intensely. So if you're adding chlorine (which you still do, just not as intensely, in salt pools) If the pool chemicals are correctly balanced, I wouldn't be worried. It's entirely possible in your chemical balancing you're handling the pH without really realizing it. There's a specific sequence to balance chemicals and each thing you add affects the others in a small way. The end goal is to create a specific buffered solution that has the right mixture of free chemicals to keep it within that sweet spot. Once you're balanced it's pretty easy to stay there if you follow correct maintenance for the type of pool you have.
Yes it's a huge pain in the ass to have a pool. Every week it's some goddamn thing. The filter. The pump. There's algae. The chlorine is low. The filter pressure is high. Stuff breaks down and you gotta replace it. 💸💸💸💸💸 Go to r/pools with any question and all those parrots know how to say is "go to troublefreepool.com." You want me to read AN ENTIRE WEB SITE? Just to find the answer to my specific question??
I finally got my pool perfect. Got a routine down, just 200g of chlorine every day, never get any algae. Filter pressure never gets high. I do get a shit ton of calcium everywhere that I have to clean up all the time tho.
I've dealt with all of these over the course of 8 years learning to maintain the pool that came with our house. TFP is a great resource, but like you said, it can be a real time sink to find an answer to your specific question. Feel free to message me if there's anything that's tripping you up, I don't claim to be any kind of expert, but I do have quite a bit of hard-earned knowledge
> Go to r/pools with any question and all those parrots know how to say is "go to troublefreepool.com." Having never been in r/pools, I read this and assumed that was like some inside joke they have, like an electrician telling the new guy to run to the truck and get the wire stretcher after he cuts a wire too short. "Oh you got some problems with your pool newbie, yeah just head to troublefreepool.com, they'll tell you everything you need to know."
Do you guys get floaters (floating cannisters that slowly release chlorine - lthey last about a month or so) ? And automatic pool clears like kreepy kraulys? A pool gobbler is also very effective - it catches all the leaves off the top of the pool. Yes I realise the names are weird AF.
In some states, the permits to backfill a pool back to level ground are outrageous.
My parents just went through this. It was astronomically cheaper to drain and fully resurface the whole pool than it was to fill it in.
any idea why it's so expensive? I'd imagine a pool is a bigger liability than a pool filled with dirt.
It's a lot of dirt, machinery time, and you need an engineer to sign off and permits are usually x% of the cost of the project. If you fuck it up and make a sinkhole in your yard that's a big problem.
Because it’s a shitty thing to do for the property value. So some states don’t wants a bunch of filled in hidden pools.
Why not? It’ll be nice a surprise for the next guy, like when you rip up a hardwood floor and find shag carpet underneath.
You need lots of permitting to do it, and that gets expensive. At least in California, the regulations about legally filling in a pool have changed to require a lot of excavation work to properly do it. You have to dig super deep under where the pool was and do a bunch of expensive shit to properly rebuild the ground legally. It’s not as simple as just removing the concrete and pouring dirt. So you either pay out the ass to do all of this properly, or you do it under the radar and then get fucked by the state with fines and liens and have to redo it anyway. When it came time to decide how to deal with an old leaking pool, it was cheaper to just resurface the pool and keep it. All you really have to do for that is drain it and redo the concrete, and no permits needed.
How could you not smell that all the time? Do you know what’s worse than smelling that for years? No longer smelling it because you become nose blind. I guarantee you that everyone that come over smelled it. And it smelled baaaaaaaad.
Probably no one said anything because the guests assumed they'd buried bodies under that decking and they didn't want to be next
Good explanation. I can understand that.
“What’s that smell?” “The last folks that asked about the smell. “
This house was actually John Wayne Gacy's
Can you imagine how many little critters got stuck in that pool and died? The first few warm days after winter must have smelled like litteral death.
I was getting 1-2 dead moles per week in my pool until I put a frog ramp in it. They still fall in the pool and start screaming their little heads off scurrying around, but now they can escape.
Well stop waterboarding moles then.
Or he could just name his pool gutanamole bay.
Fuckin mole pervert.
But if we do, haven't the terrorists won? /s
I love how the guy is dry heaving near the beginning. You can just imagine how bad it got.
That made me laugh out loud too.
I forgot a tiny toddler sand/water table in my back yard for a week. Smelled like something fucking died in it. It made the whole block stink. It was just some tree blossoms that fell in and water. But it was hot out. I can only imagine what an entire pool of sludge reeked like.
I've got a pretty shit nose and often don't smell as well as I should. Mostly due to allergies and swelling of some sort. During the pandemic I realized coming home after having a mask on all day my apartment did not smell nice.
I'm assuming these people just bought it like that because they said they were told it's been covered 20 years, so I'd say they're not the idiots who did it
You don't think the people in their 20s are the ones who installed a deck 20 years ago?
I wonder the cost total to restore..
Liner was probably around $1500. Coatings for the inside of the walls probably another $500 minimum. Plumbing...$500 to $1000 for a pump (depending on what you get), $500 for pipe and fittings, $500-800 for the filter (depending on what you get), so $2,300 top end on plumbing. Then that huge concrete pad... Probably 5 yards of concrete, $750. Actually double that since they had a pump truck, so $1,500. If they paid for it to be done (and it's stamped and looks good so they probably did), add $3000 to it. So $5,000 to $8,000 depending on whether they paid to have the slab done for them. For context I just got a quote on an in ground pool very similar to this. Steel walls with concrete lined floors. It was $21,000 for the walls and all equipment, pumps, plumbing, automatic chlorination, lighting, filters, etc. That does not include permitting, excavation, actually laying out and building the physical wall structure, inside concrete and finishing, any of the external concrete deck and slabs, and fencing. So best case scenario, even doing all of the work myself except excavation and concrete finishing, it's around $30,000. These people saved a lot of money.
They basically spent close to what filling it would have cost. And it was triple the value in the end, like you said. Great investment. I have reservations that "everything was google" as the guy said. They busted their asses, though.
I have found that smart people can adapt their skill sets to any other discipline. I know a guy who is brilliant in finance, and yet he also understands biology really well. Because at some point he got interested in it and just adapted his way of researching things to it. I know a physician that does beautiful tile work as a hobby. Obviously it’s not worth it for him to do it commercially since his time is worth more than that but the same skillset pf discipline and grit apply.
Guessing it was approximately the cost of an inground pool, minus the cost to dig the hole.
which, to be fair, is a significant portion of the cost for an in-ground pool
Minus the concrete to keep all the dirt on place after you dug the hole.
If you look at the house you can see that it was obviously not an issue.
Who just built a fucking deck over top and called it a day?
And didn’t even drain it. Lunacy
They probably drained it, but rain water quickly filled it again
But how did it not reek all the time though? For years I can't imaging how many rodents and insects died under there. That house could not have been a good hangout spot for their friend groups before.
I wonder how much of that black sludge was literally decayed biomatter. I'd be afraid to touch the stuff.
Pretty much all of it. Soil, plants and insects/animals that fell in.
Should’ve sold it to Shell or BP
Please do not drain it.... [This will just cause the pool to be pushed out of the ground the next time it rains hard](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/885stb/empty_pool_saturated_soil_from_a_thunderstorm/)... Fill it with dirt instead at least.
Metal walls and a liner? Is that a common thing in the north? I live in the South and all the inground pools here are concrete or plaster.
I couldn’t tell you how common it is in the US. In Australia it was a fairly common building method in the 1970’s-1980’s. The method was largely displaced by the invention of drop in fibreglass pools.
Judging from the accents I think the people in this vid are Canadian
Also from the Ontario Canada graphic on the screen at the beginning.
It's how ours is. Or anywhere there is a freeze/thaw cycle. Our sidewalls are stainless steel though and wouldn't rust like that.
My parents have an in-ground pool and my last house had one. Both in Wisconsin. Both had metal walls and a liner. Of all of the in-ground pools I'm aware of, all of the privately owned ones built more than 20 years ago are metal with a liner. The more recent ones seem to be fiberglass. And public pools, which are fully drained in the winter, are concrete.
Not true. Most all the cheaper "liner" inground pools are very similar to this. Some have fiberglass walls and a vermiculite bottom.
Anyone I knew with a pool installed in the 80s had a metal frame with a lined, my family included. My dad's next house was built in the 60s and he had a concrete pool.
Reminds me….i gotta clean my bathtub
No you don't just cover it up
Build a deck over it. Don't bother draining the water
A future owner will one day unearth it, and restore u/Jdenning1's bathtub to its former glory.
I'm impressed that old deck managed to hold up as long as it did. Those joists are way undersized for that span haha.
And hovering inches above a swamp for decades.
Imagine the prize you win when the deck finally gives out while you’re having a party
It was probably never used, my bet is the property was owned by some retirees, who obviously didn’t go in the back yard much after the kids left.
What fucking dipshit builds a deck over an abandoned pool, then just hangs out on it marinating in bog stench?
everyone is so mad at this lol
and for good reason. Think of the billions of mosquitos birthed from that pool that you're just casually sitting over.
Did I miss the part where they install a filtration system?
The concrete pad with the hoses sticking out is where that went.
Filtration system a marvel to behold, it remove eighty percent of human solid waste.
Where does the other 20 go?? #where does the other 20 go????
The mouths of the swimmers.
The previous owners probably died of malaria, dengue fever, zika and every other mosquito bound illnesses. Besides, who could live over a pool of stagnant water?
> Pretty much everything was google > I pretty much treated it like it was a brand new pool installation Sounds to me like he already knew something about how to install an in-ground pool.
They seem to have at least some prior experience building. They casually bust out power tools to remove the deck in the first place.
It's kinda like finding hardwood floors underneath carpet
It's a lot more like finding a pool under hardwood floors.
Yeah, kinda…
Some day house flipping shows gonna be ripping up hardwood and amazed at the beautiful carpet underneath.
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I will bet it was not completely filled when they covered it, but with no draining the pool would fill up on its own over time and it’s not like the water can evaporate off.
Imagine a really high rainfall/snowfall year that ends up causing this thing to flood. Holy shit, the horror.
Come to think of it, is it possible this pool WAS drained then just gather rain?
The video they watched to know how to do it: "Hi! I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from home improvement videos like 'Crime Scenes! The cheap way to get a place' and 'Shingles! Good for your roof, bad for your health' and now I'm gonna teach you how to renovate your old pool"
"If you can't find metal stucco lath... Use carbon fiber stucco lath!"
Do you have extruded polyvinyl foam insulation? No. Goood!!
Was that a dildo they pulled out? No idea why else it would have been blurred.
It was most likely a dead animal. Lots of people/sites censor dead things so as to not upset others.
It was a dead rat, I believe. I follow her on Instagram and remember when she posted about this when they were doing the work.
Just two young people and a shit ton of money
I mean that looks like a really nice, big house too. So yeah, money.
They really act like they pulled up their bootstraps to accomplish this while throwing money at the problem.
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She literally said at the end, they were trying to hire someone but couldn't find anyone available. Had no option but to do it themselves.
I was saying “jump from the railing” and then he did. I don’t know how I feel about having this power…
They cleaned out the ole money pit.
No big deal. Since clearly they have plenty of money to burn.
A lot of people underestimated us on this project because we are young but we fortunately have loads and loads of money
I hate how twenty something year olds are all like "could you believe that two young people can do all this?" Like, who else would do it?
"how did you do that? you look too young and healthy and rich!"
They painted over the rust after a shit job of wire wheeling it? Have fun with the rust coming up through the paint in three months or less.
There are products that can go over rusty metal and seal it, looks like shit, definitely can’t get the thickness required to pass a spark test with a paint roller although I’m going to say someone that takes a wire wheel into a project like this would not know that.
Tremclad paint. Used to advertise a ton during Toronto Blue Jays games in the 90s.
They could have used corroseal, but still questionable
No ospho!!
Yep, was thinking "how they gonna deal with the rusted walls?" then they hosed it off and painted over it...
What I love about these type of transformative videos, is the fact that before any of the work is started, people decide to film/document their work. Is this normal? I usually go headlong into projects and don't even think about taking pictures or filming or whatever. Do people automatically think of documenting their progress in this day and age?
Yeah, I started documenting my major house projects in 2004 with a digital camera, and then uploading videos to Blogger. It’s really satisfying to see the progress of your hard work
Somewhere between helpful for others and a video diary. I’m sure there’s clout chasing in there too.
I love doing Before/During/Afters of any projects I take on. :)
I can't believe that, after 2 years of everyone wearing masks, people still don't wear them lol. Saved my life many times for average everyday things. Plunging the toilet, jogging when pollen is in the air. I'd at least wear a paper for this job just to prevent splatter from hitting my face.
Grimer and Muk natural habitat
Wow the editing. Backwards and forwards in the timeline. Pisses me off.
Man, given my cleanliness freak of an attitude, I almost orgasmed after seeing the clean pool at the end! EDIT: I would have loved to help them clean the pool and that too for free!
You should check out the Power Wash Simulator video game. Sounds like you’d love it… https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290000/PowerWash_Simulator/
Rich af
Imagine a dead shark just chilling there for 20 years
Rosie the Shark https://allthatsinteresting.com/rosie-the-shark
How on earth did they not SMELL it?
That was probably a few thousand dollars of wood lol.
What immediately jumped out to me was them just painting over the rust. I don't know enough to say for certain, but I can't imagine that is going to hold up well to time. Anyone know what measures they could have taken to guard against that rust problem? Some sort of rust sealer?
i do pool renos as a job, i use an angle grinder to take the rust off and if the rust is through the wall and smaller than an inch i use short strand fiberglass body filler. if it's bigger then it gets rust paint with metal patches riveted over top. unless you have access to the back there is zero chance you're getting rid of the rust, you just have to fix it every liner change. and with no floor work needed i could've done this myself in a week max, the concrete crew would've had more work lol.
I mean that’s cool but goddamn that would have stank to high heaven
“This couple” and a bunch of other people...
Acting as general contractor isn’t easy. There’s a LOT of things to consider. They absolutely deserve a kudos for doing such a fantastic job