Two summers ago Kathryn bought a discount pool at HyperMart for Eric to play in during the summer. Advertised as “Sets up in 15 minutes”. Of course, Step 1 is “find a level site”. They aren’t talking about sort of level, but dead level. We worked for parts of two days over 4th of July weekend trying to create such a site.

We chose a location that was accessible to power (to run the filter), visible from the house, and sort of level. We dug through driveway aggregate on the high side and added dirt, stone and sand to low side. It was hot and not entertaining.

Afterwards we filled the pool with 1″ to spread out the bottom of the pool and to provide a visual on the level-ness of the installation.

Our installation did not pass the test. The low side was still too low. So we drained it all, removed the cover, pool and ground cloth. We started digging and filling again. We added more dirt fill, re-levelled the entire site and got everything within 1/4 of a bubble on the level. I was sure the additional 6-8″ of fill on the low side would settle, so I was good with that. The pool requires nearly 4,000 gallons of water. We were not prepared to try and fill it from our well. Kathryn arranged for a water truck which came on Monday afternoon. As the pool got filled the truck driver advised against filling it to capacity as it was bulging ‘up slope’. Eric has been using the pool regularly. The low side fill may have settled some, but not enough to relieve our concerns.

It doesn’t look too bad from this profile shot.

There is still a “up-slope” bulge that is worrisome. I am hopeful that a few more days and some determined stomping by the swimmers will help settle the fill and even the distribution of the water.