Trouble
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Trouble been doggin' my soul
Since the day I was born
(Trouble, Ray LaMontagne)
This week I had a hardscape material provider come out and look at our pool fence area to give us suggestions and a quote on materials. (Last week's post about cleaning up around the pool fence here.)
In keeping trend with the rest of this HOUSE PROJECT (my eye just twitched when I typed that), apparently this pool has more than aesthetic problems. There are grading (land slope) issues which could lead to structural problems. Here are some things he pointed out.
First off the obvious, land is eroding out from under the pool apron (the concrete area around the pool).
And dropping and breaking of the concrete-
According to the hardscape guy (who isn't a contractor but refers them, he only provides materials) we need a retaining wall all along the back of the fence to stop the eroding.
He even suggested ripping out this section of fence and building a retaining wall for this entire corner. (the gap under the fence here has always worried me, big enough for a toddler to crawl under)-
But wait, there's more.
He was also concerned with the area adjoining the pool.... the deck and the (once) flower garden. Since it is right up against the structural mess of a pool he thinks the whole area needs to corrected all at the same time.
In other words, we would need to rip out the entire deck and level out the ground to slope properly with the pool apron (there are structural and drainage reasons here). It makes sense to me, but the cost to do it is the possible problem.
Granted the deck is pretty much dead (we knew this when we moved in, inspector said it needed to be replaced soon) but that's a project we weren't planning on tackling anytime soon.
And we thought the guy could just dump off some rocks and we could shovel them in around the fence. :( Oh, Trouble...... trouble, trouble, trouble.
Such is the way it is. We JUST finished paying off the large basement project.
Thoughts anyone? We plan to get another opinion before we do anything drastic. Hope there is another and cheaper solution but want to do it right.
Ah, the joys of home ownership! The American Dream and the American Nightmare all nicely rolled into one...You could talk to Jeff at J&L. He very likely would know someone to give you another quote. Tell him I sent you. Gotta say, though, you guys have really been transforming that place.
ReplyDeleteI would get a bunch of quotes. I was amazed by how many different ideas and prices we got on our front steps. It really helped us figure out what the right thing to do was. Now we probably got about a dozen quotes and that was overkill but 5-6 wouldn't hurt.
ReplyDeleteAlso, we just demoed our deck a couple of years ago and it really wasn't bad. And I know you have a good reciprocating saw! Why not have a demolition party and serve some good food and invite your friends over to help? That would help a lot with the costs of fixing that part of the problem, and if I understand you correctly and you just need to regrade the soul under the deck, maybe that is also something you could do yourselves?
I know how frustrating this is. Hope you can find some good options soon!