Building a Pool Base for OUR FIRST POOL! - Above Ground Intex Ultra XTR 26355EH

hey everybody my name is Sam welcome back to our channel in today's video I'm going to bring you guys along the big project of us setting up our very first above ground swimming pool this is not going to be a detailed assembly video for this particular swimming pool that we purchased there are a ton of videos on this pool and the instructions that come with it are fantastic instead what we're going to show you guys and really share with you is number one how we built our base for the above ground swimming pool number two of course show you the pool setup talk about it briefly and then number three go ahead and talk about some things that I wished I'd done differently because we've had it set up for a couple of weeks and that's enough time to realize things that I kind of messed up on first things first every good project starts with a good foundation so let's bring you guys along for the multiple multiple Day project of us building our very own above ground pool base [Music] here [Music] with all the Timbers laid down and roughly in place what we're going to do next is use the three four five method of squaring up the frame the 345 method is where you measure on one face three feet another face four feet and at those two points we should have five foot distance between the two [Applause] pulls that up it's good this kind of bit literally pulls into the wood so we had our beams laid out made our rectangle we had our perimeter I knew that we had approximately seven inches of elevation change from one corner to the next and at this point Angel and I were really scratching our head so there was a handful of different ways we thought we could go about this first and foremost would have been to rent some kind of piece of equipment and excavate out the ground make a flat pad like that and build up from there we didn't like that idea for a couple of reasons one it would mean a piece of equipment rental probably around five or six hundred dollars to have something brought out it would mean cutting our ground but the most important reason we didn't want to do that is it would mean changing the slope and positive drainage of our property around the home that we sculpted when we put the house here we have a it's not a ditch but it is the low spot that feathers away from the home the backyard kind of slopes it is our point of drainage that runs down to the low spot out into our field the pool is set outside of that by about a foot or so at least I knew if I was to do any major excavations I would disrupt the natural drainage of our backyard and run the risk of causing a lot of problems I didn't want to risk that at all so we decided to build our base up from the grade leave our natural compacted grade alone and do kind of a I won't say a Lego design but it was you know kind of pieced together lifting it up leveling it and then pinning it down with rebar oh speaking of rebar what we're using here is half inch diameter and it was so much cheaper to buy 10 foot long rods and then use a reciprocating saw with a carbide tip blade to cut them to the various links that we wanted for the beam that's up here at the lowest spot it's resting on the ground I drove in I want to say four or five two foot long half inch rebar spikes everywhere else coming down this way the length varied from two feet to three feet and at most four feet in height or length the whole time that we went around building our base we made sure to keep it level while we put the strings in place they didn't really seem to help much because a string line will sag over long runs so what we ended up doing was just use a four foot level we laid it on the beams as we went and we leveled as we worked our way down this way to the taller end okay we got three sides done and then I decided it would be a perfect time to use the open end as an area to drive the tractor in to dump our gravel and fill the base up so I have put five truckloads into this base already and it's not really going as far as I wanted it's a big base I guess so what I did is I called the Quarry and just scheduled a load of what they call a Crusher run it is rock with pulverized dust and everything supposed to come back down to give a nice firm base got it scheduled to come out for tomorrow about 15 Tons which is probably about 12 to 13 truckloads in my truck so as much as I want to get the video rock and roll and get it done get this done sooner it's just a better use of my time and gas and fuel economy and everything just to have the dump truck plopped off tomorrow and then from there I'll use the tractor move it over and we'll make some more progress so yeah I guess I got a free day but see you guys on the dump truck arise this will make things easier let's get the tractor start moving from point A to point B all right [Music] this one thank you so good [Music] so we feel pretty confident that our rebar which most of it is in the ground two to two and a half feet even below grade we're pretty sure that's going to keep everything in place scooting around this way and keep everything pinned what I've bought from Lowe's is some giant L brackets I'm gonna put these on the corners just as an additional Insurance measure to keep those corners from ever thinking about splaying out if I can make the perimeter of the frame one uniform band if it gets stressed in one area the others should pick up the slack so to speak so I've got some Simpson strong Drive Timber screws five inches and I'm gonna put some L brackets on all these and then on the long walls or the long runs we have two Beams I have some very large galvanized mending plates we'll attach them together there as well thank you so these giant L brackets they're not galvanized they are zinc plated I look for giant galvanized brackets and couldn't find anything so they're going to be fine I mean the amount of time it's going to take for these zinc plated steel to rust and fail probably is going to be longer than the lifespan of the Timbers or even the pool we're going to put on top of this so it's okay it's not structural it's not a house it's not a deck this is a miniature retaining wall for a pool and I think it's going to be okay [Applause] [Music] well we have now filled in as much as we can with the gravel and then the road Bond the road bond is really nice and solid I don't know if you could tell but as Sam was driving over it with the tractor the stuff that's been there for you know the longest has is sturdy it's not moving at all whenever he drives over it so that's very nice to see next we need to go get some sand to put a thin layer on top so we don't have any pointy rocks that will puncture or hurt our pool at all and also rent a compactor so we can make sure it's all compacted really well thank you [Music] [Music] well the pool base is completely done now it is ready for the pool Sam even pulled the truck onto it to get a little bit more sand out and it didn't even leave like marks on it at all so it's very well compacted and ready for a lot of water weight we're gonna go ahead and sit you guys up on the deck as we put this together it does say that it is a 60 Minute put it together time so let's see how true that is with two of us working okay let's talk about the pool that we purchased this is an Intex Ultra XTR Deluxe rectangular above ground pool it is approximately 18 feet long nine feet wide and has a depth of 52 inches it is the specific model number 26355eh as far as why we purchased this pool first we knew the Intex was a pretty reputable name brand we at least heard of it and seen a lot of it over the years the XTR was their best model it had the longest warranty and seemed to be the most durable the shape being rectangular was great for us it fits really good in our backyard space and general layout and then really honestly the big deciding factor was that we saw it on a really good discount sale online on Amazon I want to say it was like 50 off so that kind of sealed the deal twisted our arms and really we got it sooner than we ever thought we would have for that reason it is the next day and we are working on filling up the pool um last night it got dark on us with the camera so we went ahead and turned the camera off but we spent as much time as we could while we could still see putting water in the pool as much as it would go and then also working very diligently to get all of the creases wrinkles and folds out of the bottom we did that for a while got dark came out here a little bit ago and also spent maybe about another 30 minutes to an hour total getting all the creases out of the bottom we also got our larger diameter water hose from our garden brought it over and it is filling it up much much quicker thank you and now we're at the fun part or at least the part of the video that you're probably most interested in okay if you're here you're interested in I guess right the things that I wished we had done differently and things that I'm going to change if we decide to take this down over winter and set it back up next year first and foremost I did not get this thing set up parallel on the base it is not Square to our base it's off a little bit we tried our best to get it started that way but once we had to fight getting all the folds and wrinkles out of the base as it was filling up we got that done I looked and we kind of tweaked it a little bit so while fighting wrinkles we ended up making it not Square it's not the end of the world I've I've been told so I need to be okay with that it is however going to cause a little bit of interesting hurdles when it comes time to build our deck which we plan on building attaching to our homes deck bringing it out we're going to definitely do that so I mean that's the first thing I wish we'd done differently the other thing that I wished we had done differently we can still fix but for this video it's not done I want to go back and add pea gravel on top of this base not where it attaches or touches the pool but on the outsides in the perimeter as people play in the pool and splash around it does kind of Splash out in the corners it's kind of by Design and that has caused a little bit of erosion of the sand in those areas nothing is washing out under the pool the thing has become problematic from a stability standpoint it's more of an aesthetic thing and then also as people walk around on the pool to pick up a toy that may drop their feet get dirty and that ends up getting back in the pool too if we're not really careful about it otherwise I think that's it so my complaint so far it's not square and I need to add something over top of the sand to keep things cleaner and not kind of wash it out that's not bad I don't think it's bad at all because this is the first time we've ever put a pool together like this we've ever built a pool base if that's the biggest things that's come up now that we've had it for I think two weeks that's not bad at all so here's a look at how tall the pool is and given this is going to be very subjective to Sam's height um I think this is 53 inches right here the actual water height is more like 45 that was very important to us when we were looking to purchase this pool obviously I wanted one that was deep as possible but we had to remember the height of Isaac and we measured him and the water height when this thing was full only came to right here at the most we haven't filled it up all that full yet either so it's okay it's safe with him the number one thing for us too is safety so not getting a deep enough one for Sam was okay but I mean really honestly that's pretty good for me right so hey perks of being short cool thing about this pool as well at first it was a little bit weird but I've come to really like it these Corners are floating this piece is just floating in here what that means is as things get Rowdy and rambunctious in the pool the walls will actually flex and move and it's a really cool flexible joint design I think it's very smart because it keeps any stresses from really hitting the corners if this was a solid lockdown Corner when we all get in there jumping around it would stress it and probably lead to premature failure of it so what at first was a little bit weird has actually become one of those really cool things and I now see the smart behind it I mean hopefully that was what they intended if not still you get points because it's nice to know that this is more of a flexible fluid pool and it makes me think it's going to last longer in the end which is all I really want it wasn't super cheap to do although we put more money into this pool base than we did the pool it overall was still kind of expensive but we want it to last and we hope that it does down here add our pool filter this is a sand filter as well I think I mentioned before but if not it's a sand filter it has two inlets so these two hoses that come out of the wall they feed water into the pump and the filter and then it goes back to the pool by this one here this larger diameter it's nice that they have cut off valves so this is a shutoff valve and there's another one right down there at the bottom of that Junction that allows me to take the filter out of the equation without needing to drain the pool down or anything like that for maintenance or anything so that is cool as far as the looks of it it's a little bit messy I don't like the flopsy hoses I've also seen where people will take these hoses and replace them with schedule 40 PVC that might be something I do in the future not I mean it doesn't bother me that bad aesthetically but I know that if it's a smooth wall pipe versus this corrugated flexible that you're going to have less hydraulic friction on your pipes and the filter will either work less or it'll pump and filter more in the end I think it's worthwhile we also have a skimmer that we purchased that's going to be a separate install video that's going to be cut and installed somewhere in our pool I think on this end though from our research you want it downwind so it catches all the bugs and stuff whenever I do that and I plummet in I may also change the plumbing on the filter don't know just my random thoughts as I'm out here shooting the video now in case you haven't noticed I'm no Tinkerbell but this ladder does actually hold me we've been in here swimming a couple times but it's not something that instills a whole lot of confidence or feels very safe but it does work it does hold me and for the boys it works great we do want to add a pulled deck that will connect here where I'm standing and over to the deck at the house I don't know how quickly or how slowly that will be as far as build but it is something that's on our list that will add functionality funness safety and just general usability of the pool it'll take it up a few notches all right so as I come to the end of this video I'll let you guys know that we do have some other things we're planning to do with this pool as I've mentioned I want to do a pulled deck I want to attach it to our homes deck bring it over this way and effectively replace that somewhat sketchy if you're an adult ladder to get in and out of the pool it'll also make it a lot easier as far as if the kids are in the pool and they want to store something like their toys or whatever they can sit it over there on the wooden part of the deck not throw it in the yard and it'll give it a more cohesive better feel to our outdoor living space I also have a pool skimmer that we bought separately I've seen a lot of other people do those as upgrades and something we're really looking forward to seeing that we are somewhat close to our Woods here than the storms that have blown through we've gotten leaves bugs and other kind of debris in the pool and a skimmer is supposed to really help with that so we'll have that coming as a separate video since it's something that people may look up and it's kind of one of its own thing that'll be coming up as well and probably a few things probably when we add the pea gravel here I'll show that as well so this video hopefully you enjoyed it has been about our pool base our pool construction kind of highlights and then of course things we do differently in our thoughts overall if you've got any questions or comments you guys know what to do looming for us down below otherwise take care and we'll see you guys next time on the homestead foreign

Channel: Green Acre Homestead

Views: 135,962

Keywords: green acre homestead, homesteading, diy, green acres, sam and angela, diy couple, above ground pool build, Intex Ultra XTR 26355EH, intex pool build, above ground pool base, pool base build, pool setup, above ground pool, intex pool, diy pool base, diy pool build, how to build a pool pad, how to build a pool base, pool base building, first pool, swimming pool build, backyard pool

Id: 1FpVWshKAiU

Length: 24min 5sec (1445 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 08 2023