In this video I'm going to show you how I
put an above ground pool in my backyard. I'm going to show you every single step, from
the beginning to the end. Because of that, this video is kind of long. So I'm going to help
you out by putting a table of contents in the description. I'll have headings, and timestamps.
Just click the timestamp next to the heading or the topic you're interested in, and it'll
take you right there in the video. Enjoy. So today I'm getting started on my pool
project. We're going to put an above ground pool here and I'm going to show you what I'm
doing every step of the way. The first step is to clear the ground. So I rented a sod
cutter from Home Depot for about 100 bucks and I'm going to clear the sod out. The
pool is a 30 by 18 above ground pool and I'm going to clear out about two feet extra
on each side, so I'm going to do 34 by 22. So, if I had this to do again, I
mean the tearing out the sod part, I would mark my corners a little better because
it would keep me from kind of going crooked on my edges, which I did a little bit. So
I'm going to have to fix that with uh, with my spade, and do a little bit of
manual labor. Anyway, live and learn. One of the things I did when I was
cutting out the sod was I cut it into 10 foot sections, so that the rolls would be
manageable. And also, I thought, you know, somebody could use this sod, and
they're going to appreciate having 10 foot sections. So, here's my buddy Mike,
he's like, "Yeah, I'll take all your sod." We got his truck and his trailer back here, we're
going to load it up, get rid of all the sod. Now, if you don't have a friend who wants your sod, put
it on Craigslist. Uh, almost guaranteed somebody will come grab it, especially if you put it on
there for free. But I could actually probably sell some of this stuff, but uh, you know I'm not going
to sell it to my buddy Mike. He's, he's my buddy. OK, so as you can see, I have this all ready to
go now. I have the sod torn out. My buddy came and carted all the sod away.
And now it's ready to level. So, one mistake I made is that I didn't go low
enough with the sod cutter. There's still another inch or so of sod root like, uh, grass root
here, so when I'm trying to rake this ground, I realize it's going to be really
hard to rake and move this dirt. 'Cause I'm still kind of tearing
up sod with the rake. Unfortunate. OK, so the next part of my project is to
figure out what the grade is here and how much dirt I actually have to move. To do that,
I am going to set up, uh, some strings so I know what level is going to look like and uh,
then I can see how much dirt I have to move. So I got some stakes here at Lowe's, running a
string, putting a line level on the string, and getting some level lines in here and seeing
. . . that'll give me a lot of information. I got my line level here. It's
like three bucks for a line level. OK, so as you can see, I did a pretty job of just
eyeing it right at the beginning, but I think this side could come up a little bit. Yeah. That stake
right there, I'll just pound it down a little bit. And this line should be perfect. So that looks just about right
now. So there is a level line. And that's about 10 inches there.
Eight inches. Nine and a half. I'm going to try this little electric rototiller. See if I can just chop up that top inch or so
of ground, so that it's easier for me to rake. This is a tiny little rototiller.
And this is a really big area. But my wife insists that I try this
before I borrow my buddy's big rototiller. Here's an interesting story. See this? A piece
of glass. Um, we have a ton of this glass in our yard. When we first got this house this was
all a big field back here. Just muck. We had a bunch of dirt blown in. And uh, when they blew
the dirt in, about six to eight inches of dirt, all over this entire yard, it was filled with
debris. Glass, nails, all kinds of things. So I am going to have to give my wife some
kudos, because this uh, rototiller does seem to be doing the job, although it's going to be
a lot of work to rototill this entire thing. So, I've been working on this for a couple
hours today, and I'm slowly getting it level. I've filled a bunch of wheelbarrow loads of dirt from the high spots and dumped
'em over here on the low end. One thing that's happening now though, that
you can see, is I'm developing a little bit of a hill over here, that could erode
away. So, I think I'm going to need to make some sort of retaining wall. Some small
retaining wall on this side. I still have to put in my two to three inches of masonry sand
on top of this when I'm done leveling it. So, while I'm constantly looking out for these little pieces of glass that I mentioned earlier I'm also looking out for pieces of jasper and my favorite things to find--agates. This little agate here? This is a nice one. Nice little surprise. Just sitting in the dirt.
