Plumbing Emergency - Rerouting A Water Line

It was coming bubbling up from underground, almost like the Beverly Hillbillies, except it wasn't Texas Tea. It was fresh, clear water. Bubbling up on our patio right around one of the vertical posts for the little palapa there.

Well, I guess I really should begin at the beginning. Monday or Tuesday of this week, that'd be the 25th or 26th of December, I had finished walking the doggies, as I do almost every day. Upon coming home at 6:30 AM, I immediately fed them breakfast, and then prepared breakfast for Dianna and myself. Our normal routine.

That's so we get breakfast out of the way, so that I can get the girls into their pen, so they don't interfere with the workers or anything going on with the construction. After that, I walked over to the chain link gate and unlocked and opened it so that Carl and the workers can all come in and get started with the day's construction activities.

After unlocking the gate, I head up to the new addition and leisurely walk through. This is when I can really look at the progress without being hurried or anything, note any problems that might be evident. I usually also spend a few minutes in the veranda just gazing out at the canal. It's a really nice sight early in the morning. I can't wait to do it when we actually live there, and I can stand or sit with a hot cup of coffee and just savor the view.

Canal From the Veranda

Of course, you've got to use your imagination a little bit. No chain link, the scalloped wall continues across, the dock is finished all around... What the Hell, let's put a little MacGregor sailboat in there as well.

Ok, back to reality for now. After losing myself in the view and dreams, I cross over to the patio and up to the pool deck to unlock the bathroom for the crew and to rais the big door. Except this morning. There's a rather large puddle of water on the patio.

immediately think that it rained the previous night, but no, that's not what happened. Is the pool leaking onto the patio? No, that wouldn't happen like that. Where'd the water come from? What's that? I almost can see a ripple in the water. Naahh.

I put my foot in the water to dam it a bit then remove it. Sure enough, there is a slight current running through there, from around the post, meandering over to the gate and out to the dock and into the canal. Hello Houston, We have a problem.

Immediately, I think of the water piping as I installed it a few years ago. There's a 'Y' right there. One way goes to the pool house, the other goes over to the fence and is stubbed off. A future faucet was planned to go there.

Well, short of tearing up the patio to fix it, what can I do? I began to think right away of bypassing the patio.Which meant probably tapping into my main 1-1/4" water line that pretty much hugs the fence line around the pool to where it goes under the patio, running it under the pool deck, keeping the pipe on the surface there just for convenience, coming out from the pool deck around the far end and then tapping into the water line as it goes into the pool house. Should be easy and fairly fast to do, right? It's never quite like you see it in your mind's eye, ever.

Carlos and I spent some time talking about the best way to do the project. We decided we'd stop the big water line just as it turned to go under the patio, enabling us to not only keep a feed working to the pool, but also the faucet that is right at the turning point.

I dug down by the bannana trees till I found the main water line. I had Carlos finish digging it out. This brought about change #1, for the project. Carlos found another small leak right at the elbow. We made a 'command decision' to move the faucet over near where we were going to reconnect it to the pool house. This allowed us to just cap the big pipe without worrying about anything else at that location, as you can see below.

Main Water Line Capped At Patio

Then I dug out over by the raised bed to find the main water line where we were going to tap into with the 3/4" line to begin the run under the deck. You can see that result below. The smaller line running parallel to the big water line is a 220V electrical line, feeding the main pool pump. From our previous activity, we knew enough not to plunge a shovel through that, thank you very much.

Bypass Start

I had Carlos poke a hole through the block wall of the pool deck, as shown below. That was easy because we're only dealing with 4" block here.

Going Under Pool Deck

Once the water line went under the deck, that meant someone (Carlos) had to go under the deck to hook up elbows and more line till it exited the deck on the far side. It's actually pretty easy under there. No spiders or other creepy crawlies, no plants, just bare marl for the most part. There's about two-and-a-half feet of room under the deck which means crawling on hands and knees. My knees just can't handle that anymore unless it's an emergency, so that was why Carlos got elected to go under.

Hatch Entrance Under Deck

After the pipe re-emerged from under the deck, as below, then it's a short run over to tap into the line feeding into the pool house. You can see where we relocated the faucet as well.

New Water Supply to Pool House

Just to show an action shot, here's Carlos figuring out where to make the cut in the line to attach the new feed. All the old line under the patio is just where it's all going to stay. No sense trying to do anything with it. Someday, someone, an archaeologist perhaps will unearth all this pipe and wonder just what the heck was going on here.

Carlos Figuring Out Where to Cut House Water Line

After finishing hooking up the pipe, we took a break for a beer on the pool deck, and to give the glue time to set. After our break, we turned the water back on and checked every connection, including under the deck for any leaks. The good news - no leaks, anywhere. Another crisis successfully averted.

This is a good way to start the new year. We'll once again wish you and yours a prosperous, happy and safe New Year. May that sentiment stretch throughout the entire year.
Cheers,

There's a few more photos than appear in this posting. You can see them all on Flickr at: https://www.flickr.com/gp/winjama/ru32eu.

Everyday Is Amazing

I swear, each and every day, it's a new surprise. If it isn't the weather, it's some new plant or something that Carlos has brought with him and casually told us that he's planted it somewhere, either in the raised garden, or in the patio garden, or somewhere.

It's always something. Case in point. This morning, Carlos came up to the front porch where Dianna and I were talking, and he shows us this huge, beautiful bouquet. Something he'd whipped together from a coconut frond 'husk'. I just Googled 'What is it called that attaches a palm frond to the trunk?' The answer is it's called the 'leaf sheath.' And, now we all know. Anyway, he'd whipped this together from a palm leaf sheath, and several other flowers and leaves, all from plants around our yard.

As you can see below, he took some of the palm leaves and them to fasten the bouquets to the palapa posts. Pretty nice, if I do say so.

Carlos' Newest Floral Creations

Here's a bit closer view of each of the bouquets. These make just a spectacular display. Sometimes, you're just not all that aware of just how gorgeous many of these plants are.

Close-Up of One Of the Bouquets

And, here's the other one. They really look vibrant and full of color. It takes someone like Carlos putting them together to really pop us upside the head and to pay attention to some of the amazing color and varieties of what's growing in our yard.

Here's the Other One

The other thing he's done a couple of now, is a tabletop flower arrangement. This one he did with some flowers that were left over from the bouquets. It looks nice from a distance, just sitting on the table.

Table Arrangement

But close-up, it's as spectacular as either of the bouquets. Such a variety of shapes and colors. I'm still amazed that this is all stuff from our yard.

Close-Up of Centerpiece

I need to break out my big camera and take some serious shots at some of what's right under our noses. But, knowing me, I probably won't. I'll get sidetracked doing some repair or other... or working on the blog.

And Not A Moment Too Soon

It's time for another 'grab-bag Sunday.' And... Whatever I was going to write has just gone up in smoke.

I'm not sure how this is going to go... I just lost everything I had written - several paragraphs and all the photos. Gone in an instant. Technology allows you to destroy stuff quicker than the blink of an eye. In fact, damn near instantaneously. It's so quick, you just sit there staring at your blank screen for a few seconds, thinking "Now, that didn't really just happen, did it?" Then, your brain springs into action, trying to come up with some really pertinent medieval profanity, with the intent being to, one, equalize the pressure between your ears and, two, that somehow, uttering a string of favorite cuss words will instantly restore the now missing words to the screen. Of course, it never does.

The scene shifts slightly, going forward in time several hours, about 24 of them in fact. I wasn't relishing trying to resurrect what I had already written, and the satellite Intertubes decided that I couldn't load even one web page without waiting for hours to pass. So, I gave up till this morning. It always seems to magically ease up download and upload capability during the 'free time', from 2 to 7 AM, Eastern Standard Time. Thanks HughesNet. You're really great.

Nothing I like better than trying to recreate something that was almost done, and yes, I had hit the 'Save' button... several times. Arrrgh! I had gone into the inner workings of the blog to adjust the HTML and [blip] everything disappeared and there was no way to resurrect it.

Oh, well. Take a deep breath, have a cup of coffee and start over. Reload the photos and try to remember the witty narrative I had carefully constructed. Not a problem. So, after having trashed everything I had written yesterday morning, let's see how far I get on re-writing it.

A while back, like in June I think, the Citizens Coalition for a Better Corozal had donated several items to the Corozal Police Department. Handcuffs, batons and five brand new bicycles. All with the idea that this would help combat the growing crime rates in our town. I kept a watchful eye every day for the new bikes. I had heard of folks who actually saw them on patrol, but I never had. And I was in town usually at least once a day, either for walkies or a run to the grocery or hardware stores.

This one morning in September was to be different. As we were walking along the waterfront by Miami Beach, I saw two of the fabled bikes propped up against one of the beach palapas. I just had to take a photo. As we approached, the two officers, who were lounging under the palapa, immediately jumped up to pose with their bikes, as you can see below. "We're doing early morning beach patrol," one said to me.

New Bikes On Patrol

We talked for a couple of minutes about the weather, the new bikes and how slow an early morning beach patrol was, and then it was time for us to continue with walkies. I had finally seen a couple of the new police cruisers in action... sort of.

This next photo might look a little strange. It's up on our back porch. Dianna has a rack for starting seeds. In its former life, the rack was one of those racks that fit over the toilet tank in the bathroom. We had never really cared that much for it, but hated to just pitch it, so here it is serving as her seed nursery.

What you see here is some of the bits I'm using to put together a watering wand setup for Dianna, so she can take care of the little plants easily.

My Stuff Ready To Build Watering Station

Here's a shot of some of the seedlings. Apparently parsley starts very quickly, and, true to form, ours does too. She also has cilantro, basil, lemon basil, chives, thyme, and probably a couple others as well.

It's Alive, It's Alive

I mentioned the watering wand. Here it is. It has a reel to hold the wand tubing. The reel turns to make rolling up the tubing very easy. The wand also has a trigger device, so you can easily start and stop the water flow.

All Done

I tapped into the kitchen cold water supply from downstairs, ran it through a couple of joists and through the wall into the west breezeway where it then went up through the floor of the porch. Once mounted to the wall, I attached a plastic valve and the wand/reel assembly. It's right next to the seedling rack for convenience.

As you can see in the next photo, convenience doesn't get much more convenient than this. I scored a couple of brownie-points with this little project as Dianna is very happy with it. Incidentally, she's been hauling this wand thing around for about ten or eleven years and finally gets to use it.

Here's the Big Picture

This was a day for water projects. If you remember from an earlier post, I had stubbed out a water line to the far side of the compost bin, intending to put my last fancy hose hanger in place there. Well it's been done now and works like a charm.

Last Hanger Hung

Here's the result. Hanger, hose, and faucet, all hooked up and ready to go. I do have to paint the outside of the compost bin, but that's for another day.

Hose, Hanger, and Faucet

Now, this project, the broken pool pump house door, has been hanging around (no pun intended) for months. For starters, we had lived with one then two broken hinges on our pool pump house door for some time. Oh sure, I had intended to call Vasco Doors and Windows, who built and installed the door in the first place, but you know how is, some other project always has a claim on the work priorities.

Rusted and Busted

It's not like this was a new problem. A couple of years ago, a hinge had broken on the door. Vasco had come then and fixed it. Then, a year or so ago, the bottom hinge broke again (quality welding and materials). Back they came and welded that as well, and added a third hinge for safety's sake. Then a couple of months ago, the bottom hinge went again. Then before I could call them, the middle hinge went. I still had some other priorities (something about a 'squeaky wheel getting the grease' comes to mind).

What brought it to a head, was about a week and a half ago, I went out to the pump house to reset the mechanical timer after one of our power failures. As I opened the door with its one hinge... Crash! The door came at me in a hurry. Thanks to some fancy dance steps, I was able to avert disaster, get my body out-of-the-way and rather gently lay the door down without busting my head or anything else on the patio. That definitely gets the adrenalin flowing.

I managed to get the door back into an upright position and propped it in place in the jamb to protect the pump from any rain that might come our way. And believe me, it's been coming our way quite often lately.

All right. I realized that the door had raised its priority level by several notches. I then had to call Vasco, or rather stop by to talk to them as they respond less well to telephone conversations. They said they could come out two days from then.

Dianna and I had everything in readiness for them to come Thursday morning and fix the door. But, having had experience dealing with them, I knew that timeliness was not their strong suit. And, to be totally honest, depending on who did the actual welding, quality may not be quite up to snuff either.

With that in mind, we were not real surprised when they didn't show up at the appointed time or day. A couple of days later (things do tend to get laid back here) I stopped in to see if they were planning to come some time. All right. They were going to come tomorrow, Saturday. I stressed that I now wanted heavy-duty hinges, and I wanted four of them on the door and I wanted their main welder (I still don't know his name). Not a problem. They'd be there at 9:30 AM.

Of course, 9:30 came and went. About 11:00 AM, they finally showed up. They got the welding machine set up, connected to a series of extension cord bits and pieces and some Romex cable as it's about 250 feet from the work site to our power panel out by the street.

We never got any further that day, as they brought out the new hinges – the same size as before. Wrong. The head welder jumped into his pickup, and went back to the shop to get the large hinges. About 45-minutes later, he returned. They didn't have the hinges. They had to get them and would be here first thing Monday morning. After winding up the cable bits and putting all the tools back in the truck they left.

That afternoon I had a Men's Group meeting out at Craig's house. I remember telling them that Saturday morning was alright, but not the afternoon as I wouldn't be there. Dianna told be that evening that of course, they had come back with the right parts. Dianna told them they'd have to come as scheduled on Monday as I wasn't there. So they left.

I thought maybe that would be the kiss of death for the Monday appointment. But no, they showed up about an hour later and things began to get serious.

After a short discussion about hinge sizes,work did actually get going. My concept of a larger hinge was something larger than two inches in height. More on the order of four inches or so. The concept they were dealing with was a hinge that was the same height, but had a beefier central pin. Realizing I was bound to lose if I stuck to my guns about hinge sizes, I said they could go ahead with those hinges as long as they put four of them in place.

So, now here we are, and as you can see below, actual work is occurring. First off, removing and grinding off the rusty stumps of the broken hinges

Grinding Off Old Weld Scar

Then, it's back with the bits and pieces of wire to the power main. Totally bypassing breakers, so their welding machine is at the mercy of the gods of current. Standard operating procedure.

Quick and Dirty Hookup

Here's a glimpse of the welding machine. You can see the head welder twisting the heavy cables together connecting the electrode holder to the machine. You can see the Romex power cord behind it.

Hooking Up The Electrode Holder Cable

In case you were wondering, this used to be a Lincoln arc welder. And, I assume, once upon a time it looked something like this: You can see a couple vestiges of red paint on their machine.

Dreams of A Lincoln Arc Welder

This machine reminds me of my Godson Isaiel's old welding machine. It was so decrepit, that his assistant had to literally stand with one foot in the machine to keep the coil from bouncing around while Isaiel did the welding. Now that I think about it, maybe this machine isn't so bad. But, I digress.

Here, you can see them actually welding the hinges to the door and jamb.

Welding On New Hinges

Surprisingly, the assistant actually got to do a couple bits of minor welding on the back side of the door under the close watchful eye of the master, of course.

The Apprentice Gets To Do Some Welding

Eventually, the job got done. It now works smoother than it ever has. I have high hopes that it will last for years to come – at least one or two.

As a parting gift for having read this far, here's a shot of an unknown flower growing in our patio garden. It's gorgeous.

A Pretty Pink Flower On Our Patio

We have two examples of this plant. One came from the other, so they should both be the same. But they're not. One's flowers start off looking somewhat like a rose, then they open in the morning, pink like this one. But by afternoon, they have become white as snow (whatever that is). The plant from the one above doesn't close up at night and its pink flowers don't change to white. Yet they come from the same plant. Explain that one, Gregor Mendel.

Looking For the Blue Men Group

Here's something we don't normally see every day...

April, now that she's becoming a big girl, was back at the palapa patio with us this morning. All of a sudden, Dianna says, "What the Hell is that thing?"

I'm picturing the creature from Alien or something. Thankfully what it was, was April chasing a large blue crab that had gotten into our patio garden area. He (or she) is about five or six inches across, just the carapace, not the legs or that wicked left claw.

Of course, I had left my camera upstairs in the house. I immediately ran off to fetch it, hoping the crab would still be there when I got back. It was and here's the result.

I played with it a little bit, grabbing it's massive claw and gently wiggling it until she decided to close it and gave me a slight pinch to one of my fingers. This was enough of an indicator of the power in that claw. If April had gotten nailed by it, I'm not at all sure she would have survived the encounter. Anyway, the crab hung around and posed nicely for a couple of photos.

Wanna Shake Hands?

She then decided it was time to skedaddle by running sideways along the fence to the corner, where she got a bit confused. April took this to be another opportunity to play with her new toy, so I figured that I had to do something to get the crab back into her proper element and not get myself chewed up in the process.

How Do I Get Outta Here?

Cody brought me his rake. I used the handle, trying to get the crab to latch onto the wooden handle, but no go. So I flipped it around and tried scooping her up that way. Marginally successful. At least now she latched onto one of the plastic tines and I was able to hoist her over the fence to the dock on the other side.

Gimmie A Lift Will Ya?

Once over the fence, there was not doubt in our visitor's mind of what to do. She made a beeline to the canal. With a mighty leap (or at least a small step) she tumbled down and splash, back into the canal water and safety.

I'm Gettin Outta Here!

April, of course, spent the next five or ten minutes complaining that we had gotten rid of another of her toys. Then she got sidetracked with a bee or something.

It's All Done... Till The Next Project

This latest project actually started as something, well, not small, but certainly, in my mind anyway, not major. We had a leak in the swimming pool just under the skimmer. Well, there was a crack above the skimmer as well, but being above water didn't amount to much other than cosmetics.

The Original Crack - Before Draining

I should digress for a bit here. This all started around the first of last week. We noticed the water level in the pool was slowly going down. There was no leak in the pump house, no spider gasket (a gasket on the filter) problem either. I had just replaced that in trying to trouble-shoot the cause. I had had problems before with the gasket before allowing water to leak out the back-flush setting. But, that wasn't the case here. We finally narrowed it down to either the skimmer was leaking or possibly the piping returning from the skimmer back to the pump house.

Carlos, having younger knees than me, was sent down the deck hatch to see if he could determine about where the leak was actually occurring. It took him about 10 seconds to find the source - right under the skimmer.

After a bit of head-scratching and hemming and hawing, about whether I had the skills and/or tools necessary to repair it, we decided to call John Harris, who built the pool in the first place for us about three or so years ago.

He came over within the hour, (this was on Monday) bringing Agusto, his foreman, with him. They checked it out, said it really wasn't that bad and we talked about some other minor dings and surface cracks we wanted to get fixed.

How Much of an Opening Do We Need?

A big question for us was timing, as we have some friends coming in about a week from the US and from the UK. John figured they could get started Wednesday morning.

So, about 7:15 AM, Wednesday morning, John and his crew showed up and started figuring how to open the deck to get positioned to fix the leak.

Opening Up The Deck

From there, things moved rather quickly. The deck was opened and they started digging around the base of the skimmer pipe.

Digging Around Skimmer

Here's a view of the skimmer and crack area. Work is already progressing on filling behind the skimmer with concrete. Draining the pool took about two hours.

The Original Crack Exposed

Wood forms appeared as if by magic and were soon in place and filled with concrete. Below, the woodwork of the deck is being re-installed.

Concrete Form Around Skimmer

Somewhere around this time, we were talking to John about our BBQ/Palapa area and what we wanted to do for a floor. He had done something similar to this at a neighbor's house, He took me over to see. It looked good to me and I knew Dianna would just love it.

 I could just visualize it with me doing the work. We would have been unprepared for such a project and I certainly wouldn't have considered attempting it right before our visitors from afar came.

John thought that he and his crew could be finished by Friday or Saturday with both the pool and the patio projects. And, I haven't mentioned that the pool project had grown by this time to include re-plastering the entire pool with Diamond Brite and raising the spa seat by four inches!

We talked some more. It really appealed to Dianna and me to have both parts done before our visitors showed up, if we could afford it. We talked with John about price and finally came up with a deal that made it very attractive to us, It was easy to say, "Go ahead."

So, now we had two large (for us) projects underway. Totally re-doing our pool surfaces, raising the spa seating four inches, patching cracks, and laying about one thousand square feet of concrete, staining it and stamping an old brick pattern into the barely wet concrete. All to be finished by Friday or Saturday.

Same number of guys and work commenced on both simultaneously. It got kind of intense for a while. A lot going on.

In no time, the crack under the skimmer was tackled. Using hydraulic cement (the package says you have about a fifteen minute working time. Three to four minutes is more like it. It sets and cures very fast, and continues to harden even under water.

Chiseling Out The Crack

Hydraulic Cement Patch Completed

Pretty soon John and Agusto were 'on the horn' with their cell phones and calling for supplies like additional bags of cement, steel Diamond Brite (which would arrive from San Pedro via the Thunderbolt). First thing I remember showing up was the concrete stamps. The heavy rubber mold pieces that gave us a very nice pattern

Stamps Showing Pattern

Right away, the crew began setting levels on the patio to gauge how thick the pour would be in various parts. It became evident right away that the area right around the door to the pump house was too low to be part of same pour. In other words it was going to have to be a step down from the patio level. But that created an additional problem. There would be no way for water collecting there to move anywhere except into the pump house itself. Not a good thing.

The thought was that a drain needed to be installed right there to handle that problem. Luckily, the backwash drain pipe runs right through that very area so it was easy to add a drain into the system.

Digging Out Drain Pipe

I had a spare 4" drain fixture, so with the addition of a couple of other fittings, we were on our way with that problem being solved.

Completed Drain Addition

So work continued at a steady pace on the pool and the patio. If it seems I jump around between the two, it just because that's how it was happening in real time. There was a lot going on.

Here's a shot of work just beginning on the spa seats - the first of the tile being removed. This was an ideal time for me to bring out my new air chisel, which I've had for months, but hadn't used yet. I bought it to bore a hole in the utility room wall to vent the water heater, but just hadn't gotten to it yet. It turned out to be a great tool for removing not only the tiles, but the Thinset under the tiles.

Removing Old Tile

Removing Last of the Seat Tile

Once all the old tile was knocked out, forms were set to add the additional four inches of concrete. Here the pour is in progress.

Filling Seat Form in Spa

As soon as the concrete set for the seat, the guys could begin setting the new tile in place. Naturally, Creative Tile in town didn't have the same 3" blue tile they had when we originally did the pool. They had 4" tile instead. So, you go with what you have. It looks fine. There's enough separation that it looks as though we had done it on purpose.

Tiling Layout Almost Done

Redone Seats Being Diamond Brited

And, here's the final result for the spa. During the Diamond Briting process, the spa jet adjustable outer bezels that control the amount of bubbles and velocity of water coming through them got cemented in place so that they no longer turned. I asked John to have his guys free those up for us.

A surprise result of that was, apparently, chiseling the bezels free must have knocked something inside the jets (there are three of them) loose that had been seized up before, virtually since we installed them during the pool construction. Now the jets work great where before, it was disappointing to say the least. Now the spa works like you'd expect - it's fantastic.

Part of the project was to re-Diamond Brite the whole pool - about 10 bags of Diamond Brite went into that.

Diamond Briting the Pool

This even included covering the concrete bit that holds the railing, making it all a unified piece.

Diamond Briting Rail Base

Of course, once it's done, then all the tile needed to be cleaned. Probably the slowest part of the project. Here's Dianna doing her part in the cleanup.

Dianna Helping Clean Tiles

A quick view of the completed Diamond Brite job.

Completed Spa

  As soon as it set, we started filling the pool - a nine-hour process.

Finally Adding Water

 Here you can see just how well the jets function. Sometimes 'hitting something upside the head with a 2x4' works wonders.

The Jets Are Perfect

By now, John's crew has covered the patio area with plastic sheeting, laid 1/4" steel all around (to help keep the concrete from cracking).

Plastic Sheeting and Tying Steel

Now the pour commences. It's a big pour and was done in two parts. This was necessary because of the way the concrete stamping has to be done. It's critical that the concrete not be too soft to stamp nor can it be too firm.

First Barrow-Load Being Poured

Here you can see the first part of the pour coming along nicely. The whole patio consumed 56 bags of cement. It's funny. With just the dirt surface, the patio didn't seem all that large. Once it's all covered with concrete, it seems huge.

First Half Pour Well Underway

And now, here the first half pour is completed. It still takes some time before the stamping can begin as the concrete needs to set up fairly firmly to be successful.

First Half Pour Completed

And here, looking through the palm fronds, the stamping process has begun. First the powdered concrete dye is cast over the concrete.

Spreading Dye

 The dye as well as the release agent are both powders, about the consistency of talcum powder. Here's John stirring some dye to do away with any clumps before it's cast over the concrete.

John Stirring Up The Dye

Then, a mold release agent, which is impervious to water, is added. Otherwise, when the stamps are applied, when you remove them, there'd be bits of concrete sticking to the stamps, completely ruining the effect you want.

Adding Release Agent

The stamp, a large heavy rubberish (silicone?) thing with handles, is applied, walked on to set the design and then after the dye and release agent is applied for the next stamp, it can be pulled back out and reused.

Placing First Stamp

As you might guess, there's a fair amount of technique involved to achieving an even coat of the dye and the release agent. As they say...

It's All In The Wrist

 Below, you can see the design imprinted into the concrete.

Showing the Pattern

And here you get an idea of how it progresses through the whole area.

Whole Lotta Stamping Going On

Around 11:00 AM or so, the process developed a glitch. Agusto had gone to Orange Walk to pick up more dye and release agent. The store there was slow with the goods. Consequently, he was delayed getting back to Corozal.

With the critical nature of the project timing as far as the concrete hardening, the inevitable happened. the last bit of the first pour hardened off too much by the time he got back. It had to be chipped out and disposed of. More concrete then had to be mixed and poured. With the time necessary for it to harden to the proper consistency, the guys day just became that much longer.

A Minor Glitch

In the end, the repair job was successful. It's near impossible to tell where the concrete was removed and replaced.

I had mentioned the difference in heights between the patio proper and the immediate entry area of the pump house. This photo shows how that was handled and shows the drain in place.

Pump House Entry and Drain

Here's a couple of shots showing the very last of the stamping process.

Almost Done

Applying Last Stamp

Now, it's all done, with the exception of for Saturday morning, a couple of workers will return to paint a final coat of the dye over the entire surface to give it a uniform color. This will wear and give a weathered look, but it will all start out evenly.

The stamping is all done

The painted application has begun. It'll take them about three hours to paint the whole thing.

Painting On Second Dye Coat

They're almost done with the painting part of the project.

Painting Dye Almost Done

The job is finished. John will return on Monday to pick up leftover bits and pieces and that the end of the project.

Second Dye Coat Done

Sunday, the pool was full. We had let Huey run over night. The water was crystal clear and 80 degrees. Dianna and I spent several hours in the pool. We've used the patio. It works as advertised.

We've sat in the spa and enjoyed the invigorating massage. Everything has come together. We love it!

Interestingly, none of the dogs would go onto the patio until I had walked out on it. Once I did that, they were right behind me and have been all over it since.

Secret Approves