Building a pool on a mountain – from the beginning

We decided that our view was just too beautiful not to enjoy from a pool. It’s a daunting task, but we’ll show you how we are building a pool on a mountain – from the beginning. It’s definitely a learning experience!

When we built our house, my husband did not want much of a yard to take care of. He told our landscape contractor to design the yard with enough grass to look nice, but he didn’t want to take more than 30 minutes to cut it. They did a nice job accomplishing his wishes, but that left a sea of red clay in our backyard. We decided to let it go “natural”, but after 3 years, the natural looked like a bunch of weeds.

This led to a conversation about filling that area with a pool. It can’t be that hard to install a pool on a mountain, right? We’re grandparents now so having a pool was an attractive way to keep the grandkids (and kids) coming here along with all their friends. We’ve always loved being the house everyone hung out at.

We started researching pools and what was available for our circumstance – half inground, half above ground. We couldn’t do an inground pool because it would take way too much fill and money. We wanted it to look like it was inground, so we went with a company that makes pool kits that can go inground, partially inground, or above ground.

The pool is called Hercules. What we liked most about it is that it is rectangular, so it does not look like an above ground pool once it’s finished. We ordered a tanning deck for it and stadium steps so it will look very much like an inground pool, only way cheaper. And, because of the way it is made it is insulated, which is always a good thing.

Before we ordered the pool, we rented a machine and had a friend come over (who knows how to use it) to “test” the area to make sure it was not too rocky as we needed to dig it out and level the ground. He did find a rock vein that would need a jackhammer (which we had to do to build our house as well), but that area seemed relatively small so we decided it was possible to do.

Next we determined that in order to have a flat area to build a pool, we needed 2 main retaining walls – one to hold back the yard near the house, and one to hold back the dirt that would be supporting the pool (so the pool wouldn’t slide down the mountain). We pretty much do all projects ourselves, but this one needed a professional. We had an engineer draw up plans to design the wall and we hired a contractor to build it. The designs were necessary for getting a permit since the lower wall is quite high – over 6′ – and we have drainage issues being on a mountain. We needed to make sure our investment in this pool would not end up down the mountain either because of a faulty wall, or because we had rivers of water washing away the dirt.

The wall contractor was very careful to build the walls using geogrid, a material that ties the blocks into the soil. He also made sure to run drainage pipes along the area where the upper wall is. This allows for the water that is running down the mountain to drain into the pipes and past the area of the pool.

We also needed to run electrical conduit underground and around the wall to accommodate the electrical wires that will be used for the fountain we are putting in and any pool equipment. Making sure to think of this in advance and install it at the proper time eliminates extra work later.

Here is an idea of what the pool will look like when it’s finished. The majority of the deck will be on the yard side with no deck on the mountain side. Now we just wait for some warm weather and we start the assembly process. Once the pool is built, we will build a deck around it.

Stay tuned for more updates as we move forward!