If you have followed along on our pool building journey, you’ve seen how it all started (how to build a pool on a mountain), how to build the pool/deck, and now what we did to hide the rocky yard and how to hide your pool solar cover.
Here is what the end of the pool looked like after we finished building it last year. You can see there is a very rocky section of yard that we could not plant anything. We wanted to finish this and the only thing I could think of doing was putting planters. Then we thought a fountain would be fun too. And then Jim had the brilliant idea of building a hidden storage area for the solar cover. I had no idea how he would make that work, but he did!
We drew out this sketch together and thought it would be a nice solution to the issues we had. We make a good team … I dream it and Jim builds it. I think it came out exactly the way we expected.
This shows the structure of the planters/fountain with the solar cover underneath. We used a standard solar cover reel and just mounted it upside down. There is a slot in the front of the structure that allows the cover to go out to the pool and back inside to store it when not in use. Solar covers are great and actually do an amazing job keeping your pool warm (ours is usually between 85-90 degrees), but they are very difficult to manage. Last year we would fold it up at the end of the pool and have to store it in a big bin and it’s bulky and heavy. We thought there must be a better way and that’s when this idea came to mind. We tried to find ways to automate the wheel, but we haven’t figured that out yet, so for now we just manually turn the wheel to roll it up.
The fountain itself is a 48″ Natural Wonders waterfall. We used a Jandy diverter attached to the pump that we use to turn it off and on. Our pump does have to be on a higher speed to push the water up and out of the fountain, but the pump does a good job getting the water out. We used this tile from Lowe’s to cover the front of the fountain and used this sealer which does an amazing job keeping it dry (I used 3 coats of sealer). We’ll definitely be putting that sealer on some shower tile floors in the house. We used a Schlueter rounded plastic edging on the bottom to give the solar cover a soft edge to go under. The sound of the water is louder than what would be ideal, and I think it’s because the fountain is 36″ high from the surface of the water. I would probably have lowered that had we known so that is one lesson learned.
The planter boxes are made of quarter sawn white oak which we purchased from a local guy called The Woodsman. It’s 1″ thick so the boards are the structure – we didn’t need any additional structure behind them. White oak is a very weather resistant wood similar to cedar. One thing I love about quarter sawn white oak is there is very little grain pattern so it’s modern looking, and its white oak so you don’t have the pink tones of red oak. I stained it and put 6 coats of this marine varnish to make it last a very long time.
The last thing we wanted to make sure watering these planters was easy since the one to the left of the fountain is hard to get to. I found this video on YouTube that shows how to make a self-watering planter. I followed his instructions and so far, so good. I used a mixture of peat moss and potting soil, and I should have wet the peat moss fully before planting the trees. Because I didn’t do that, I have had to fill the water reservoir a few times as the soil keeps wicking the water too fast. Once the soil is damp, I think it will take less water to keep it damp. I have found that any self-watering plants do so much better than having to figure out how much water to give a plant. This way you can’t overwater, which tends to kill them.
We are so happy with how everything turned out and honestly every day feels like we wake up in a resort! It was way more work than I would have imagined, more money, and a ton of time … but I would do it all again. We love entertaining and having our family over, so it gets a lot of use. Also, the pool is a salt system, and I would not do it any other way … it’s so easy to take care of!
If you want to get a better view of the solar cover area and what that looks like, watch this video.