Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Pool, day 6 (18)

After the rebar was put in, we had a lull of 10 days, while stuff was ordered. But it duly arrived, and then people came to put the equipment into place, and do the plumbing and wiring.

Here's the pool, with some pipes and stuff in it.

Pool, day (lost track)

This is what they always call 'the equipment'. Because it's just a filter / chlorinator, there's no heater, and it's much smaller than normal. The pool will be a salt water pool, which I don't really understand. The chlorine is attached to sodium which makes it salty - so it still has chlorine to kill the beasts that you don't want, but it's not all nasty and chloriney. And the water feels different too.

Pool, day (lost track)

This bit is called the skimmer, it's where the stuff that floats on the top gets trapped and filtered out.

Pool, day (lost track)

And here's the light. I still don't see how we will change the bulb.
Pool, day (lost track)

The inspector (from the council) came yesterday to, inspect. He seemed happy with everything, except the fences, which he said weren't high enough, because they had to be five feet high - but they are five feet high, which confused me. The gates need fixing - they need to close and latch automatically - we knew about that.

We need to get pool alarms for the doors from the house fitted. I looked online at Amazon, and a couple of people mentioned in reviews that these alarms were approved by their council. That made me a bit nervous, so I went to a pool supply store, and bought them there, for $80 each. The alarms have to be high enough that a child can't turn them off - when you open the door, you have 7 seconds to press the button, and then 14 more seconds to get through the door and close it (at least, that's my understanding). You should not be able to remove the alarms without using tools - so no tape or velcro to attach them to the door. I had quite a hard time finding all those rules - the LA County website was pretty useless, but eventually I found the Los Angeles Design and Construction of Swimming Pools Regulations.

It's not obligatory, but we're also going to get a pool alarm, which will go off if anything large falls into the pool (like a dog or a child).

Sunday, October 18, 2009

I have seen the future of bumper cars ...

... and I'm not happy.

When I was young (and, let's be frank, still) the purpose of going on bumper cars was to attempt to inflict injuries on people in the other bumper cars, whilst avoiding such injuries yourself.* The best way to do this was to hit people when they weren't expecting it, ideally when they were braced for a different impact. (When someone has just run into someone head on, they are braced for a forward impact - this is the ideal time to hit them on the side or back).'

Today we went to Santa Monica Pier. Bought tickets for the bumper cars, and then went to find them. But they weren't there. There was an empty tent.

Eventually I found them. And they weren't like proper bumper cars.

First, they get their electricity through the floor - no tall masts with exciting sparks on the mesh ceiling any more. (It's quite an elegant solution - I thought about how that might work for a while - it must be AC, not DC, I've decided. And would their be sparks if I were to drop a piece of metal there?)

Santa Monica Beach / Pier

Second, they are surrounded by inner tubes. When they crash, they just bounce off each other in a gentle, and not even potentially a little bit painful, fashion.

Santa Monica Beach / Pier

Because they are rubber, they don't slip past each other. Daniel discovered that you can pin someone to the wall, and stop them moving until the ride is over and then they cry.


*Obviously within the legal parameters of bumper cars - you could just get out and hit them if you really wanted to inflict injury.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Old Los Angeles Zoo

Ever since I first heard about it, I'd been meaning to go to the Old LA Zoo. The original zoo was built in the 1930s, and in the 1960s, it was realized that it wasn't really suitable for the animals, so they closed it, and built a new zoo about 2 miles from it. But the old zoo was just left - it's now an abandoned, derelict zoo. Which is kind of strange.

I'd imagine this was some sort of storage building.

Los Angeles Old Zoo


And that these might have contained birds.
Los Angeles Old Zoo

Notice how 40+ years of erosion have partially buried this cage.
Los Angeles Old Zoo

One cage had a gate that still worked. The boys weren't strong enough to open or close it, which was tempting ...
Los Angeles Old Zoo
Random people walking past cages.
Los Angeles Old Zoo
This is above the cages. It looks like a chimney - I wonder if there was a heating system.
Los Angeles Old Zoo




There was more, but it was getting dark, so we're going to have to make another trip. We also saw two coyotes, which made the dogs very excited.

Dog Tags

The dogs have a tag on their collar, with their name and our phone number on it. Then they have one from Southern California Golden Retriever Rescue (because they're not really our dogs, they're SCGRR's dogs). They have a tag with their microchip number on it (although I don't see why they need that, 'cos they've got a microchip) and they have a tag which proves they have a dog licence. Which makes a lot of tags.

They sort of jingle when they walk.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Day 5 (8) of the Pool

We're on day 5, or maybe 9, depending on how you count, of pool building. As in it's been 8 days since they started, and they've done 5 days work. I forgot to put a memory card in the video camera this morning, so we don't have an exciting video of people putting steel reinforcements in a hole in the ground.

But never fear, you can see some pictures.

From one end:
Pool, Day 5 (8)


From the other end:
Pool, Day 5 (8)


From above:
Pool, Day 5 (8)

Day 4

Day 4 of pool construction. Not much happening today - partly 'cos it's been raining for the last couple of days, and the hole is now full of muddy water, so all they did was empty it. Oh, and they brought some metal bars.



We got a 9 page document from Mr Carlos Pools, telling us what we are supposed to do and not do while they're building the pool. It might have been more helpful if we'd had this when we started, 'cos it says things like "The plans and inspection card willbe placed in a plastic envelope ... DO NOT MOVE, REMOVE or DISTURB ANY OF THE CONTENTS. Leave the envelope and its contents exactly where left." I mean, why would we do that?

"DO NOT ALLOW DOGS TO RUN LOOSE AFTER THE EXCAVATION OF THE POOL ...". Oops. I picked up the poop, so maybe they won't know.

"KEEP CHILDREN AND PETS AWAY FROM THE EXCAVATED POOL, ... PARTICULARLY THE EDGES." Well, as long as they don't watch the video. Anyway, no one fell in, so that's OK.

Today, which is day 5 of work, but day 8 since they started, they're putting the steel reinforcing bars in.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Huge Hole

We've now got a huge hole in the ground, a pile of dirt, and a slightly moonscape-ish yard.

Here's the pool outline. The wood at the back marks the level of the water (or maybe the edge). It doesn't look level, but it is.

Hole
Dog in the hole.
Hole

Hole

This used to be our (relatively) lush green lawn. The pile of dirt is going to make a level deck sort of area.

Hole

They dumped a lot of the soil in other areas of the yard, to level it a bit. It doesn't really look like an improvement.


Hole

Alex thought the pile of soil needed water. Don't know why.

IMG_7475

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Still digging

When they started digging, they said they would be finished in a day. I thought that was optimistic. This is day 2, and they're coming back on Monday to finish off.

(With more random Youtube music.)

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Pool is being dug!

They started to dig the pool yesterday.

The digging chaps - Luis and Jose, turned up at about 8:30. Chris (from Mr Carlos Pools) wasn't there yet - "He's always late" they said. They spent the time measuring and marking and stuff, while we waited for Chris.

Once we'd measured and marked, we realized that because we had to move the pool (because of the neighbors) we didn't have much space at one side, and there was a tree in the way - so we had to remove the tree. When we removed the tree, there was some paving that looked out of place, so we decided to remove that too. They were pretty flexible about all of this - and didn't seem to mind when everything had to stop while we decided whether to build a little wall (no - too expensive) and to put more soil in some places.

The people doing the digging seem to know what they are doing, they do lots of measuring, but they also think about what kind of soil goes where - when they remove the lower clay soil, they put that in the dump truck, when they remove the darker topsoil, they put that in the areas that are going to become lawn.

Anyway, here's a video. There's a nine hour video, a 10 minute video, and a 2 minute video. Given the average attention span of the reader of this blog I expect you haven't even reached here. But assuming you have, here's the 10 minute version (complete with Youtube's randomly chosen music).

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Permits! Digging!

We have got permits for a pool (apparently - I haven't seen them, but I believe them when they tell me we have). They will come on Friday (that's a week today) and start digging. Digging should take two days - they might finish on Saturday, if we're nice to them, or might finish on Monday.

We want to use some of the soil to try to make parts of the yard less steep - but there is quite a lot of stuff in the way. Some paving stones, the compost heap, a weird bench thing (made of three pieces of stone - it's very, very heavy, and falls over and apart when I try to put it together). I wonder if we can just bury it.