Endless Pools

When you erect an above-ground pool in the spot in which mine sits—out in the open, where the evening temperatures can drop to 20 degrees in the Winter—you've got to insulate your pool or you'll burn out the bearings on your electric meter (i.e., you're going to have a heart attack when your power bill arrives in the mail).

Endless Pools suggests rigid styrofoam be used as insulation, and me being the iconoclast that I am—and since I not only resist authority but advice of all kinds—I decided to experiment with a variety of insulation types. After spending money and having fun I came around to the conclusion that rigid styrofoam is the way you ought to insulate your pool.

My pool is buried about two-thirds of the way into the ground, and my rigid foam boards, which are 2" thick, extend most of the way to the bottom of the pool (they have a silver backing, and even though they're installed in the photo at right they just look like the sides of the pool). I don't intend to ever move this pool, and so it doesn't matter that I leave the nuts and bolts exposed for future disassembly. Therefore, where the foam boards are inconvenient to use I insulate with expanding waterproof foam (the yellow stuff you see) that comes in an aerosol can. Everything that is exposed gets insulated in my pool. All these varieties of insulation I mention, by the way, are available at Home Depot or Lowes.

Before I could insulate the pool I had to hurry up and mount the retractible cover onto it, as the heat will leave the pool in a hurry without anything covering the water. But I'm putting a redwood deck all the way around the pool, and I couldn't put the cover's rails on until I had the first two rows of redwood plank on the pool. So I rushed to Home Depot and bought enough redwood for that, got out my miter and table saws, and installed just enough planks so that I could mount the retractible cover's rails.

The cover is important, but doesn't add that much insulation, so I'm going to make 4'x4' panels out of rigid foam mounted onto some sort of backing—maybe thin plywood or paneling—and lay a half-dozen of these panels onto the top of the cover to prevent heat loss.

At this point my water is heated and I'm ready to take this baby out for a spin. It's butt cold outside, but the pool is warm and what the hey. So I put on my "kit," as the Aussies say, and jump in. I turn on the pool and get ready to swim against the stream of water that ought to be hurtling my way. Instead I'm pulled forward like I'm about to be flushed down a huge toilet. I hit the off button and it occurs to me that I've hooked up the hydraulic hoses backward, causing the propellor to turn in the opposite direction.

The hydraulic hoses are the black ones next to the skimmer on the upper left of the photo. They're hooked up to a valve which controls the amount of hydraulic fluid flowing through the system, which controls the speed of the pool. Basically, look at the photo and imagine the hoses on the left mounted to the valves on the right and vice versa. That's how it ought to be.

Speaking of hydraulic fluid, I couldn't locate the five gallon container Endless Pools gives you for the hydraulic motor. So I went down to the local auto supply store and got some high grade non-foaming fluid they put in the tractors around here. Come to find out that Endless Pools specs a biodegradable fluid based on canola oil. If it leaks into the pool it isn't, for example, going to burn your eyes or give you cancer or anything. I, however, do not care about these things and just want to swim. If and when it leaks I'll deal with the problem then. Fortunately the equipment is the equipment, and it matters not—to the equipment—that I'm using your garden variety hydraulic fluid.

I am the only one, it turns out, in the history of Endless Pools who has ever been dumb enough to put standard hydraulic fluid into the motor's reservoir without inquiring if that's okay. This is part of my cherished experience, however—to do it my way.

I'm off to Home Depot to get some more foam boards to finish the insulation, and to figure out how I'm going to insulate my PVC pipe. Probably wrapping them with neoprene would do the trick. I wonder if I know anybody in the neoprene business?