[John Rogers]

Way back in the old days......1982 a little after we bought our house and great friend of our gave us an 18 foot diameter, 4.5 foot deep pool. We had a piece of land behind our rear fence that we had never really looked at and it was 24 feet wide to our rear property marker. So I found my two corner marker blocks and the neighbors in back also and ran some string and then moved our back fence to 6 inches inside the line. Then I spent the next 2 months leveling a patch of ground 20 feet in diameter and it was a real pain as our land was hard as a rock! Finally got it level and then bought half a dump truck of beach sand and spent a week with a wheel barrow moving it into the back. I made a ramp of 2x6x20foot boards covered with plastic from Harbor Freight to let the sand slide down the hill. I had put the metal pool base down with the joints on wide flat bricks and leveled the sand as a base for the liner. Got a couple neighbors to help unroll the corrugated side and put the cap pieces on. The sun was out nicely so the liner was easy to unroll and get the wrinkles out and I popped the top cap pieces loose to work the liner underneath. It took a couple days to fill the pool to near the top using two garden hoses and our 4 girls were about as happy as I had ever seen them once they got to go in! We had it for 24 years are used 3 liners and a replacement side when it rusted through. But well worth all the sweat and work!


Doing an above ground pool is still a large chore but as I found out later the city tried to make me get an inground permit which was really silly but I had already checked the city codes for pools so no permits required. I'd look to see what the city says in the area where you live to be sure.