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  1. #1

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    Building a Marble Swimming Pool

    Well I have just been going through my HDDs and have about 4gbs of spare space on this pc which has 240gbs of Hard drives in, so time to dump some pictures.

    So here is a tutorial on how to build your own Marble swimming pool, now marble aint the best of stuff to use as it is pourous and stains real easily, but hell the whole lot is covered in either salt or freshwater so the staining works out even, also the 10cm by 20 cm slabs of marble only cost 100baht per square meter so marble works out the cheapest to make your swimming pool.

    Anyway lets start from the beginning, first off you need a really big hole, this is where you will put your swimming pool, I should mention this is one I built a few years ago, so first off you get your standard digger in, this baby has to clear the crap off of the land and start digging the hole, now if you want a 2 meter deep pool you have to dig down like 3 meters so you can get the footings in, swimming pools are really heavy so you don't want to try and save money on them, this digger has about a 3.5 meter reach on it which is no where near enough but it's a good start.



    He needs a couple of days to move all the dirt and crap into a big pile then you got to rent a 10 wheel truck for him to load all this crap into so it can be dumped, by this time your running out of room if the land is only a small plot, the digger is like 3 to 4,000baht perday, the 10 wheeler about 3,000baht perday, plus what he makes on selling your dirt, these guys don't do too bad moneywise.

    The dirt pile starts.



    The staff accidently on purpose smashed down the neighbours wall and concrete BBQ but luckily they never knew about that, hell we needed the room, we had the big beasty bstard coming soon.

    So here we are digging a big hole.



    Eventually you realise that this little bugger aint gonna dig a hole big enough, this is the time to rent a tracked monster, this beast is brought in on a lorry and you got to put wood planks down for it otherwise the road gets destroyed, also your wood gets destroyed but it is better than being sued I suppose by city hall, now this beasty is like 8,000baht perday, you got your 10 wheel lorry here all the time now to get rid of the excess dirt and things are moving at a fine pace.



    Sometimes you hit slight little problems like the water table being to high, ok this aint a slight problem it's like a fok me problem, the job turns into a nightmare job, ok this place is right near the beach in Jomtien, so you got to get guys there nice and early in the morning to start pumping out, you don't want all that machinery like beasty diggers and lorries waiting there so they can start work, so you get a couple of the guys in there at 6am, this is where you need a couple of Muslim staff, they are more conci, erm they think more about there work than Buddhists do.


  2. #2
    The Pikey Hunter
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    ^.... and the buggers had to get up for the 5am prayers anyway, so they're more likely to show up.

  3. #3

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    Trouble is that even Muslims have holidays and then your foked for a couple of hours, I mean whats the point of digging out mud and watching it go all over the place, the pumps are in place but aint no one there to start erm up.

    Obviously at this stage all the neighbours hate you, everyday your pumping thousands of gallons of water onto the street and flooding it, it came to the stage that we had to rent a water lorry everyday to pump it into, the pumps were running full time but over half of the slimey gunge went into water lorries, now this was getting damn expensive, we would fill up the water lorry and while he was off dumping the stuff the pumps kept pumping, yep onto the street, as we got deeper we had more and more problems with the water table, we found that neighbours had run their cess pits onto this land and had to block all them as we didn't need their water aswell, obviously they done their nut and told us about this imaginary sewage system in Jomtien, it's like what this imaginary sewage system ends up at this house? fok you, so they were blocked, although some German cnut neighbour did try to cause us problems later in the job, more on Adolf later.


  4. #4

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    Of course when your digging a damn big hole next to a house you got to chuck some steel supports into the ground so the house don't collapse, people probably get a bit angry about that sort of stuff, anyway before you start digging out you get your cheapy digger to whack something like this into the ground, I should add they are real hard to get out of the ground and we use one of those engine lifting things set up on a bamboo frame work.


  5. #5

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    The Swimming Pool Resevoir

    Now as we all know your swimming pool needs somewhere to dump excess water and store it, so this is another big hole you need, the best case scenario is like a resevoir of about the a third of the size of your swimming pool, most cases this aint gonna happen so don't worry about it too much, the sun burns off Clorine like nobodies business so your gonna have to keep a check on the balance of your pool anyway, so lets build a resovoir.




    Rendering off the resevoir.



    Again this also holds a lot of weight so is structural and damn expensive.



    Tile the bugger out and you got a water proof container.

    Last edited by dirtydog; 06-03-2007 at 08:08 PM.

  6. #6
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    is this for a single home? or a complex?

  7. #7

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    Single home of course, don't deal with scummy people that have to live in a complex.....

  8. #8
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    so how much would have been the total bill then?

  9. #9

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    No idea, we couldn't do a total bill as the pool was built under the water table, the local houses have raised pools, aint no one gonna quote for a job like that.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by dirtydog View Post
    No idea, we couldn't do a total bill as the pool was built under the water table, the local houses have raised pools, aint no one gonna quote for a job like that.
    so what u just worked for a bit then gave up?

    or u got no idea what it cost ya or wot u billed?


  11. #11

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    No idea what I billed, this was in conjunction with building a mansion and guest house.

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    Steps into the swimming pool

    So now you got to decide how to get in and out of your swimming pool, proper steps or a stainless ladder? stainless is cheaper and quicker, but this pool has steps, here we are with the basic form work in place.




  13. #13

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    Swimming Pool Footings

    Lets go back a bit and show you the footings, we wont bother with the steel work and walls and that as that has already been done in this thread HERE (Building your own swimming pool in Thailand)

    For the footings most builders use the concrete rings to use as a form, these ones are 150cm diameter, these you will need loads of as you don't want your swimming pool cracking at a later date, on top of these you will run your beam work, and on top of that you will do your concrete pour for the floor of the pool, obviously in your footings you put in a steel rebar pad with uprights to tie into your beam work.


  14. #14

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    Marble Swimming Pool Steps

    So here is a nice picture of the finished steps leading into the swimming pool, all the edges are rounded off so people don't cut their feet, this is done with an angle grinder starting with really rough pads and eventually getting down to really smooth ones made out of wet and dry sand paper.


  15. #15

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    Lighting in your swimming pool

    Swimming pool lights are 12 volt halogens, some are sealed units and some aint, also some are 100 watt and some are 300 watt, now being DC these need some real big cables in, you wired up for 100watt stuff and the customer gets 300watt stuff your foked, those cables you used will just burn out, remember, keep your customer under control at all times, even if it means beating them.

    The best lights to get for your swimming pool are the sealed units, yeah they cost a bit more to replace but hell if you got a swimming pool you got money to waste and a real expensive ornament so stop your whinging about the price, most people in the world cant afford swimming pools so whats an extra couple of thousand baht?

    With swimming pool lights it is best to have a seperate transformer and cable run to each one, cable burns out or goes wrong they lost one light so it aint the end of the world, you run the cables in series and it gets damaged at the beginning you will be getting lots of hate mail and phone calls


  16. #16

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    Putting up marble onto walls

    Marble is really hard to get to stick to walls, this is because the back of the marble is quite smooth and also marble isn't very pourous, as the walls here are never straight and you want your marble to be straight you do need to use cement to stick on your marble slabs.

    These are 10 by 20 cm slabs of marble, the best way to get these to stick is to cut a groove into the back of the marble using an angle grinder and then glue a nail into the groove, ie a 2 inch groove for a 3 inch nail so it sticks out a bit, when you cement this up onto the wall the nail will be imbedded into the cement, you don't need to do this to every slab as it is really time consuming, but the more you do it to the better it will last.


  17. #17
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    DD, I hope that most everyone can now understand the problems of building a home here in Thailand.

    Yes, it is true that I am a donor. All of US25 bucks or so.

    Back on subject. This thread shows the problems of building a dream project in a 3rd world country. This I can understand...

    2 thumbs up!

  18. #18
    Have you got any cheese Thetyim's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by dirtydog
    the best way to get these to stick is to cut a groove into the back of the marble using an angle grinder and then glue a nail into the groove
    Sorry that went straight past me.
    Can you explain more or show a picture of the groove & nail.
    Also what glue do you use.

  19. #19

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    The nail is like laid into the groove so slopes slightly away from the back of the tile, that way there is like an inch of the nail sticking sticking away from the tile but no further than say 8mm from the back of the tile, the glue can be any 2 part resin type stuff.

  20. #20

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    dirtydog's Avatar
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    Swimming pool shower

    Next you need a shower area by your pool to either wash the salt or chlorine off of your self after swimming, and the suntan lotion off before swimming.





    The stainless grating we got made to order, the shower stand from Home Pro, in the last picture you can see the surround of the pool is made with Granite, this is really slippery when wet and really should be acid etched in strips so your feet get a reasonable grip on it.

  21. #21
    I don't know barbaro's Avatar
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    DD,

    I think what you do, is cool.

  22. #22
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    I thought when you were in the water table you built above ground? It seems (don't know nuttin about it!!!) you have almost enough structure and concrete to do that? I guess it is a question of taste then.

  23. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by KevinCorr
    I thought when you were in the water table you built above ground?
    Price wise that is the sensible option

  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by dirtydog View Post
    Swimming pool lights are 12 volt halogens, some are sealed units and some aint, also some are 100 watt and some are 300 watt, now being DC these need some real big cables in, you wired up for 100watt stuff and the customer gets 300watt stuff your foked, those cables you used will just burn out, remember, keep your customer under control at all times, even if it means beating them.

    The best lights to get for your swimming pool are the sealed units, yeah they cost a bit more to replace but hell if you got a swimming pool you got money to waste and a real expensive ornament so stop your whinging about the price, most people in the world cant afford swimming pools so whats an extra couple of thousand baht?

    With swimming pool lights it is best to have a seperate transformer and cable run to each one, cable burns out or goes wrong they lost one light so it aint the end of the world, you run the cables in series and it gets damaged at the beginning you will be getting lots of hate mail and phone calls

    How come you are not using fiber optic cables (ran to the fixture outlets)? Instead it looks like you place lamps into the fixtures. This is a problem safety wise and maintenance wise. Like you said spend the bucks well and do it right! The lamps can be above ground in a weather proof box and the FO cables ran into the pool fixtures. Also you use power supply to change AC to DC not a transformer. You will have to size a power transformer's VA for the lamp load KW! Thus not having to run wires of different gauges AWG everywhere.

    The Dude

  25. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by dirtydog View Post
    The nail is like laid into the groove so slopes slightly away from the back of the tile, that way there is like an inch of the nail sticking sticking away from the tile but no further than say 8mm from the back of the tile, the glue can be any 2 part resin type stuff.

    I still don't get it, but it is probably OK, because
    1) I am not that smart , and
    2) I don't plan on building a swimming pool in the near future.

    1) is not likely to change (at least not for the better), and if 2) ever does, I will be in touch.
    Any error in tact, fact or spelling is purely due to transmissional errors...

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