You know you can sell a swimming pool?
Oct. 19th, 2015 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pensnestThis is what happens when you do.
Note: *lots* of images in this post! If you want to see them full size, click on the pics.
***
So when we bought this house, it had a pool in the back garden. Quite a nice one, about 4m x 9m, 2m at the deep end, with swim jets and some 'spa' jets at the end with the steps. However, we couldn't see ourselves making much use of it, and it was expensive to heat and had a leaky pipe somewhere, besides being a daily pain for Beast, who had to inspect the pH and chlorine levels every other day.
So I put it on Gumtree. For Sale, fibreglass swimming pool, £100. The catch? Buyer collects.
Once we'd agreed the sale, our buyer really pulled out all the stops and got on with the job. And he did a great job of organising the removal of the pool.
Last Monday, a rented digger (size small) arrived at about 8am, shortly followed by our buyer with the digger driver, the pool removal supervisor (who had installed the pool, 15 years before), and his son the paratrooper (home for a week's leave). Also an electrician, who spent his day disconnecting and removing the various bits of machinery from the pool shed.
Digging has begun!
They started at the deep end. The digger operator was very precise, and after a while was able to put the bucket down within millimetres of the edge of the pool, once it had been established that all the plumbing was nicely tucked in below the 'lip' of the pool and therefore not in any danger.
Two sides dug. Bonus half-naked paratrooper was in the ditch freeing the soil from the pipework, where the digger's bucket could not go.
By the end of the day they had dug almost all the way around...
...and the area was a bit of a mess.
***
Next day, the team (minus electrician and paratrooper) arrived bright and early again, and the remainder of the digging was accomplished.
And we waited for the crane to arrive. (This had originally been planned for Thursday, to give plenty of time for the digging, but our buyer had managed to rearrange when the digging went so well.)
Crane imminent!
The crane arrives! Observe the narrowness of the aperture through which it must pass. Incidentally, the crane operator remembered bringing the pool in, fifteen years ago!
And the crane was not the only thing to arrive.
This was to take the pool away. A long tractor unit with its own crane, carrying an all-terrain vehicle which might have been used to manoeuvre the trailer unit, but which turned out not to be necessary.
Because the lorry driver was very good at his job!
Though it was certainly fortunate that there is a gate into a small car park just opposite our drive.
Backing the trailer in...
... really quite a skilled job...
... because there wasn't a lot of space between the trailer and the gateposts!
Anyway.
They got it through the second set of gates (we'd taken the gates off their hinges, but this was in any case a wider opening than the one at the bottom of the drive). You can see here the stacking of blocks on the back of the trailer. It was necessary to get things high enough to ensure that when the pool was loaded, it would go over the top of the gateposts.
Meanwhile, at the bottom of the garden...
... the crane was in position and various chaps were attaching ropes of some kind to the attachment points on the sides of the pool.
There were alarming noises at the first attempt to hoist. One of the attachment points at the shallow end was at an awkward angle, so that there was more strain on the side of the pool at that point. They inserted a railway sleeper (or something very like) to ease things a bit.
Then they changed the hoisting point to spreader bars to even things up a bit more.
This seemed good.
And...
... up she goes!
It was, I thought,
rather like seeing a spacecraft
about to leave the planet!
It did not, however, set off for the ionosphere, but was landed gently on the other side of the bushes, at which point, I posed with it.
It was great fun to watch! Beast and I enjoyed the whole thing very much. Our buyer, on the other hand, found it all rather stressful—of course, he had expended quite a few thousands of pounds in order to get the job done, and if the pool had, I dunno, broken in half at some point, it would have been for nothing, and quite tragic.
So, there it sat.
Then, in order to get it to the truck, they moved it.
The rather spectacular view from my back porch. I still think it looks as though a spacecraft had landed.
The next part of the proceedings was very delicate.
The crane repositioned itself and picked up the pool again, and, with two guys controlling it on tethers, gradually swung it up...
... and up...
... and around...
... and in a bit...
... and over the trailer...
... quite close to the house.
Really, very close to the house.
I mean, when I say close to the house...
... I'm not kidding.
You see?
Really close.
Possibly I'm dwelling on this part, but the guys from Abbey Transport did such a delicate job, we were seriously impressed. The pool did not touch the building at any point. Nor did it damage next-door's holly tree. (The neighbours were watching, fascinated, from their upstairs window.)
Then they had to get it down onto the trailer, past the first set of gates, and onto the drive.
Remember, it was sitting on the quite high blocks so that it could get over the gateposts. Here's a close-up.
As it progressed in a very stately way down the slight slope of the drive, one of the chaps was standing on the edge of the pool, or on the tractor unit, holding up the telephone cable that went to the corner of the house. Sadly, I have no useful photos of this, but it was quite dramatic.
You can see the cable, at any rate.
They also had a brief pause to adjust. Initially the pool was not positioned centrally on the trailer, there being the small matter of a house in the way. So the blue crane picked up the back end, and the red crane on the tractor unit picked up the front end. Awesome bit of co-ordination.
When they got to the gateposts, the tethers holding the pool on to the trailer had to be removed, the trailer inched forward, and the tethers re-tied. The tethers would not go over the posts, and there was no room for adjustment!
And they're out!
Traffic was held up for maybe five minutes, but naturally cyclists are completely lawless and do not stop even when there is a swimming pool crossing the road.
The full view.
And it's away.
***
Not something you see every day.
Note: *lots* of images in this post! If you want to see them full size, click on the pics.
***
So when we bought this house, it had a pool in the back garden. Quite a nice one, about 4m x 9m, 2m at the deep end, with swim jets and some 'spa' jets at the end with the steps. However, we couldn't see ourselves making much use of it, and it was expensive to heat and had a leaky pipe somewhere, besides being a daily pain for Beast, who had to inspect the pH and chlorine levels every other day.
So I put it on Gumtree. For Sale, fibreglass swimming pool, £100. The catch? Buyer collects.
Once we'd agreed the sale, our buyer really pulled out all the stops and got on with the job. And he did a great job of organising the removal of the pool.
Last Monday, a rented digger (size small) arrived at about 8am, shortly followed by our buyer with the digger driver, the pool removal supervisor (who had installed the pool, 15 years before), and his son the paratrooper (home for a week's leave). Also an electrician, who spent his day disconnecting and removing the various bits of machinery from the pool shed.
Digging has begun!
They started at the deep end. The digger operator was very precise, and after a while was able to put the bucket down within millimetres of the edge of the pool, once it had been established that all the plumbing was nicely tucked in below the 'lip' of the pool and therefore not in any danger.
Two sides dug. Bonus half-naked paratrooper was in the ditch freeing the soil from the pipework, where the digger's bucket could not go.
By the end of the day they had dug almost all the way around...
...and the area was a bit of a mess.
***
Next day, the team (minus electrician and paratrooper) arrived bright and early again, and the remainder of the digging was accomplished.
And we waited for the crane to arrive. (This had originally been planned for Thursday, to give plenty of time for the digging, but our buyer had managed to rearrange when the digging went so well.)
Crane imminent!
The crane arrives! Observe the narrowness of the aperture through which it must pass. Incidentally, the crane operator remembered bringing the pool in, fifteen years ago!
And the crane was not the only thing to arrive.
This was to take the pool away. A long tractor unit with its own crane, carrying an all-terrain vehicle which might have been used to manoeuvre the trailer unit, but which turned out not to be necessary.
Because the lorry driver was very good at his job!
Though it was certainly fortunate that there is a gate into a small car park just opposite our drive.
Backing the trailer in...
... really quite a skilled job...
... because there wasn't a lot of space between the trailer and the gateposts!
Anyway.
They got it through the second set of gates (we'd taken the gates off their hinges, but this was in any case a wider opening than the one at the bottom of the drive). You can see here the stacking of blocks on the back of the trailer. It was necessary to get things high enough to ensure that when the pool was loaded, it would go over the top of the gateposts.
Meanwhile, at the bottom of the garden...
... the crane was in position and various chaps were attaching ropes of some kind to the attachment points on the sides of the pool.
There were alarming noises at the first attempt to hoist. One of the attachment points at the shallow end was at an awkward angle, so that there was more strain on the side of the pool at that point. They inserted a railway sleeper (or something very like) to ease things a bit.
Then they changed the hoisting point to spreader bars to even things up a bit more.
This seemed good.
And...
... up she goes!
It was, I thought,
rather like seeing a spacecraft
about to leave the planet!
It did not, however, set off for the ionosphere, but was landed gently on the other side of the bushes, at which point, I posed with it.
It was great fun to watch! Beast and I enjoyed the whole thing very much. Our buyer, on the other hand, found it all rather stressful—of course, he had expended quite a few thousands of pounds in order to get the job done, and if the pool had, I dunno, broken in half at some point, it would have been for nothing, and quite tragic.
So, there it sat.
Then, in order to get it to the truck, they moved it.
The rather spectacular view from my back porch. I still think it looks as though a spacecraft had landed.
The next part of the proceedings was very delicate.
The crane repositioned itself and picked up the pool again, and, with two guys controlling it on tethers, gradually swung it up...
... and up...
... and around...
... and in a bit...
... and over the trailer...
... quite close to the house.
Really, very close to the house.
I mean, when I say close to the house...
... I'm not kidding.
You see?
Really close.
Possibly I'm dwelling on this part, but the guys from Abbey Transport did such a delicate job, we were seriously impressed. The pool did not touch the building at any point. Nor did it damage next-door's holly tree. (The neighbours were watching, fascinated, from their upstairs window.)
Then they had to get it down onto the trailer, past the first set of gates, and onto the drive.
Remember, it was sitting on the quite high blocks so that it could get over the gateposts. Here's a close-up.
As it progressed in a very stately way down the slight slope of the drive, one of the chaps was standing on the edge of the pool, or on the tractor unit, holding up the telephone cable that went to the corner of the house. Sadly, I have no useful photos of this, but it was quite dramatic.
You can see the cable, at any rate.
They also had a brief pause to adjust. Initially the pool was not positioned centrally on the trailer, there being the small matter of a house in the way. So the blue crane picked up the back end, and the red crane on the tractor unit picked up the front end. Awesome bit of co-ordination.
When they got to the gateposts, the tethers holding the pool on to the trailer had to be removed, the trailer inched forward, and the tethers re-tied. The tethers would not go over the posts, and there was no room for adjustment!
And they're out!
Traffic was held up for maybe five minutes, but naturally cyclists are completely lawless and do not stop even when there is a swimming pool crossing the road.
The full view.
And it's away.
***
Not something you see every day.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-19 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-19 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-19 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 12:12 pm (UTC)I'm always impressed by how very very good digger/crane/massive lorry operators are at handling those huge machines with such delicacy and precision.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 06:15 pm (UTC)(And now we know where the half-naked paratrooper came from. I was wondering :-)
no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 06:27 pm (UTC)What are your plans for the pool-sized hole in your back garden?
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-23 04:03 pm (UTC)I hope the buyer gets it all successfully installed, though I guess you'll probably never know.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-29 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-27 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-28 08:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-25 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-29 10:03 pm (UTC)