Our lockdown pool

Living in the Yarra Valley, an hour outside of Melbourne, we are are usually treated as rural (especially when it comes to deliveries). Unfortunately during the Covid-19 pandemic all of a sudden we became part of metropolitan Melbourne and got locked down with everyone else. Melbourne lockdowns were the longest of anywhere in the world. We were grateful we had our property, but it was very hard not seeing my parents who were in Tasmania and our other family and friends.  In late 2020 after the first lockdown came to an end, we had a feeling there would be more coming so we made a decision to invest in a pool.

Our brief was simple, it had to be low maintenance, it had to be DIY to keep costs down and we had to be able to heat it (with Melbournes climate we wanted to be able to use it for 6 months of the year). We had a look around and online and found some gorgeous concrete tank pools that were DIY, small and less expensive than most pools (there’s no such thing as a cheap pool these days).

So we found a local company selling them and put down payment in Dec 2020. It took us about 9 months to go from start to finish, mainly due to a 3 month wait on building permit and then winter hit so we didn’t feel the need to push ourselves.

First job was to cut out the pool into our deck. This involved reinforcing underneath. Then we moved onto digging out the ground. We didn’t have to go down very far, but needed to add a good thickness of gravel for the pool to sit on. Finally the pool arrives. Unfortunately I was very unwell the day this arrived, I couldn’t even leave the couch to take photos. We then had to add all the plumbing and filter equipment and build an equipment shed.

And finally pool fencing to ensure it complies with all legal requirements in the state of Victoria