BUILDING FOUNTAINS AND PONDS - Fountain
and Garden Pools 13
When copper is used for pool linings,
the basic processes are the
same, but copper is not so malleable
a material. More skill is re-
quired to fit it to the contours of an
irregular pool. Even with the
best of fitting it will not make as smooth
a fit against the soil. Its
use tends to be limited to rather small
pools, especially pools which
will not be used for fish and aquatic
plants.
Sheet steel of thicknesses which are
heavy enough to justify their
use as pool linings cannot be shaped
and joined with tools which are
available to amateur builders or even
to general contractors. As
already indicated (Sec. 306), persons
who do not have access to the
heavy machinery used in forming boiler
plate can use the material
for pool linings only by salvaging discarded,
large steel tanks and
having suitable sections of them cut
off with a metal-cutting torch.
Even in very cold regions, pools which
are fed by springs
which remain warm throughout the winter
need not be emptied.
If the water supply to the pool is not
continuous, or if its tempera-
ture drops to near the freezing point
in winter weather, the supply
pipe should be disconnected from the
source of supply and drained.
The overflow pipe should be stopped at
the top to prevent water
entering it during a thaw or rain and
freezing in the interior. Many
homeowners have found that emptying of
the pool itself is unneces-
sary. Instead, fish or plants which would
be killed by the cold are
removed, then a number of small logs
are placed in the water.
When the water freezes, the logs do two
things: they prevent solid
sheets of ice from forming all the way
across the pool and exerting
great pressure by virtue of their overall
expansion. They give some-
what under the pressure of the expanding
ice and thereby absorb
pressure that would otherwise be exerted
on the sides of the pool.
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