Gates of Valhalla

Oh well these might not be as mighty as the legendary gates of Valhalla but still it's a gate to our piece of heaven, Valhalla that is.

Gates of Valhalla

It's been awhile since I updated this diary/blog and to be honest there's not much we've been at with respect to the pool project.
A few weeks of lazy vacation just enjoying the pool/sauna combination.

The most urgent thing to pay attention to was to install the pool cover. A custom made tarp that is supposed to protect the pool from debris when not in use as well as acting as a safety so that careless people don't fall into the pool and drown when we're not home.
I know it's ridiculous but those are the rules...I didn't invent them.

We bought a custom cut tarp with the pool and with it we got 31 pins which are to be drilled and hammered into the deck. The general idea is that the pre-made holes in the tarp are placed over the pins and secured with a hairpin like item.

We pretty soon discarded that concept as the "hairpins" were pretty tough to push into place.

I estimate it would take somewhere close to 40 seconds per pin accumulating to over 20 minutes of job to place the tarp/cover over the pool.

For a person obsessed with performance and efficiency this was just...not good enough.

The replacement was to buy a bunch of rubber straps normally used with tarps. 

The biggest difficulty proved to be to find a hardware store that had that many (31) in stock.

With that out of the way I quickly drilled 31 holes and hammered the pins into them.

Since this is supposed to be a security that is to hold the weight of a drunken adult (or something similar) we of course had to put it to test.
The construction passed the test with flying colors.

Crash test dummy in action

Realising that we had some leftover rebar mesh we made some use of it rather than tossing it.
So we installed a few mesh pieces on the outside of the fence and then planted blackberry plants allowing them to climb the mesh and produce edible crops.

There's now very little left of this project we can do this year.
The plan is to treat the deck with Siio wood protection but that has to wait until next year when the wood has dried properly.
Oh well I'll probably come up with something that needs to be done when I become restless.

Title reference: Gates of Valhalla/Into Glory Ride/Manowar