Welcome to the dig phase of your pool build. This is a super exciting milestone because today is the first day we're gonna see your pool taking shape. So before the contractor arrives, there's a few details that we need to confirm. First, you're gonna wanna coordinate with your contractor and make sure that the layout is marked correctly and has been approved. Think about seating areas, the size, the shape, different skimmer locations. All of this should be marked on the layout. So make sure that you do that with your contractor either the day before or the morning of the dig. We highly recommend trying to be present on the day of dig and even walking the layout with your contractor on the morning of the dig just to confirm that everything is laid out properly. While you walk the layout with your contractor on the morning of the dig, just make sure they understand the engineering plans and that they're following them for all slopes, coves, and elements of your pool construction project. Now it's also a really good idea to keep your windows and your doors closed on the day of dig to minimize any dust. Some homeowners opt to have a six inch gravel base under their steel cage. If that's something you wanna do, make sure that your dig crew knows about it so they can dig a little bit deeper and even bring in the gravel after they've dug the pool. Next, let's talk about dirt management. Decide ahead of time if you want that dirt hauled away or if you're gonna keep it on-site for maybe future landscaping or grading that you may want to do. Alright. We're about to dig a big hole in your backyard, so let's think about safety. Super important that you put up a safety fence while that hole is dug. If you don't put up your normal fence, let's at least get one of those orange plastic construction fences. Put it up so that we don't have any neighborhood kids randomly wandering into your backyard, falling into the hole, and causing a scene. And if you're a good neighbor, you may even wanna let your friends next door know that you're digging your pool ahead of time so they can also keep their windows closed and just expect that it's gonna be a little bit noisy and messy on that day that the excavation crew arrives. Finally, if you are doing a Baja or tanning shelf with your project, you need to set the height now while the dig crew is there. Let them know what height you want that tanning shelf. If you're gonna go with the first step, that means you're gonna have about a six inch water depth. If you want your tanning shelf to be on the second step, well, then you're looking at about an eighteen inch water depth. That's the difference of the water coming up to your belly button or all the way up to your chest. The choice is up to you. Before we head to the field, don't forget after this video to go to the next module. This is where you're gonna find your checklist and resources. K? Your scope of work checklist for your subs is going to be there. We recommend giving those to your subs and having them follow that checklist. We also recommend downloading your homeowner checklist that'll make sure that you are covering all of your bases through this phase of the project. In that section, you'll also find an FAQ with answers to the most common questions we get on dig day. Alright. Now let's head to the field with Mike and we'll show you exactly what to expect on the day of dig. We suggest you calling eight one one which is Dig Alert. Dig Alert will come out and mark all the utility lines so that your excavator or any heavy trucks don't hit any of these lines during construction. They'll come out and mark with flags and paint, the gas line, fiber optic lines, electric lines, anything on their property that's exposed that could get damaged. That way your crews know not to go running over them or dig in any of the areas where you see any of these flags. Calling eight eleven Dig Alert is a free service, so we recommend you do it prior to starting any construction. One of the things you might want to think about is knowing where you're gonna have your staging area, as they call it. It's an area on your property where you'll be able to store some of the materials that are gonna be needed to do your project. Most of the guys delivering materials are gonna ask you, where do you want this stuff delivered? If you don't have space in the backyard by the pool, you'll have to find another place on your property where you can have yourself a staging area. Alright. Before your excavator comes out on the day of dig, you might want to call them and just see if there's anything they need from you before they show up. Maybe they need you to move a playset in the backyard or sprinkler heads or anything like that. Just have a conversation with them before they come out. Make sure they don't need anything from you. Most of the time, your excavator will bring everything they need to do the job, but possibly they want you to supply some lumber or stakes or something like that. Just have a conversation with them prior to them showing up so that it's easy as possible and smooth as possible when they show up. They can get started with their job and there's no hiccups that way. Okay, guys. Here we are, the day of DIG. This is always exciting and fun to get everything started. As you see behind me, we got the tractors here and they're getting some grading going. Wanted to show you today about the laser and how that works. They're gonna set up a laser like this on all your jobs. The excavator should have one with them and they'll bring it up, set it up, get it leveled and has little things spinning around there that shoots a laser all the way around the yard. And then you have this laser stick that has the different dimensions on it. They're gonna set it up so that when it hits level, it'll make a beeping sound which sounds like that. So that lets you know that it's level all the way around the pool. They'll use this now when they're digging the pool to set elevation of all the forms and then they'll use it again when they do the shotcrete because the shotcrete needs to be done level as well. So, the coping and tile goes on and it's nice and level. And, between now and when the gunite or shotcrete's done, the forms are gonna get moved a little bit by people getting in and out of the pool, putting the steel in, putting the plumbing in. So they'll recheck that when they do gunite. So you'll see a laser like this out on the day of dig, and then you'll see it again when they do the shockrete or gunite. They'll set it up again to make sure all those elevations are correct. Okay. This is what we call a storyboard. Sometimes they'll mark it up on a post, patio post, or they'll set a stake in your backyard and they'll put together, like I say, the storyboard that's gonna tell them where the elevations need to be for your particular project. Now, on this one at the very bottom, we have this symbol here and that is to show you zero. So that'll be zero elevation. That'll be the level parts of your pool. Just above that, you see a line and it says pool coping. What that's for is to tell them the height of that pool coping. The difference between pool coping and zero for the bond beam is the thickness of the coping. And we'll go over that in a minute, different styles of coping and how you set that. And then from there, there's additional marks on here that are for the different elevations of your pool. If your pool has some raised areas, it'll be shown on here. This particular project has what it says, spa beam. What that means is that's how high the spa is. And in this case, it's raised eighteen inches over zero. So if I took a tape measured from here to here, you're gonna see an eighteen inch difference and that lets them know the spa's up eighteen inches higher than the pool. Now, if your whole pool and spa are all level, you don't have any raises, you'll probably just have two marks like down here. If you do have raises, they're gonna mark all those different elevations so that they'll know where to set everything with the laser that we talked about earlier and I showed you how the laser works, they'll bring that laser over here and make sure they're just right at all the different elevations. Okay. Earlier we were talking about coping thickness when we're going over the storyboard. What I was referring to is depending on what type of coping you pick is gonna determine the height of that bond beam. For example, if you were to use a coping that's about this thick, which is inch and a half, they would need to know so that they would go an inch and a half below the thickness of the coping for that bond beam where it's gonna be sitting on in the pool. Now, if this coping that you're gonna be using is cantilever, that would be three and a half inches thick, so that would be much thicker. The bond beam would go down because of that. So you just need to pick whichever coping you wanna use prior to the excavator coming out so you can tell them the thickness of that coping. Now if you're gonna go with cantilever, it'll be pretty straightforward, three and a half inches. Depending on the stone that you may pick, it may be two inches, inch and a half, it just depends. So try to get the coping first before you have your excavator come out. Know the thickness so you can let them know and they can set up their elevations just for your particular coping on your pool. Most pools are gonna be more like this example here, done on a level ground with maybe some raises. And what they're gonna do is in your backyard, they'll paint out the waterline of the pool, which is where the outside edge of your pool is, and then they'll go twelve inches back to allow what we call the bond beam. The bond beam's where your coping's gonna sit once the pool is gunighted. So you'll have a foot back mark. So if your pool's thirty feet long, it'll now be thirty two feet long, a foot on each end. So when you set back twelve inches like that, that's where they're gonna put their stakes. They'll mark the level with the transit. They'll put the form boards up, and then they know exactly the height to do the gunite and that'll be the top of the pool when it's done. So this is more typical of what you'll see in most backyards and we'll show you some more shots of this in a little bit. Alright, guys. I just kinda wanted to show you they got some of the grading started here. You can kinda see some of these paint lines where they painted out where the pool's gonna go first. They lay it out in paint, make sure it fits the way you want. That would be a great time if need to make a little adjustment. You can make it then. It won't affect the engineering or the permits or plans if you decide to move your pool a little bit this way or a little bit that way. Obviously, if you're moving it a lot, we'd need to change the plans for you. But typically, can make little adjustments and it won't affect anything. So once it's painted out, as you can see, they're doing all the grading right now. After they get the grading done, they're gonna set the stakes and the forms, and then you can really see the shape of the pool taking place. Okay. When you guys are doing your dig, hopefully, you'll have nice, clean dirt just like this in your backyard. You may have a hard soil, what they call hard pan or shale rock or even hard boulders. If you do, they're gonna have to bring out a breaker to break that up in order to haul it out. Then that would cost extra. So you just need to know that when you're getting into your excavation. You may be able to talk to people that have dug pools in your area to see if they've had a situation or not. But hopefully, this is what you can expect and it's nice and easy and the tractor goes right through it without any issues. Alright. What I wanted to show you here is sometimes on your projects, you might run into this. Anything that's underground, the tractor takes no mercy on. So if there's something underground that you are particularly wanting to keep, I would pull it out before the day of dig such as sprinkler heads or anything like that that you want to keep because when the tractor hits it, it's just gonna crack it up and then it'll have to be taken out and redone. Now in a case like this where there's a drain line going through, obviously, this drain line is gonna have to get rerouted anyway, so it's no big deal. But I just thought I'd show it to you so it would make sense to you. As you go through your project, they may be hitting some pipes, drains, irrigation, what have you. And don't worry about it. Those items all need to get rerouted anyway. Obviously, it can't go through the middle of the pool with the drain. And same thing with the irrigation. It all needs to be redone anyways. So good example of what can happen when a tractor hits a PVC pipe. Alright. One of the reasons we decided to tape the process of this particular pool being built is it's got some pretty extravagant things to it. It's sitting up out of the ground pretty high. It's very geometrical with a lot of sharp lines to it. So that takes a lot of extra work and most projects, probably yours won't be quite as intense as this. But we wanted to show you how extreme it can be and that it's no big deal. It can all be handled. It's just a little extra work. So all this extra framing that you see here is to support up these walls that are sticking up out of the ground. There needs to be a lot of support on those because they'll be actually shooting the shotcrete or gunite right up against those walls. So you wanna make sure that you have some good set foundation. You wanna make sure all your stakes are in good, what they call kickers, which are these boards that come down here. That's gonna all support the weight of that gunite being shot up against it. Again, your pool probably won't have this. It'll probably be pretty standard where it's in ground and there's not much raise. But I just wanted to show you that this is how they prepare prior to putting in the steel that you see here to make sure that everything's square, everything aligns, and that there's a very robust system of framing to hold up when they do shoot the gunite up against it. That you'll see as we go through the process, the steel actually being installed in the pool. It'll probably make more sense once you see that. This particular project has what we call a shallow end ramp. That's where they dig the pool from the shallow end side. Should this pool have been flipped and the deep end was on this side, we would have had what we call a deep end dig and that's where they have to dig a ramp just to get in to dig the pool. That ramp will need to be backfilled once it's gun ited, and they do that by putting up a button board, whether that's plywood or a pegboard that they shoot up against with the shotcrete or gunite. Behind it will be backfilled and compacted. You are gonna spend a little extra money for a deep end dig, not only for the extra grading time, but backfilling and compacting as well. Pro tip. Once your pool is dug, if they have a gravel base they're putting in after the gravel base goes in, it'd be a good idea to have a sump pump in the bottom of your pool should any storms be coming. The sump pump in the bottom would kick on and pump all this water out so it doesn't accumulate in the bottom like it is here. Here, a sump pump's gonna have to be brought out eventually, but it's been nice to have one in the beginning. That way, you don't have to worry about it. Alright. One of our pro tips is to have a porta potty delivered to your property. Having it available for the construction workers so they don't have to leave your job site in order to use the restroom and ask to go inside your house and use yours. It's around three hundred dollars or so a month and I think it's well worth the investment. Pro tip. Check with your excavator what size his machine is that he's gonna be bringing in to make sure you have enough room for access. On this particular project, even though it did have a double RV gate, it was decided to actually take down some additional fencing because of the way they had to turn and try to get into the property. They would have ended up hitting the fence anyways, so it was decided to take it down. Look at that in advance. Talk with your excavator. See what size machinery he's doing. Maybe even have him come out and look at your property prior to getting started so you can decide what to do with the fencing to make the access as easy as possible. Pro tip. Have an area set aside for the guys to put all their material, your pool equipment, so that that way it's not in the way of them doing the project. Also, you have available space that you can put some waterproof covers with the plans inside of them, maybe a couple of the details so they can quick reference these as they're doing the project makes it really nice. Pro tip. Have a trash can available for the guys out on the job site so they have a place to put all their trash and they don't just throw it around in your yard. And also have an ice chest available with some cold drinks for them so that they can keep working hard and don't have to take a break and leave. It's just a nice gesture and most everybody appreciates that you're thinking of them and you have some hydration for them.