Welcome to the steel phase of your pool build. This is where your pool really begins to take shape. The steel cage is like the skeleton of your pool. So it is critical that the steel crew is following your engineering plans exactly. Now let's talk about scheduling. If you're doing any art rock on your pool, you'll need to coordinate with that team to ensure that they are setting up the steel cages for the art rock prior to you moving forward with gunite or inspections. You'll wanna confirm the order of scheduling with your subcontractors. Typically, steel is done before plumbing, but sometimes plumbers wanna do their work before the steel crew arrives. So talk to your subcontractors, see what order they prefer, and schedule accordingly. Now we already said this once before but it bears repeating. Please check that your subcontractor is following the engineering plans exactly. Okay? Every pool is different. You might have rebar spacing that's twelve inch on center or ten inch or maybe you have something custom because of what you're building. Just make sure the subcontractor is following those engineering plans. We cannot stress that enough. It is so important. If your soil type requires special reinforcement, it'll be on those engineering plans. So again, just call your subcontractors attention to those details. Make sure all pool features are built into the cage. Your skimmer should be surrounded in steel, Any spillways or cascades should be notched out, and the spillway from the spa to the pool should be set with the proper width that you want on your project. The steps in your pool may or may not be included with the steel cage. Oftentimes, these are just formed with gunite later. When it comes to the lighting, there's nothing your steel crew needs to worry about. All the lighting requirements will be taken care of by your plumber or electrician. Now before we head out into the field, remember after this video to check out the next module, get your checklist, go through the FAQs, and that way you're fully prepared as you move forward with this step. Now let's go into the field with Mike and show you what it looks like on the day of steel. We're gonna be talking about the steel today. What you see here is typical layout for your steel rebar, which is a twelve by twelve grid throughout the entire pool floor and the walls. All around, they're gonna have a twelve inch square grid with number three rebar. These little doby blocks is what they're called. They're little cement blocks on the bottom here. They keep the steel elevated up off the ground. They're called, like I say, dobey blocks, and they're just a way to make sure that the steel's up high enough that when they shoot the gunite or shotcrete, it goes all the way underneath, and you're gonna get at least three inches below and three inches on top of that steel rebar. So the rebar is gonna be right in the middle of that shot greed or gunite, depending on which material you go with. If your pool project's gonna have a spa with it, the wall between the spa and the pool is called a dam wall, and we always want those dam walls to be twelve inches wide. And when they put the steel in, it's gonna be called a double curtain. That means you have steel on both sides, two rows of steel, and that way it allows them to put plumbing in between and still have enough of the shotcrete or gunite on each side to have that full three inches so that that way you have good coverage over the steel and a nice strong wall between the spa and the pool. Okay. If your project has a spa, you're gonna have a spillway notch that allows the water to flow from the spa into the pool during its normal circulation cycle. That's where you see here the difference in elevation, where the steel bends down here. It's usually a two to three inches difference, and that's gonna be allowing the water to spill over from the spa into the pool over the dam wall. And during your circulation mode, it's gonna help everything stay clean and filtered and chlorinated. So as you see here, this difference in elevation is what they're gonna call a spillway notch. Alright. Right here in the steel, you'll see it's notched down similar to the spa notch that you saw earlier for the spillway. This is what they call a fountain notch. It's notched down to allow room to put the fountains in and have them level with the top of the coping and still have enough gunite underneath there for structural. This particular one, there's gonna be three of these scuppers right as you see through here. So that's why you see such a long area that's cut down. If there was only one scupper, it would probably bend down here and come right back up over here and go on. But because this project's gonna have three, it's a little bit longer area for the fountain notch as you see here. If your project has bar stools like this one does, they're gonna put steel rebar and bend it around like this. It'll be tied into the floor. In this case, it happens to be on a a seat ledge. And once they're done with the steel forming it all up, this is gonna get filled solid with shock crete or gunite, and they put that into what they call a sonotube. And what that is is a big piece of cardboard, basically, that's circular. This one happens to be eighteen inches wide. Some people do twelve. And then what happens is this is gonna go right over the top. They'll center it, and then when they're shooting the gunite or shotcrete, they'll just fill this cavity up all the way to the top. Now what they've done is they had a string line here that they had put across here to make sure that everything was level, and they checked that with their transit. So if your pool should have bar stools, you should have the sauna tubes available for the guys when they're doing the shock creep, or ask them if they supply the sauna tubes, but they will need to be there to surround the steel cage and fill up with the shock creep. Once they've poured the shock crete, these are actually made to kind of peel apart and take off of the gunite or shock crete shell that's inside of them. This will just peel right off of there, and then you'll have a nice perfectly round seat bench, seat area, bar stool. If your pool were to have a little table inside, which some do, this would be the base for that table, and then the steel would actually continue up and out. Let me kinda show you real quick what that looks like. These steel rebars would continue up and bend out at each point, and then they would form underneath it as well to form a table. So if your project had a table, this would be the base of the table, and then the top of it would spring out the steel going these different directions and allow them to form and pour the top of that table as well. If it's just barstools, it's gonna look just like this. Okay. All pools need to be bonded. You're gonna need to check with your local jurisdiction to see what their requirements are as they all differ. Most are gonna require at least four places throughout the pool that have a bonding clamp like this and a number eight bonding wire that comes off of it, and it's what they call a whip because it kinda whips up in the in the air like this. And this is gonna get tied to either a number eight copper wire that's gonna surround the pool, a copper wire grid, or maybe a steel grid that'll go around the first three feet of the pool. Check with your local jurisdiction to see which one they require. Some even require the bond wire to go all the way around the bond beam as you can see here. It's kind of going all the way around, and some jurisdictions do require that bonding wire to be around the entire perimeter of the pool and spa. So you do definitely need to check with your jurisdiction to see what their requirements are so that you make sure your guys are doing whatever it is that they're gonna require when they come out and inspect for the bonding of your pool. With these whips, I'm gonna show you in the future video when we do the decking portion. I'm gonna show you exactly what these do and how they tie into the equipotential grid that's gonna go around the pool. But for now, you just need to have at least four of these whips going around the pool, to meet code. Again, check with your local jurisdiction to see exactly what they require. Pro tip. After the guys are done doing the steel, they'll have steel ties at every intersection. Make sure the ties are all pointing down so that that way, there's less chance of any type of metal coming up through the gunite that could get into the plaster and cause any rust marks. So after the steel crew's done, just take a quick look around, make sure if there are any steel ties sticking up, that you just bend them over so that everything's nice and flush and nothing's sticking up past the steel.