September 16, 2025 • 52 mins
How do you ensure your luxury outdoor space stands the test of time? Mike and Trey Farley of Farley Pool Designs delve into the complexities of creating stable, long-lasting backyard retreats. Drawing from over 40 years of experience, they discuss soil stability, the need for geotechnical reports, and the critical role of structural engineering in pool and outdoor living space design. From understanding the diversity of soil types in Texas to the importance of piers, grade beams, and void boxes, the Farleys break down everything you need to know to build with confidence and avoid costly mistakes. Plus, they share some entertaining anecdotes and insider tips on designs, ensuring your vision becomes a reality.
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00:00 Welcome to Luxury Outdoor Living 01:12 Understanding Soil Stability 03:07 Geotech Reports and Soil Analysis 05:22 Dealing with Different Soil Types 24:14 The Importance of Trees and Grade 27:37 The Trash-Filled Pool Dilemma 28:15 The Engineering Challenge: Building on Unstable Ground 29:14 Understanding Piers: Types and Uses 30:28 The Plano Project: A Case Study 33:05 Concrete Piers and Groundwater Issues 34:44 Steel Piers: A Modern Solution 37:22 Soil Injections: An Overview 41:12 The Importance of Piers in Pool Construction 44:55 Grade Beams and Structural Stability 48:13 Final Thoughts and Advice
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:02):
Welcome to Luxury Outdoor Living Podcast with Mike and Trey
Farley of Farley Pool Designs.
For over 40 years, we've helpedhomeowners turn their backyards
into personal retreats, spaces ofjoy, relaxation and unforgettable
memories, and whether it's a cozy as.
Scape or a resort style oasis.
We design it all.
(00:24):
We know how overwhelming a projectcan feel, and nothing feels worse than
a homeowner having a bad experience.
And that's why after decades of designingand teaching in this industry, we're
here to share our knowledge, helping you.
The process with confidence.
Every week we break down designtrends and insider tips that
turn your vision into reality.
(00:45):
And since this is about creating somethingamazing together, drop a comment.
If you have any questions, ideas, orjust want to be part of the conversation,
if you find this helpful, a like helpsget this out to more people like you.
And if you want to keep upwith what's next, go ahead
and hit that subscribe button.
We'd love to have you along for the ride.
Let's build your paradise together.
Mike (01:12):
Good afternoon.
This is Mike Farley of Farley Pool Designand I am hosting the luxury Outdoor
Living Podcast with my cohost Trey Farley.
we've got a really goodepisode to uh, stand on today.
Oh, we, yeah, we do.
Trey (01:25):
Yeah, we got a bunch of.
A dirt to, to stand on.
Mike (01:29):
the challenge that.
We have in some parts of the countryand others, it's not as big a deal is
the stability of what we're building on.
And when I came to Texas, I had tochange and learn a lot of different
things because the stability in thisarea is like none other that I've.
Ever heard about And the fact thatsome people are like, we've got some
(01:53):
bad soil that we have to work with.
And some people are like,we've got really sandy soil.
And some people are like, we gottadeal with the tides coming in and out.
And some people are like we've gotrock that we have to deal with.
And here we have almost all that.
We don't have tideshere in, in North Texas.
We got some in Texas though, sowe have some in Texas but that's
(02:14):
a little bit farther to the south.
Yeah, that's not where we're at.
Hopefully we don't have anytide waters coming up here.
Otherwise that's a really bad earth.
I
Trey (02:21):
mean,
The weather these days, who knows?
It's global weirding.
Mike (02:24):
But anyway, we're gonna talk about structures and the first thing
to talk about in this whole process is.
I'm not an engineer, are you?
No, I'm not.
Okay.
We're not engineers.
Work with them though.
We work with engineers.
Yes.
And so what we're talking about iswe're gonna give you some general idea.
'cause if I bring an engineer in here totalk about this, they're gonna go down
(02:47):
some rabbit holes and your eyes are gonnaglaze over and you're not gonna understand
all the things that they're talking about.
And what we're trying to address is stuffyou as a homeowner would need to know.
So it helps you communicate withthe builder that you're working
with as well as the engineer that'sgoing to be working on your project.
Spider (03:06):
Yeah.
Mike (03:07):
So the first thing that you need is a geotech report, okay?
For an engineer to giveyou any information.
It's worth the paper it's written on.
There has to be, I call 'em soils reports.
A geotech report is they're gonnacome out and they're gonna do a
boring down into the ground withthis big machine, and they're
(03:28):
gonna take samples of the soil out.
And so they come back and theyhave all these layers, and usually
it's done at least to 20 feet,but sometimes it has to go deeper.
Sometimes it's 30, sometimes it's 40 feet.
And the big thing the engineerwill tell you is what he's looking
for from a stability standpointof what you're resting on.
Now, sometimes people will go down16 feet and that hits solid rock,
(03:51):
and that's as far as they're going.
They can't drill any farther into that.
Once you have the report.
Then you come up with the design,then the engineer's going to come in
and recommend different things that'sgoing to be needed on the project.
And having the report also helps witha lot of taking away a lot of guesswork
on, how bad does this soil go downinto the ground before it changes
(04:16):
to something that's more stable?
what, on almost every geotech reportthat you're gonna see is the deeper
you go, the more stable it becomes.
Okay.
So the bad stuff is up near the surfaceand sometimes, you're just gonna scrape
the bad stuff off and you're gonnabe down into good stuff to work with.
And as we look at stabilityof these things, they differ.
(04:38):
So if I'm doing a cabana.
The Cabana Foundation isliterally right on the ground.
So the first five or six feet is a bigdeal because we're still sitting a lot of
times in some soil that's not that great.
Versus when you dig a pool, we're gonnastrip out at least four, sometimes
(04:58):
five, sometimes six feet of soil.
Yep.
But before we reach the bottomof what we're building on.
And if we're in a stable situation, thenthat pool is great and it can rest there.
So your depth of your, whatyou're starting with is gonna be
different depending on the typeof structure that you're building.
So de peer or not de peer.
(05:19):
I, I always wanted to say that.
So de peer or to not
Trey (05:22):
de peer?
I think a great thing not a great,but a very common question that comes
up when we're meeting with differentcustomers is a concern and it's Hey.
Why do I need to peer mypool when my neighbor didn't?
And you touched on it already, that dirtis very diverse, especially in Texas.
It can be one lot could becompletely different than the other.
Usually it's not that case, but it can be.
(05:44):
And to address what
Mike (05:44):
you just said here in North Texas, I can just drive down Highway one 14.
Mm-hmm.
Take for example.
And I can be in Westlake.
Say we start in Westlake.
We had a really good lunch because Roanokeis the restaurant capital of Texas.
And so we start there and wehave some slight clay in Roanoke.
Okay.
(06:05):
And we drive literally tothe next town of Westlake.
Westlake, we're in pure sand.
No clay whatsoever.
Yeah.
We stay on one 14 and we get it intoSouth Lake and some of South Lake.
There's some clay, but for the mostpart it's still pretty sandy soil.
Okay.
And then we hit the DFW airportand we don't build anything there.
(06:29):
But right after the DFW airport,we're gonna get into Los Colinas.
Okay.
Los Colinas.
Yeah.
Literally on the other sideof the DFW airport from South
Lake is the second worst.
Clay in the world.
Trey (06:44):
Great atmosphere.
Okay, great.
Great place go get a coffee, hang out.
But yeah, if you're buildingout there, it's typically a
little bit more expensive.
Mike (06:52):
So clay soil.
Is known for being expansive.
Trey (06:57):
Yeah.
'cause it dries and it absorbswater as well, so it expands.
Yeah.
Mike (07:01):
So when we first moved to Texas, we were up in McKinney and I remember
going out to the soccer fields one dayand I dropped my keys on the ground.
Okay.
And they went into a crack becauseliterally the ground had cracks in it.
And I was like, oh my, I justthrew my keys on the ground and
they disappeared into this crack.
And I literally had to geta tire iron out of my car.
(07:24):
Oh my.
And dig down like four feet.
'cause they had literally fallen four feetdown into the ground, into this crack.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it was in the middle of the summer andthe clay soil had shrunk up and literally
there were cracks all over the ground.
Okay.
Now you went out after a rain and.
The cracks all disappear because the soilthen expands and fills in all the cracks.
(07:49):
So when you'd go on a job site inMcKinney, it was always, the joke is if
you went after a rain, when you got backto your car, you were typically three
to four inches taller because so muchdirt also stuck to the bottom of your
shoes that you would grow in height.
So when you get a soils report, one ofthe things that you're looking for at
(08:11):
first glance is there's the thing in therethat's called potential vertical rise.
And potential vertical rise isusually one inch is an acceptable
potential vertical rise to build in.
But after one inch, when you get intotwo inch, when the soil moves up and
down from what to dry, two inches, youcan start having pools get uneven and
(08:32):
decks cracking, and you can end up withall these different plumbing challenges.
So when you go from Westlake.
Where there was zero potential verticalrise to Los Colinas, where the potential
vertical rise was over 10 inches.
So literally you just drovethrough a couple of towns there.
(08:53):
Yeah.
And you went into some ofthe most diverse things.
Sand.
The only problem we have with sand iswe did a job site earlier this year,
and it was like trucks driving out atthe beach and they were getting stuck in
the sand trying to drive around becausethe sand was so unstable moving around.
(09:14):
So we had other structural issuesthat we had to deal with there.
Yeah, that was
Trey (09:18):
wild.
It was like when we were doing theuh, precon on that job I walked in
the backyard and I know that there'ssand in that area, but it felt like.
They imported sand andjust poured it everywhere.
Like they wanted to havea beach or something.
It was crazy.
The whole backyard waslike a beach, pure sand.
It was wild.
Yeah.
Mike (09:33):
Yeah.
And so literally you drove right downthe road and you know, this potential
vertical rise is one of the thingsthat you're looking for is to see
how much things are going to move.
the question of why my friend hadto have peers, and I don't, or
no, there's the other way around.
I did a project, these are in trophy club.
(09:55):
Two neighbors next door to each other?
Yeah.
They're on the golf course.
Okay.
There was a retaining wall and the trees,the base of the trees were 10 feet down
from the top of the retaining wall.
Okay.
So if you walked up to theedge, you could see the bottom
of the tree is 10 feet down.
Now what does that tell you?
True grade
Trey (10:13):
is 10 feet down.
Mike (10:15):
Okay.
So where those trees are growingis what was original grade now.
So the rest of that 10 feet was built up.
Built up.
It's fell, what we call isfill dirt, not as PHIL, not a
Trey (10:26):
guy.
And you were telling me before the podcastthat the reason like you didn't do as
many peers in California is because ofthe regulations they have with backfill.
Mike (10:35):
Correct.
in California, when you backfillthat retaining wall that was built,
if I was in California, they haveto do it to a compaction rate.
I think it's 98.5% so we work
Trey (10:48):
with some builders that do that on their jobs too, in Texas.
But that's not required.
Mike (10:52):
It's not where it's state law in California, yes.
There's nothing requiredhere with your backfill.
So when
Trey (10:59):
we think fill, it's kind of a oh boy, here we go.
Mike (11:01):
They had built this house, Now what a lot of builders do is
they'll compact underneath thehouse pad to the right situation.
Room (11:10):
Yeah.
Mike (11:10):
But they won't do it for the rest of the yard.
what happened is, on that one was doinga recreational depth pool, so the bottom
of the pool's down five, six feet.
So we still have at leastfour feet of fill dirt Yeah.
Before we hit original grade.
And so that pool had to be peered.
Okay.
The cabana also had to be peered becauseof the amount of fill that was on the lot.
(11:33):
The next door neighbor was a littlebit higher up on the hillside.
Okay.
And so his trees wereseven to eight feet down.
Okay.
So what we did on his particularyard is we terrace the pool.
Okay.
So we dropped the pooldown lower on the property.
And the pool was also a deeper pool thanthe one that we had done the first one.
(11:58):
So it was sitting in true grade,it was sitting in true grade
at the bottom of the pool.
And so because of that,
the bottom of the pool issitting on original grade.
So it was stable.
Yeah.
The cabana, we stepped thateven lower than the pool.
Oh, okay.
So with the pool, we were dealingwith the four of the pool.
Cabana's up, five feet higher, but becauseagain, the hillside and going up the
(12:20):
hill and then we stepped the cabana down.
So it was down 42 inches,so it was bar height.
So ended up, the cabana footingswere all in original grade.
Spider (12:30):
Okay.
Mike (12:30):
So next door neighbors to each other.
Yep.
One pool had to have piersfor the cabana and the pool.
And the other next doorneighbor did not need to.
Trey (12:40):
And this is because of the lot, the retaining wall one guy's on a hill
where you know the design, you're ableto use your flexibility and put it into
true grade versus the other neighbor.
You have the retaining wall, youhave the restrictions of what the
lot is and you're just not gonnabe able to do that with that lot.
Mike (12:57):
Correct.
But the same thing can be saidfor, my buddy that I work with who
lives in South Lake didn't haveto put any peers under his pool.
I live in Castle Hillsright down the road.
Yeah.
And in Castle Hills we're dealingwith the Eagle Ford Shale.
The Eagle Ford Shale is what'sin Los cleanest as well.
(13:20):
It's a band of soil that goes allthe way runs north and south in
the state of Texas, and so throughthe Dallas Fort Worth metroplex.
So as we go up through the colony to theFrisco, to, now in Prosper and Salina
All that on the west side of theToll Road is in the Eagle Ford Shale.
Trey (13:41):
So let's not get this confused.
If you have bad soil andyou're in true grade.
Do you not need peers?
Because we're talkingabout we're in true grade.
Okay.
That means you.
You're fine.
Okay.
Mike (13:51):
So excellent question.
there's two reasonsyou have to have peers.
Okay.
And they both had to do with movement.
One is movement because we're goingto settle over a period of time.
'cause we're in dirtthat's not fully compacted.
Yep.
That's the fill.
That's the fill.
when we have a settlementissue, we're gonna wanna put
(14:12):
piers underneath the structure.
Okay.
Trey (14:14):
And we
Mike (14:14):
just
Trey (14:15):
talked about that.
Mike (14:15):
Okay.
The other type of structure is back toour potential vertical rise in the soil
because our soil expands and contractsbecause when it's wet to dry, it's
moving, which is typically gonna be clay.
That's gonna be clay typically.
And it's gonna, yourissue's not settlement.
(14:36):
But actually expansion,it's going to get bigger.
Okay.
And then it's gonna dry and it's gonnaget shorter and it's gonna get bigger,
and it's shorter and bigger and shorter.
So it changes versus field dirt.
It doesn't change from season to season.
Okay.
It just slowly settles down.
Okay.
And a lot of times you can seethis in yards where it was built
(15:00):
and they brought the dirt all theway up to the top of the wall.
And then five or six years later,the dirt's now settled down lower.
Trey (15:08):
And so if you do pure pool in a, in say lost cleaners where it's 10
inches of rise or above, and your poolis technically on stilts with the piers,
so it's not gonna move up and down.
Is the dirt around thepool gonna start moving up?
Is it gonna have a foot ofdirt above the pool now or.
Mike (15:26):
That's a good question.
So your dirt's going to move up and down.
We put the stilts in.
Mm-hmm.
So now we're structurally we're stable.
Is everything else gonna move around it?
So there's two things that'sgoing into play there.
One, we have an extremepotential vertical rise.
What we're going to do is, inaddition to piers, we're going
(15:48):
to add what's called a void box.
Okay.
Or a carton form.
Okay?
And these are fun.
And the fact that you wouldthen dig the pool 12 inches
deeper than you need it to be.
Okay?
Or maybe six, or it might be 18, foraccounting to add the void boxes.
The engineer's gonna tell you how bigyour void boxes are gonna have to be.
(16:11):
Okay?
And you're gonna putthese boxes on the ground.
And then what happens is they have awaffle pattern on the inside of them.
Yeah.
with this waffle pattern onthe inside, and we actually
have some video what is it?
Videos on YouTube that explain,and show you exactly that.
Trey (16:29):
I don't know which job.
I know it's a Smith job that wedid in Dallas that we use these and
we did a little bit of what is it?
And there's a time lapse as well.
I don't know what it's called on YouTube.
But that job shows it very well.
Mike (16:41):
Yeah.
So what happens is you put theseboxes, so you draw your pi and then
you put the boxes on the groundand basically it creates a void.
That's why void box or a cartonform, and you then put the steel.
On top of the boxes.
Mm-hmm.
So it creates is a void of about 12 incheswhen you go to, because when you shoot
(17:04):
the gunite, it stays on top of the box.
Okay.
So your pier comes up throughthe boxes, it goes, attaches.
So what ends up is your whole structureof your pool is lifted 12 inches
above the ground, not lifted, built12 inches higher than the ground.
Spider (17:22):
Okay.
Mike (17:22):
And so now the soil can expand and contract, and it's not
touching the bottom of the pool.
Because as the boxes rot out, not gonnacause a problem with, moving up and down.
Anyway, so that's away that you can do it.
And you're not gonna have your deckmoving up and down in conjunction with
the soil and everything that's around it.
(17:43):
So typically your house is gonnabe addressed, the structure of
the pool's gonna be addressed.
Your deck may be addressed as well.
And another thing that may come into playthere as well will be soil injection is
another thing that can be added to helpreduce the amount of movement up and down.
(18:03):
again.
This is all gonna bespecked out by engineers.
Yeah.
Not me.
No, we're talking about rough,
Trey (18:10):
We're talking about concepts right now.
We're not gonna talk aboutprecise measurements and
loads and anything like that.
It's all gonna be varyingdepending on your job specifically.
Mike (18:19):
So what you have is the stilts that come in, and then you've got the void
box on top of that, and then you buildyour normal structure on top of that.
So one of the things that youneed to understand is when you
go to buy a piece of property
It's what, it's really helpful if youcan find out anything about the soil
when you're buying something and you'regonna be like how in the world am I
(18:41):
gonna find out that well call a pool guy?
Trey (18:43):
Yeah.
Mike (18:44):
if you're gonna buy a house and you wonder, am I in an area
that's got a lot of problems?
One of the ways you can understandis there are a lot of foundation
work that's being done on thehouse over a period of time.
That's a tip to you that there'ssoil movement in this area.
'cause they're having to do all thesefoundation repairs and if we could know
(19:05):
going in, are we in South Lake and we'rein good soil or are we in Westlake and
some of the best soil in the state?
Or are we in lost, cleanest Andthe second worst in the world?
' cause a substructure with piers andvoid boxes and grade beams on a typical
project's gonna add $50,000 in cost.
(19:25):
Yeah.
Okay.
That's typical.
Sometimes it's a lot more than that.
Sometimes it's less than that.
But that's an additional costthat you're gonna have to do
to make your structure good.
Now there are builders all the time thatare like that's a little bit overboard.
But those are the guys thataren't using an engineer.
They're like, this is the way we've doneit for the last 25 years, you'll be fine.
(19:48):
And two years later they'renot in business anymore.
But you built this structurenow that you're gonna have to
deal with all the repairs on forthe lifetime of that structure.
Trey (19:56):
Yeah.
That's a nightmare.
Mike (19:58):
Yeah.
So that's where people arelike, and that's why I moved.
Trey (20:01):
And that's actually a good thing too.
Like if you're looking to buy ahouse and maybe you're looking at
a pool that's already been made inthe last 10 years or something like
that it's good to, to look into the,how it was actually built itself.
And I think that would bring me to thiscause we deal with bids all the time.
we're putting our fine tunenumbers on the design you do.
And a customer it is just a, any customer.
(20:22):
What part of the bid should theyautomatically go and look at to
understand if they're getting theirmoney's worth with structures or
just understand the structure itself?
Is there a specific spot that you would
Mike (20:34):
Well, the challenge is every single contractor writes
his specifications differently.
Mm-hmm.
And it's extremely difficultfor a homeowner to understand.
Like, I had somebody the other daythat said you're doing the same
steel, you're both using number fours.
I was doing fours, eight inches on center.
(20:55):
The other guy was doing it 10 incheson center, and then the third guy
was doing it 12 inches on center.
Trey (21:01):
There might be someone that doesn't understand what that means.
Mike (21:03):
Okay.
So on center means that's how far thebars are apart in the shell of the pool.
the difference betweeneights and tens and twelves.
To go from eight to twelves, that's50% more steel from a 12 to an eight.
Trey (21:18):
When you're at eight inch on center, you have more steel
in the pool than you do than 12.
Correct.
Okay.
And so
Mike (21:24):
when you, your steel gets laid, you've got this grid
pattern through the whole pool.
Yeah.
And what happens is the closer thegrid is, the stronger the structure is.
Because you're dealing with the gunite.
And again, sometimes the engineer willsay in fact we need a double mat of steel.
(21:45):
' cause we can't get the steel tooclose together because then it
will actually weaken the structure.
So there's a steel concrete ratiothat you have to work within.
So you could get literally too much inor you could have not enough in so you
have to understand, if I do a doublemat, that means the shell has to be
thicker because it's got cover minimumof three inches of steel on both sides.
(22:10):
So, you then shooting usuallya 12 inch wall versus, a six
to seven, that eight inch wall.
So those are all things, again, that aregonna be specified out by the engineer.
Now we have movement youmight be like you know what?
We don't have fill dirt in our backyard.
(22:30):
We can see where all the trees are.
It's all original grade, so Ishouldn't have to use piers at all.
BBQ Intro (22:40):
We are gonna take a break here for a second and get into outdoor living.
So with outdoor living, we like togo to barbecue bits here we're gonna
share some information of everythingthat you may want to consider in
your outdoor living space as far asfeatures, especially for the kitchen.
Hope you enjoy this.
Mike (22:59):
We don't want a disaster when we're done.
Sure.
How do we go about doing that?
And I'm not talking about themeat, actually, I'm talking
about the cleaning aspect.
Sure.
That's, that's not my favorite.
So is there any tips for that?
Bobby (23:12):
The tips or beforehand, before you start the grill up, there's, you
know, a couple things you wanna look at.
Get it hot, you know, brush it downreally good and keep it well oiled.
That will really minimize.
The, uh, disaster or the cleanupthat you have afterwards.
But to prepare for that, uh, remember allyour drip trays down below, regardless
(23:33):
if they're multiple level drip trays ornot, they should be lined with a foil.
So if they're lined with a foil, maybea heavy gauge shiny side down, so any
of the marinades or fats that drip offof there won't congeal into the pan.
You can change it when it's dirtyenough for you, but it will.
It will eliminate a lot of the, thegrease fires that we have inside of this.
Mike (23:56):
Okay.
BBQ End (23:57):
So I hope you enjoyed the barbecue bits that we just featured today,
and we'll have more coming up next week.
If there's something in particular thatyou're interested for, let us know and
we'll get back into the episode now.
Trey (24:11):
Real quick.
We keep on talking about the trees.
Why are the trees importantwhen we're talking about grade?
Mike (24:16):
Because you don't put a hundred year oak tree and move it.
that's an original grade point.
Trey (24:23):
Okay.
Mike (24:24):
it's really helpful when you're looking at a piece of property to
look at trees because if they've beenthere for 30 or 40 years, or longer
than the house, that's something.
Now you have housesthat are 200 years old.
Yeah.
And do we have a filleddirt issue on a 200 year old
Trey (24:41):
home?
Probably not unless there'san extensive remodel.
Mike (24:45):
Most engineers will say it's settled as much as it's gonna settle.
Yeah.
Over a certain length of time.
Again, that's gonna bedecided by an engineer.
Not by me.
Yeah.
Okay.
So those are things that wanna look at is,but trees give us a, point to understand
what we're dealing with, we deal witha lot of blow it up and start over.
Trey (25:06):
Yes.
Mike (25:06):
And so when we blow it up, a lot of times we're blowing up a diving pool.
And so we're taking out this diving pooland now we have a nine foot deep, 10 foot,
12 foot deep hole that we're coming in.
But we're gonna build a recpool that's only five feet deep.
Spider (25:22):
Yeah.
Mike (25:23):
So now we have a hole underneath our pool structure that we're gonna put in.
And so piers are one way to structurally.
Deal with that.
And that would be sometimeswhy one person has to have it.
And we don't have filldirt in the neighborhood.
We don't have expansive soil in theneighborhood, but one guy's gotta
have them, but the other guy doesn't.
Trey (25:44):
in that situation could you use gravel?
Mike (25:46):
there are different solutions that you can come up with that
engineers are going to look at.
And that is a common situationthat we use is, will come in.
Common situation we'll use is we'llcome in and remove the dirt that
they backfilled the pool with.
Yeah.
'cause sometimes what happensis the pool is taken out by the
(26:07):
builder and we come in and we knewit was an eight foot deep pool.
And they didn't compact it 'cause theyknew we were gonna put a new pool in.
Yeah.
And so we will dig out actually all thedirt they filled the hole in with, and
then we'll bring base in and fill that in.
And that way the wholepool has a stable base.
It's a concept.
Trey (26:26):
The concept of scratching it off the surface we talked about earlier.
Pretty much.
Correct.
Yeah.
Mike (26:31):
I had a project oh, about 15 years ago and the pool
that was there had cracked.
Spider (26:37):
Okay.
Mike (26:38):
So we pulled the pool out.
So we're putting a diving pool back in soit's deeper than the original rec pool.
So we're gonna be into originalgrade, no problem whatsoever.
So we go and we dig the pool, andwhen we dug the pool right at the
very bottom, we found some trash.
What kind of
Trey (26:56):
trash?
It was like construction debris.
Okay.
Nothing exciting like a car or anything?
Mike (27:02):
No, nothing exciting like a car.
We keep the stories of allthe buried treasure we found
over the years to ourselves.
Oh, makes sense.
We don't share that on the podcast.
So we found some trash at thebottom and called up the engineer
and we're like, what do we do?
And he's like, well dig it out.
And I said how much of it?
And he's like, well, all of it.
Spider (27:21):
Yeah.
Mike (27:21):
So we start digging.
We were at 10 feet deepwhen we hit the trash.
I. 10 feet deeper intothe, oh my goodness, crown.
We got rid of all the trash.
This had been a dump site forlike a construction when they
were building a whole subdivision.
It was the house at the very back of thesubdivision, and it was down the hill a
(27:41):
little bit, and so they just dumped stuff.
Trey (27:44):
Y'all weren't trying to use piers, right?
Y'all were just trying to
Mike (27:46):
No, we weren't gonna be using piers 'cause we were gonna be stable.
Trey (27:49):
Yeah, exactly.
So you had to take out the trash.
'cause it's a voidtechnically in the dirt.
Correct.
You gotta get rid of thevoid so you can backfill it.
Mike (27:55):
That's why the original pool cracked.
Trey (27:57):
Oh, because it was sitting
Mike (27:59):
on the trash.
Yeah.
And the trash was settlingslowly over a period of time.
And so we came in anddug all the trash out.
And I wish I had a camera, 'cause this wasback before we had cameras on our phones.
And Oh wow.
This is when dinosaurs roamed earth.
Dinosaurs are roaming the earth.
And so one of my friendscame up to look at something.
(28:19):
He called me on the phone.
He's like, what kind of poolare you building here, dude?
He's like, this hole is huge.
I've never seen a hole this deep.
The hole's deeper than thewidth of the pool anyway.
he said he walked up on the edge andhe almost like, just almost oh my
gosh, I'm on the edge of a cliff.
So we had to backfill it with.
(28:40):
10 feet of road base.
Oh, wow.
And that was what theengineer specified us to do.
Yeah.
And it wasn't for the wholesize of the pool either.
The pool was a good sizepool that we were putting in.
actually they were out not too longago to do some remodel work on the
tile and the guys that do the remodelwork, I asked them, I said, how's
(29:00):
the pool structure and everything?
And this was like 15, 18 years ago.
And they said, looks pristine.
So I bet
Trey (29:07):
y'all didn't have to deal with any weeping before you
plastered because there's somuch gravel underneath that pool.
Yeah.
Mike (29:13):
Not a weeping issue.
So one of the things we keeptalking about peers yeah.
A lot of times people don't understandthere's two different types that
are quite commonly used here andin other parts of the country.
They may be referred to as different.
Installations as well.
So I know in California they doless of them, but they're more
(29:33):
massive and they call 'em cassons.
Okay.
So a typical pier here in Texasis gonna be 12 or 16 inches.
Trey (29:43):
Wait, I thought a cason was a concrete pier.
It is, but they're, that's what we do.
We
Mike (29:47):
do caseon technically okay.
We do.
Okay.
Okay.
But some of them they do outin California, they may only
do like two or three, six.
Yeah.
They may do 36 inch diameter.
Some of 'em are massive.
I've seen on some of the hillsideconstruction that they're trying to build
it so they don't have an issue with creep.
like Tony Stark's house
Trey (30:07):
or
Mike (30:07):
Oprah
Trey (30:08):
Winfrey's house.
Mike (30:09):
where they, creep down the hillside, due to erosion and things like that.
oh, okay.
I gotta tell this story.
we'll talk about concrete pier.
So a concrete pier is gonnabe made of steel and concrete.
You're gonna drill a hole down intothe ground and you're gonna fill
this up until the top of the pieris with the structure's resting on.
At a project in Plano, which was righton the edge of a bluff where it dropped
(30:34):
off, and from the one street to the nextstreet, there was like a 40 foot drop.
Oh wow.
Okay.
Okay.
And so the engineer told uswe need 30 foot deep piers.
Geez.
And I was like 30 feet,I couldn't believe it.
He says, I want to be down inthe bedrock, the blue shale.
I need you to drill at least 30 feet down.
(30:54):
'cause that's what the soilsreport came back inside.
Into the rock or on top of it?
Into the rock.
Geez.
Okay.
We wanted it stable.
Trey (31:00):
like Rome.
Mike (31:01):
Yeah.
So we drilled it, we built thepool, and everything worked great.
I get a call about four or five yearslater, I'm working with a different
company and they said, Hey, haveyou ever done any expert witnessing?
And I was like, oh boy, no, why?
And they said we've got this projectwhere this retaining wall there was
(31:22):
blew out and this retaining wall blewout and the whole hillside fell down.
And the only thing that'skeeping the whole hillside and
the house intact is the pool.
And I said, really?
he said, yeah, the piers are goingall the way from the pool, like
30 feet down into the ground.
And I was like, where's this at?
(31:43):
And he told me where it was at.
And I was like, I thinkwe built that pool.
Anyway, I went over thereriding my dinosaur again
because I don't have a camera.
Yeah.
And I walk up and literally thiswhole, 'cause when we built the
pool, the retaining wall was about.
10, 15 feet from the back of thepool to the back of the property.
(32:03):
And the fence was there?
Room (32:04):
Yeah,
Mike (32:05):
it was all gone.
Oh wow.
And all you saw was these littleskinny things of concrete, 12 inches?
No, they were actually18 inch diameter piers.
There was probably 40 of them going up.
And you could see 'em on theedge of this 'cause the dirt
from the piers out peeled away.
And literally what you could see isthis whole thing was being held in
(32:29):
place and the pool sitting on top of it.
Trey (32:32):
is this water weight that blew out the retaining wall or?
Mike (32:35):
So what they found out was that there was a leak on the neighbor's pool.
And again, with expansive soil,it got in and it eroded down to
the base of this retaining wall.
Yeah.
And it eroded out there.
And then the hole got big pretty quick,and then there was a major storm and a lot
of water went through the hole, and allof a sudden the whole thing started coming
Trey (32:57):
down.
It seems like waterway blows out retainingwalls more than actual carrying weight.
Mike (33:02):
So interesting.
So anyway, but yeah,that's a concrete pier.
Now, when you drill a concrete pier,one of the things you have to be
really careful about is sometimeswhen you're drilling down 20,
25, 30 feet, you can hit water.
Down in the ground Groundwater.
Yeah.
And if you hit groundwater you can'tdo a standard pier because when you
(33:24):
pour the concrete in, it would mix withthe water and it's not stable at all.
Yeah.
It's gonna
Trey (33:28):
keep saturating it.
Yeah.
Mike (33:29):
It's just, it's not a stable situation.
So you have to do what'scalled casing the pier.
And when you case a peer,the cost goes up three times.
Oh wow.
Okay.
So when somebody's expecting mypeers are gonna cost this much,
there's a possibility in some areasthat you're gonna hit water and
it's gonna be significantly more.
Now again, you're dealingwith the engineer.
(33:50):
With the engineer specs.
And a lot of times when theydo the soils report the high
moisture content will show up.
So they'll understand, listen, wedon't wanna take the piers down to 30
feet 'cause we're gonna hit water, sowe're gonna take the piers down to.
20 feet and we're gonna bell 'em.
What does
Trey (34:07):
bell 'em mean?
I've never heard that term.
Mike (34:08):
So if you bell up here, there's a really cool bit on the
end of it, and it actually flaresout to like the shape of a bell.
Trey (34:16):
Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
It's like a a dry wall anchor.
It goes into the wall,then it spreads out.
Yeah, I've seen those before.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Mike (34:23):
So now we're not gonna have to go as deep, but we're gonna put the bell
on it, but we're not gonna have to case'em because we didn't hit the water.
Trey (34:31):
Yeah.
Mike (34:32):
Okay.
So that's the projectwe did in Cedar Hill.
That was what the plan was.
But then when we went to go toBellum, we hit water at that point.
Okay.
Anyway, so we had to dosomething different anyway
from a structural standpoint.
So one of the things that's sometimesbeing recommended more and more
today is actually using steel piers.
Les Al Piers is what they're mostcommonly called, and initially
(34:55):
they were used for foundation.
Okay.
Now the other thing they're used a lotfor is where there is water underwater.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was talking to a builder thatbuilds fabulous, big, massive
projects down in Florida on the coast.
And I said, how do you handle that?
Who was it?
it was Ryan Hughes.
Okay.
(35:15):
We were talking about iton our episode last year.
he talked about that this bigmassive project that they did,
it was the very first one.
And how many he piers that theyhad to do in that situation.
So more and more engineers arenow working with a steel pier,
or he piers as a solution.
And a lot of job sites where you can't,now they're totally done different.
(35:39):
'Cause it's like puttinga corkscrew in the ground.
Trey (35:42):
Yeah, they're a little bit more flexible too.
'cause like we had that onefire pit and we were able to
anchor it down at an angle.
It was interesting how that was done.
Mike (35:51):
Yes, there's a lot more flexibility with them and how they're
used, but they're drilled into theground and it's based on resistance.
Mm-hmm.
So there's a thing that measureshow many Kips that you get to,
and when you get to a certainlevel, that's an acceptable rate.
And that's where you quitdrilling the pier into the ground.
(36:12):
So that's never known whenyou're starting a project.
So it's hard to say, Hey, you're goingto be able to do this with a 15 foot.
Hele pier.
You might need a 30 foot hele pier.
So why is it not known before you start?
Because you don't know whenyou're gonna get the resistance.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So you to end
Trey (36:32):
the field decision.
Mike (36:33):
It's as you drill when it shows up on the chart.
Yeah.
Okay.
You've got enough resistancenow with this pier.
And what's funny is you'lldrill 14 of 'em, they'll all be
different, at what level you getthe resistance and everything.
So
Trey (36:49):
so how does that work?
You used say, what's atypical size heel pier.
Mike (36:53):
Oh, 15 feet.
Trey (36:54):
Typical.
So,
not
Mike (36:55):
the other thing is there's different tips that you can get on these helical
piers to penetrate even deeper, so youcan get 'em deeper into the ground.
Yeah.
So you can get a betterfoundation situation.
Anyway, these are things that youwant to, again, will be specified
by the engineer, which you haveto do and what the specifications
(37:19):
to it and how it's all gonna work.
But,
Trey (37:22):
One thing we didn't talk about and I was thinking about it when we were talking
about the void boxes and and heel peersa little bit too, because I remember when
we had a luncheon and we're talking about,we've talked about it a bunch of times.
We've been through a bunch of classes forthis, but soil injections, soil injections
can play a role in this as well.
It's another option.
Do you wanna talk about those at all or?
Mike (37:40):
I think we need to have a whole episode on soil injection.
Okay.
But what soil
Trey (37:45):
injection, because there was a little bit of controversy at the luncheon.
It was a bunch of like pool professionalsand they were like debating if you
needed void boxes or if you couldjust use soil injections there.
There's a lot of banter back and forth,
Mike (37:59):
right?
Soil injections, you're notgoing to use soil inject 10
inch potential vertical rise.
And having a, a solution that's gonnawork and your soil injection is going
to reduce the amount of expansionthat you're going to have in a space.
Yeah.
So typically you're gonna see a. A certainpercentage of reduction and you're not
(38:22):
gonna get above a certain percentage.
you know, Like a four inch PVR.
Typically soil injection's notgonna work above that 'cause you're
not gonna be able to reduce itenough for it to be effective.
But what soil injection is, there'sdifferent types of injections.
We'll touch briefly on this.
Trey (38:40):
pretty much you inject the soil with acid.
Mike (38:42):
you're addressed putting a chemical into the soil.
Yeah.
Okay.
And that chemical that goes into thesoil is something that's not going
to affect plants or not going to beharmful or anything like that, but
it's something that's gonna be stablein the soil for a long period of time.
Because there's also another situation,which is done with a lot of the
(39:06):
homes in these bad areas is theydo what's called water injection.
Spider (39:10):
Yeah.
Mike (39:11):
Okay.
So they come in and they inject water,they expand the soil, then they put.
Your black plastic on the ground.
Trey (39:18):
This is typically with foundations,
Mike (39:19):
right?
Trey (39:19):
For homes,
Mike (39:20):
it's typical of foundations of homes.
Yeah.
They put the black plastic on the groundand then they build on top of that.
Yeah.
And what happens is that worksbecause it's so saturated.
It's not going to shrink, and the houseacts as a blanket to insulate it, and
then they just tell you, you gottause your sprinklers all around the
perimeter of the house and keep it moist.
(39:41):
Yeah.
Okay.
Now the, it's very common.
It's a very common situation thatworks until you hit a drought.
Okay.
your city comes in and tells youyou can only water once a week.
Mm. Okay.
And then the soil starts shrinking.
And then the other thing is it'sso hot for such a long period
of time and there's no rain.
The ground all starts shrinking around.
And so what happens is that's whythere's a lot of foundation problems
(40:05):
and this part of the country isbecause then it becomes of issue.
Yeah.
So we can't water injectunder a swimming pool?
No.
It's not gonna work.
No.
Okay.
So they do chemical injection.
So the chemical goes inand expands the soil.
It makes it stable for a better.
Situation to build on.
We'll work out getting somebody on here totalk about soil injection Yeah, for sure.
(40:28):
And explaining what that is.
Trey (40:29):
But can I tell you a couple more piers that I just have listed
here, just 'cause I think it's funny.
I've never seen any of these before.
Okay.
I've heard of this, thedriven steel piles push piers.
Then you have the bell under reamed pi.
Maybe that's what you were talkingabout earlier, the, when you
bell it, and then micro piles.
So micro piles are like small six inchto 12 inch high strength piers, or
(40:52):
high strength drilled or driven piles.
So best for tight areas.
Mike (40:57):
there's a lot of things you can look at.
To stabilize a space.
one thing also is, I don't havefill dirt, I don't have bad soil.
So we got a projectthat we're fixing to do.
Yeah.
And we still have piers underneath it.
why would we do pi?
Trey (41:13):
It's probably what we should have started with.
Okay.
This is actually a very big topic.
It's because you don't wantthe pool to move at all.
If it moves at all, itcould affect something.
That's honestly the wholereason you build a pool.
Mike (41:24):
So one of the most popular features on pools today is a bashing edge, 100%
or a negative edge, or an infinity edge,whatever definition you want to call it.
The whole premise of it iswater is perfectly level.
Trey (41:38):
Yeah.
Mike (41:39):
Okay.
Trey (41:39):
It's a pinnacle aesthetic of luxury outdoor living.
Mike (41:42):
Yes.
Very well said.
That pool moves a quarter of an inch.
Well, You have half a spillway now youhave water running all out of this corner.
Yep.
And this corner over here is dry.
Trey (41:53):
And it's white.
It's got what is it?
Florid, destined orwhatever the white patina.
So
Mike (41:59):
what people's compensation for a lot of times with that is more water.
Yeah.
but it's fairly trickling over thiscorner here, and it's pouring over
like Niagara Falls on this side
Trey (42:10):
can work as a solution if it's such a small minute measurement.
It's water doesn't lie.
And so you have to have it level.
Mike (42:19):
only will cover a certain percentage.
So if you're buildinga vanishing edge pool.
The cheapest insurance youcan have to keeping your pool
level is to put peers in.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now I have a structure that we'reattaching the pool to, and so I need this
pool to stay level for the next how long?
(42:41):
10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
What's an acceptable rate, butit's certainly with soil, not pi.
At all, even if you've got the greatestsoil, I'm in Westlake and I'm in great
Sandy soil, I can of course build apool with piers and without piers.
And, my vanishing edge still works.
(43:01):
It's probably not a, an ideal situation.
So the only
Trey (43:04):
time I can think that maybe it would be fine is if you're on rock.
Mike (43:08):
Yeah.
So I'm, digging a pool.
Like I've got a pool that we'refixing the cell and this one's gonna
be tricky and the fact that partof the pool will be in solid rock,
Trey (43:18):
but the tanning ledge and the spa and stuff like that's not
as a deep, the depth isn't as big.
Mike (43:24):
It's not gonna be No.
And so we're probably goingto have to peer this pool.
Yeah.
Even though a lot of it's in solidrock because some of it's not.
And like the spa will be actually sittingbecause of the hillside and the slope and
where they want, the spa is gonna probablybe about five feet above original grade.
so there are reasons that you would do it.
(43:46):
And it's the cheapest formof insurance to stabilize.
The whole thing is to put peers into it.
Now there's
Trey (43:52):
actually one that's more common.
It's the same concept, negative edge spa.
It's done a lot and it's done fromjobs that are a million, $2 million
to $200,000 or whatever it is.
It all range depending on, areaand stuff like that and time.
But still, negative spa is a lotcheaper than a negative pool.
(44:13):
But it's the same concept.
You can't have it not be level.
And if you do.
It's gonna look terrible in my opinion.
Mike (44:19):
And so what some people do with that is they'll tear all the tile off
and re-level it, and then it moves again.
And then it moves again.
And then
Trey (44:27):
do it again.
Mike (44:28):
Do it again.
And again, the issue is are wedealing with a settlement issue?
Yeah.
Or we do with soil expansionand contraction issues.
So that can be an ongoing,horrible situation.
So by all means, peers are abetter situation for that solution.
those are some of the reasonsthat we would use a peer.
(44:50):
We would use a void box.
Oh, didn't talk about a grade beam.
No.
So a grade beam, typicallywhen you build a house.
You're gonna put piers in the groundand then you're gonna connect all
these piers with a concrete footing.
Those are grade beams toconnect the whole thing.
And so that enables the stabilitythat you're gonna, the framework that
(45:13):
you can build something on top of.
Again, that's something that theengineer's gonna specify how big these
are, how deep these are, how muchsteel's in them, how it's actually done.
But that's part of the overallprocess to make everything work.
So if you've got, and there'sdifferent degrees that you're
going to need all these things thatthe engineer is going to specify.
(45:39):
On what's gonna be best.
Trey (45:40):
Yeah.
'cause like a pool, true crime, I'mthinking in my head, 'cause there's a
lot more outdoor kitchens probably thanpools and backyards just 'cause the price.
But still if you just try to put,some columns on your patio and
add a roof to it, you can gettwisting and then it can fall apart.
And Have you seen that happenbefore or heard of it happen before?
(46:01):
Oh yeah.
Mike (46:01):
So you're talking about building a cabana
Trey (46:04):
with no grade beams pretty much with no grade beams or they're too small.
Mike (46:07):
And so what happens is the builder will come in and they'll put a footing
on each corner post, and those fourfootings are independent of each other.
Spider (46:18):
Oh
Mike (46:18):
boy.
And so what can happen over aperiod of time is they can move.
Now, when you have a solid roofthat's above, over a period of
time, what it's gonna do is tear.
Roof apart.
some people are like I'm gonnause bigger footings on the
corners, so it's not gonna move.
And they still can move.
So what a lot of people do is theychoose to use grade beams in between all
(46:39):
those, it stabilize it, it can't move.
So anytime that we're doing astructure, especially ones that attach
to a existing house, very important.
It's very important because we don't wantthings twisting and moving and tearing
the new structure off the old structure.
Yeah, I mean that's a mess.
But again, we're gonnadeal with an engineer.
(47:00):
The engineer's gonna specify that whathas to be done for that situation.
So one last have ideal.
Trey (47:07):
One last thing that we didn't really touch on is piers underneath walls.
Mike (47:11):
again, if you have a wall that's not an original grade,
there's two things to do.
You dig the wall down, so thefooting is an original grade, and
then build the whole thing up.
I've done this a number of times with likeslides where we've done a masonry slide.
Yeah.
And the slide footing is down four feetinto the ground and I'm building up four
(47:32):
feet a block to get it just to grade.
And then we do the masonry on top of that.
That's a solution thatwe've commonly done.
But you could then come in also anddo piers underneath that structure.
And so a lot of times people willhave piers underneath walls as well to
stabilize walls 'cause they're gonnaonly put a wall in that's four feet tall.
(47:54):
But to get down to good soil, itmight need to be 10 feet tall.
Okay it's cheaper to come in and do a peersystem underneath the retaining walls.
We've got another project that's coming upright now that we're doing that as well.
if it's stable, it doesn't move.
Things hold together for a long time.
Trey (48:13):
Yeah I think at the end of the day, a lot of people are paying
a lot of money to have an awesome,luxurious, whatever it might be, just
a peaceful, relaxing backyard, andthey're investing a lot of money into it.
A lot of people want, they'regoing down the route of no
maintenance or less maintenance.
Obviously no maintenance itdoesn't exist, but as least
maintenance as possible.
And if you're spending so much moneyon something like this, your dream, and
(48:37):
if it's not built right, the structuretypically is the first thing to show
signs of stress and you don't want that.
Mike (48:45):
You could build everything perfectly Beautiful.
Yeah.
And in the, foundation thatit's not setting on falls apart.
It's even biblical, you buildon sand, you have problems.
If you build on rock, you gotta,house that stands up a wise man.
Yeah.
So encourage you guys to ask questionsof the people that are going to be
(49:05):
working on your project, so you understandthat they're going to give you a stable
situation to build your dreams on.
Trey (49:12):
Yeah.
And one of the most disappointingthings is probably, Hey, I'm looking
at this 3D and it looks amazing.
But then when you lookat the contract, wow.
Majority of the money that I'm spending isunder the ground and I don't even see it.
But that's just the reality of it.
Repair work is a
Mike (49:28):
lot more expensive.
Yeah.
Trey (49:30):
Especially when you have to overhaul the whole thing and then redo it.
Mike (49:33):
But we do some of those, we do, we wall 'em up and start over.
We
Trey (49:37):
benefit
Mike (49:37):
from other
Trey (49:38):
people's mistakes sometimes.
Yeah.
So
Mike (49:40):
hopefully you won't have those.
Nope.
And if you're in Dallas-Fort Worth and youwanna do some fun stuff, give us a call.
Want
Trey (49:47):
it done the right way.
Mike (49:48):
Yeah.
And we'll look forwardto talking to y'all soon.
If you got questions let usknow in the comments below
Trey (49:55):
and make sure you talk to an engineer.
Mike (49:56):
Yes.
'cause we are not engineer.
We are not.
I guess.
One last thing.
Okay.
Okay.
Who the engineer is.
Trey (50:03):
Ooh, that is actually a big deal.
Mike (50:04):
Who the engineer is important to understand that they've dealt
with structures like this because astructure that's a parking garage versus
a pool is a totally different thing.
So there are loads that go withswimming pools that are different.
So there are people literallythat specialize in swimming pools
that builders that are buildingquality work are sending, people
(50:26):
all over the nation to certainparticular pool structural engineers.
So make sure that the person you'reworking with on their team is not, oh,
he got his engineering degree last year.
And he's going to be figuringthis complex situation out.
That's not a wise situation.
You want something that's usuallythe engineers that are old
(50:47):
and gray have a lot of wisdom.
Although we've had some engineerson the show that aren't old and
gray, and they're very good as well.
Yes.
So anyway, y'all take care.
Have a good one.
Outro (50:59):
This show is all about helping you become a better buyer, a better pool
owner, and hopefully you're gonna findsome insights into how to enjoy your pool
even more so how to help your friends,your family, anybody looking to buy a
pool in the future or that want to remodeltheir backyard, add an outdoor fireplace,
fire pit, add an outdoor kitchen area, addsome shade cells, or whatever else it is.
(51:23):
We wanna be that resource for you, andthat's the end goal here, and we promise.
That there's gonna bea ton of information.
We'll try to go through it, youknow, as relatively quickly, but
also slow so people can understand.
But the intent of the show, thereason Mike and I are doing this
is because we just got a lot inour heads and we wanna share it.
So we hope to see youhere every single week.
Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Luxury Outdoor Living Podcast with Mike and Trey
Farley of Farley Pool Designs.
For over 40 years, we've helpedhomeowners turn their backyards
into personal retreats, spaces ofjoy, relaxation and unforgettable
memories, and whether it's a cozy as.
Scape or a resort style oasis.
We design it all.
(00:24):
We know how overwhelming a projectcan feel, and nothing feels worse than
a homeowner having a bad experience.
And that's why after decades of designingand teaching in this industry, we're
here to share our knowledge, helping you.
The process with confidence.
Every week we break down designtrends and insider tips that
turn your vision into reality.
(00:45):
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Let's build your paradise together.
Mike (01:12):
Good afternoon.
This is Mike Farley of Farley Pool Designand I am hosting the luxury Outdoor
Living Podcast with my cohost Trey Farley.
we've got a really goodepisode to uh, stand on today.
Oh, we, yeah, we do.
Trey (01:25):
Yeah, we got a bunch of.
A dirt to, to stand on.
Mike (01:29):
the challenge that.
We have in some parts of the countryand others, it's not as big a deal is
the stability of what we're building on.
And when I came to Texas, I had tochange and learn a lot of different
things because the stability in thisarea is like none other that I've.
Ever heard about And the fact thatsome people are like, we've got some
(01:53):
bad soil that we have to work with.
And some people are like,we've got really sandy soil.
And some people are like, we gottadeal with the tides coming in and out.
And some people are like we've gotrock that we have to deal with.
And here we have almost all that.
We don't have tideshere in, in North Texas.
We got some in Texas though, sowe have some in Texas but that's
(02:14):
a little bit farther to the south.
Yeah, that's not where we're at.
Hopefully we don't have anytide waters coming up here.
Otherwise that's a really bad earth.
I
Trey (02:21):
mean,
The weather these days, who knows?
It's global weirding.
Mike (02:24):
But anyway, we're gonna talk about structures and the first thing
to talk about in this whole process is.
I'm not an engineer, are you?
No, I'm not.
Okay.
We're not engineers.
Work with them though.
We work with engineers.
Yes.
And so what we're talking about iswe're gonna give you some general idea.
'cause if I bring an engineer in here totalk about this, they're gonna go down
(02:47):
some rabbit holes and your eyes are gonnaglaze over and you're not gonna understand
all the things that they're talking about.
And what we're trying to address is stuffyou as a homeowner would need to know.
So it helps you communicate withthe builder that you're working
with as well as the engineer that'sgoing to be working on your project.
Spider (03:06):
Yeah.
Mike (03:07):
So the first thing that you need is a geotech report, okay?
For an engineer to giveyou any information.
It's worth the paper it's written on.
There has to be, I call 'em soils reports.
A geotech report is they're gonnacome out and they're gonna do a
boring down into the ground withthis big machine, and they're
(03:28):
gonna take samples of the soil out.
And so they come back and theyhave all these layers, and usually
it's done at least to 20 feet,but sometimes it has to go deeper.
Sometimes it's 30, sometimes it's 40 feet.
And the big thing the engineerwill tell you is what he's looking
for from a stability standpointof what you're resting on.
Now, sometimes people will go down16 feet and that hits solid rock,
(03:51):
and that's as far as they're going.
They can't drill any farther into that.
Once you have the report.
Then you come up with the design,then the engineer's going to come in
and recommend different things that'sgoing to be needed on the project.
And having the report also helps witha lot of taking away a lot of guesswork
on, how bad does this soil go downinto the ground before it changes
(04:16):
to something that's more stable?
what, on almost every geotech reportthat you're gonna see is the deeper
you go, the more stable it becomes.
Okay.
So the bad stuff is up near the surfaceand sometimes, you're just gonna scrape
the bad stuff off and you're gonnabe down into good stuff to work with.
And as we look at stabilityof these things, they differ.
(04:38):
So if I'm doing a cabana.
The Cabana Foundation isliterally right on the ground.
So the first five or six feet is a bigdeal because we're still sitting a lot of
times in some soil that's not that great.
Versus when you dig a pool, we're gonnastrip out at least four, sometimes
(04:58):
five, sometimes six feet of soil.
Yep.
But before we reach the bottomof what we're building on.
And if we're in a stable situation, thenthat pool is great and it can rest there.
So your depth of your, whatyou're starting with is gonna be
different depending on the typeof structure that you're building.
So de peer or not de peer.
(05:19):
I, I always wanted to say that.
So de peer or to not
Trey (05:22):
de peer?
I think a great thing not a great,but a very common question that comes
up when we're meeting with differentcustomers is a concern and it's Hey.
Why do I need to peer mypool when my neighbor didn't?
And you touched on it already, that dirtis very diverse, especially in Texas.
It can be one lot could becompletely different than the other.
Usually it's not that case, but it can be.
(05:44):
And to address what
Mike (05:44):
you just said here in North Texas, I can just drive down Highway one 14.
Mm-hmm.
Take for example.
And I can be in Westlake.
Say we start in Westlake.
We had a really good lunch because Roanokeis the restaurant capital of Texas.
And so we start there and wehave some slight clay in Roanoke.
Okay.
(06:05):
And we drive literally tothe next town of Westlake.
Westlake, we're in pure sand.
No clay whatsoever.
Yeah.
We stay on one 14 and we get it intoSouth Lake and some of South Lake.
There's some clay, but for the mostpart it's still pretty sandy soil.
Okay.
And then we hit the DFW airportand we don't build anything there.
(06:29):
But right after the DFW airport,we're gonna get into Los Colinas.
Okay.
Los Colinas.
Yeah.
Literally on the other sideof the DFW airport from South
Lake is the second worst.
Clay in the world.
Trey (06:44):
Great atmosphere.
Okay, great.
Great place go get a coffee, hang out.
But yeah, if you're buildingout there, it's typically a
little bit more expensive.
Mike (06:52):
So clay soil.
Is known for being expansive.
Trey (06:57):
Yeah.
'cause it dries and it absorbswater as well, so it expands.
Yeah.
Mike (07:01):
So when we first moved to Texas, we were up in McKinney and I remember
going out to the soccer fields one dayand I dropped my keys on the ground.
Okay.
And they went into a crack becauseliterally the ground had cracks in it.
And I was like, oh my, I justthrew my keys on the ground and
they disappeared into this crack.
And I literally had to geta tire iron out of my car.
(07:24):
Oh my.
And dig down like four feet.
'cause they had literally fallen four feetdown into the ground, into this crack.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it was in the middle of the summer andthe clay soil had shrunk up and literally
there were cracks all over the ground.
Okay.
Now you went out after a rain and.
The cracks all disappear because the soilthen expands and fills in all the cracks.
(07:49):
So when you'd go on a job site inMcKinney, it was always, the joke is if
you went after a rain, when you got backto your car, you were typically three
to four inches taller because so muchdirt also stuck to the bottom of your
shoes that you would grow in height.
So when you get a soils report, one ofthe things that you're looking for at
(08:11):
first glance is there's the thing in therethat's called potential vertical rise.
And potential vertical rise isusually one inch is an acceptable
potential vertical rise to build in.
But after one inch, when you get intotwo inch, when the soil moves up and
down from what to dry, two inches, youcan start having pools get uneven and
(08:32):
decks cracking, and you can end up withall these different plumbing challenges.
So when you go from Westlake.
Where there was zero potential verticalrise to Los Colinas, where the potential
vertical rise was over 10 inches.
So literally you just drovethrough a couple of towns there.
(08:53):
Yeah.
And you went into some ofthe most diverse things.
Sand.
The only problem we have with sand iswe did a job site earlier this year,
and it was like trucks driving out atthe beach and they were getting stuck in
the sand trying to drive around becausethe sand was so unstable moving around.
(09:14):
So we had other structural issuesthat we had to deal with there.
Yeah, that was
Trey (09:18):
wild.
It was like when we were doing theuh, precon on that job I walked in
the backyard and I know that there'ssand in that area, but it felt like.
They imported sand andjust poured it everywhere.
Like they wanted to havea beach or something.
It was crazy.
The whole backyard waslike a beach, pure sand.
It was wild.
Yeah.
Mike (09:33):
Yeah.
And so literally you drove right downthe road and you know, this potential
vertical rise is one of the thingsthat you're looking for is to see
how much things are going to move.
the question of why my friend hadto have peers, and I don't, or
no, there's the other way around.
I did a project, these are in trophy club.
(09:55):
Two neighbors next door to each other?
Yeah.
They're on the golf course.
Okay.
There was a retaining wall and the trees,the base of the trees were 10 feet down
from the top of the retaining wall.
Okay.
So if you walked up to theedge, you could see the bottom
of the tree is 10 feet down.
Now what does that tell you?
True grade
Trey (10:13):
is 10 feet down.
Mike (10:15):
Okay.
So where those trees are growingis what was original grade now.
So the rest of that 10 feet was built up.
Built up.
It's fell, what we call isfill dirt, not as PHIL, not a
Trey (10:26):
guy.
And you were telling me before the podcastthat the reason like you didn't do as
many peers in California is because ofthe regulations they have with backfill.
Mike (10:35):
Correct.
in California, when you backfillthat retaining wall that was built,
if I was in California, they haveto do it to a compaction rate.
I think it's 98.5% so we work
Trey (10:48):
with some builders that do that on their jobs too, in Texas.
But that's not required.
Mike (10:52):
It's not where it's state law in California, yes.
There's nothing requiredhere with your backfill.
So when
Trey (10:59):
we think fill, it's kind of a oh boy, here we go.
Mike (11:01):
They had built this house, Now what a lot of builders do is
they'll compact underneath thehouse pad to the right situation.
Room (11:10):
Yeah.
Mike (11:10):
But they won't do it for the rest of the yard.
what happened is, on that one was doinga recreational depth pool, so the bottom
of the pool's down five, six feet.
So we still have at leastfour feet of fill dirt Yeah.
Before we hit original grade.
And so that pool had to be peered.
Okay.
The cabana also had to be peered becauseof the amount of fill that was on the lot.
(11:33):
The next door neighbor was a littlebit higher up on the hillside.
Okay.
And so his trees wereseven to eight feet down.
Okay.
So what we did on his particularyard is we terrace the pool.
Okay.
So we dropped the pooldown lower on the property.
And the pool was also a deeper pool thanthe one that we had done the first one.
(11:58):
So it was sitting in true grade,it was sitting in true grade
at the bottom of the pool.
And so because of that,
the bottom of the pool issitting on original grade.
So it was stable.
Yeah.
The cabana, we stepped thateven lower than the pool.
Oh, okay.
So with the pool, we were dealingwith the four of the pool.
Cabana's up, five feet higher, but becauseagain, the hillside and going up the
(12:20):
hill and then we stepped the cabana down.
So it was down 42 inches,so it was bar height.
So ended up, the cabana footingswere all in original grade.
Spider (12:30):
Okay.
Mike (12:30):
So next door neighbors to each other.
Yep.
One pool had to have piersfor the cabana and the pool.
And the other next doorneighbor did not need to.
Trey (12:40):
And this is because of the lot, the retaining wall one guy's on a hill
where you know the design, you're ableto use your flexibility and put it into
true grade versus the other neighbor.
You have the retaining wall, youhave the restrictions of what the
lot is and you're just not gonnabe able to do that with that lot.
Mike (12:57):
Correct.
But the same thing can be saidfor, my buddy that I work with who
lives in South Lake didn't haveto put any peers under his pool.
I live in Castle Hillsright down the road.
Yeah.
And in Castle Hills we're dealingwith the Eagle Ford Shale.
The Eagle Ford Shale is what'sin Los cleanest as well.
(13:20):
It's a band of soil that goes allthe way runs north and south in
the state of Texas, and so throughthe Dallas Fort Worth metroplex.
So as we go up through the colony to theFrisco, to, now in Prosper and Salina
All that on the west side of theToll Road is in the Eagle Ford Shale.
Trey (13:41):
So let's not get this confused.
If you have bad soil andyou're in true grade.
Do you not need peers?
Because we're talkingabout we're in true grade.
Okay.
That means you.
You're fine.
Okay.
Mike (13:51):
So excellent question.
there's two reasonsyou have to have peers.
Okay.
And they both had to do with movement.
One is movement because we're goingto settle over a period of time.
'cause we're in dirtthat's not fully compacted.
Yep.
That's the fill.
That's the fill.
when we have a settlementissue, we're gonna wanna put
(14:12):
piers underneath the structure.
Okay.
Trey (14:14):
And we
Mike (14:14):
just
Trey (14:15):
talked about that.
Mike (14:15):
Okay.
The other type of structure is back toour potential vertical rise in the soil
because our soil expands and contractsbecause when it's wet to dry, it's
moving, which is typically gonna be clay.
That's gonna be clay typically.
And it's gonna, yourissue's not settlement.
(14:36):
But actually expansion,it's going to get bigger.
Okay.
And then it's gonna dry and it's gonnaget shorter and it's gonna get bigger,
and it's shorter and bigger and shorter.
So it changes versus field dirt.
It doesn't change from season to season.
Okay.
It just slowly settles down.
Okay.
And a lot of times you can seethis in yards where it was built
(15:00):
and they brought the dirt all theway up to the top of the wall.
And then five or six years later,the dirt's now settled down lower.
Trey (15:08):
And so if you do pure pool in a, in say lost cleaners where it's 10
inches of rise or above, and your poolis technically on stilts with the piers,
so it's not gonna move up and down.
Is the dirt around thepool gonna start moving up?
Is it gonna have a foot ofdirt above the pool now or.
Mike (15:26):
That's a good question.
So your dirt's going to move up and down.
We put the stilts in.
Mm-hmm.
So now we're structurally we're stable.
Is everything else gonna move around it?
So there's two things that'sgoing into play there.
One, we have an extremepotential vertical rise.
What we're going to do is, inaddition to piers, we're going
(15:48):
to add what's called a void box.
Okay.
Or a carton form.
Okay?
And these are fun.
And the fact that you wouldthen dig the pool 12 inches
deeper than you need it to be.
Okay?
Or maybe six, or it might be 18, foraccounting to add the void boxes.
The engineer's gonna tell you how bigyour void boxes are gonna have to be.
(16:11):
Okay?
And you're gonna putthese boxes on the ground.
And then what happens is they have awaffle pattern on the inside of them.
Yeah.
with this waffle pattern onthe inside, and we actually
have some video what is it?
Videos on YouTube that explain,and show you exactly that.
Trey (16:29):
I don't know which job.
I know it's a Smith job that wedid in Dallas that we use these and
we did a little bit of what is it?
And there's a time lapse as well.
I don't know what it's called on YouTube.
But that job shows it very well.
Mike (16:41):
Yeah.
So what happens is you put theseboxes, so you draw your pi and then
you put the boxes on the groundand basically it creates a void.
That's why void box or a cartonform, and you then put the steel.
On top of the boxes.
Mm-hmm.
So it creates is a void of about 12 incheswhen you go to, because when you shoot
(17:04):
the gunite, it stays on top of the box.
Okay.
So your pier comes up throughthe boxes, it goes, attaches.
So what ends up is your whole structureof your pool is lifted 12 inches
above the ground, not lifted, built12 inches higher than the ground.
Spider (17:22):
Okay.
Mike (17:22):
And so now the soil can expand and contract, and it's not
touching the bottom of the pool.
Because as the boxes rot out, not gonnacause a problem with, moving up and down.
Anyway, so that's away that you can do it.
And you're not gonna have your deckmoving up and down in conjunction with
the soil and everything that's around it.
(17:43):
So typically your house is gonnabe addressed, the structure of
the pool's gonna be addressed.
Your deck may be addressed as well.
And another thing that may come into playthere as well will be soil injection is
another thing that can be added to helpreduce the amount of movement up and down.
(18:03):
again.
This is all gonna bespecked out by engineers.
Yeah.
Not me.
No, we're talking about rough,
Trey (18:10):
We're talking about concepts right now.
We're not gonna talk aboutprecise measurements and
loads and anything like that.
It's all gonna be varyingdepending on your job specifically.
Mike (18:19):
So what you have is the stilts that come in, and then you've got the void
box on top of that, and then you buildyour normal structure on top of that.
So one of the things that youneed to understand is when you
go to buy a piece of property
It's what, it's really helpful if youcan find out anything about the soil
when you're buying something and you'regonna be like how in the world am I
(18:41):
gonna find out that well call a pool guy?
Trey (18:43):
Yeah.
Mike (18:44):
if you're gonna buy a house and you wonder, am I in an area
that's got a lot of problems?
One of the ways you can understandis there are a lot of foundation
work that's being done on thehouse over a period of time.
That's a tip to you that there'ssoil movement in this area.
'cause they're having to do all thesefoundation repairs and if we could know
(19:05):
going in, are we in South Lake and we'rein good soil or are we in Westlake and
some of the best soil in the state?
Or are we in lost, cleanest Andthe second worst in the world?
' cause a substructure with piers andvoid boxes and grade beams on a typical
project's gonna add $50,000 in cost.
(19:25):
Yeah.
Okay.
That's typical.
Sometimes it's a lot more than that.
Sometimes it's less than that.
But that's an additional costthat you're gonna have to do
to make your structure good.
Now there are builders all the time thatare like that's a little bit overboard.
But those are the guys thataren't using an engineer.
They're like, this is the way we've doneit for the last 25 years, you'll be fine.
(19:48):
And two years later they'renot in business anymore.
But you built this structurenow that you're gonna have to
deal with all the repairs on forthe lifetime of that structure.
Trey (19:56):
Yeah.
That's a nightmare.
Mike (19:58):
Yeah.
So that's where people arelike, and that's why I moved.
Trey (20:01):
And that's actually a good thing too.
Like if you're looking to buy ahouse and maybe you're looking at
a pool that's already been made inthe last 10 years or something like
that it's good to, to look into the,how it was actually built itself.
And I think that would bring me to thiscause we deal with bids all the time.
we're putting our fine tunenumbers on the design you do.
And a customer it is just a, any customer.
(20:22):
What part of the bid should theyautomatically go and look at to
understand if they're getting theirmoney's worth with structures or
just understand the structure itself?
Is there a specific spot that you would
Mike (20:34):
Well, the challenge is every single contractor writes
his specifications differently.
Mm-hmm.
And it's extremely difficultfor a homeowner to understand.
Like, I had somebody the other daythat said you're doing the same
steel, you're both using number fours.
I was doing fours, eight inches on center.
(20:55):
The other guy was doing it 10 incheson center, and then the third guy
was doing it 12 inches on center.
Trey (21:01):
There might be someone that doesn't understand what that means.
Mike (21:03):
Okay.
So on center means that's how far thebars are apart in the shell of the pool.
the difference betweeneights and tens and twelves.
To go from eight to twelves, that's50% more steel from a 12 to an eight.
Trey (21:18):
When you're at eight inch on center, you have more steel
in the pool than you do than 12.
Correct.
Okay.
And so
Mike (21:24):
when you, your steel gets laid, you've got this grid
pattern through the whole pool.
Yeah.
And what happens is the closer thegrid is, the stronger the structure is.
Because you're dealing with the gunite.
And again, sometimes the engineer willsay in fact we need a double mat of steel.
(21:45):
' cause we can't get the steel tooclose together because then it
will actually weaken the structure.
So there's a steel concrete ratiothat you have to work within.
So you could get literally too much inor you could have not enough in so you
have to understand, if I do a doublemat, that means the shell has to be
thicker because it's got cover minimumof three inches of steel on both sides.
(22:10):
So, you then shooting usuallya 12 inch wall versus, a six
to seven, that eight inch wall.
So those are all things, again, that aregonna be specified out by the engineer.
Now we have movement youmight be like you know what?
We don't have fill dirt in our backyard.
(22:30):
We can see where all the trees are.
It's all original grade, so Ishouldn't have to use piers at all.
BBQ Intro (22:40):
We are gonna take a break here for a second and get into outdoor living.
So with outdoor living, we like togo to barbecue bits here we're gonna
share some information of everythingthat you may want to consider in
your outdoor living space as far asfeatures, especially for the kitchen.
Hope you enjoy this.
Mike (22:59):
We don't want a disaster when we're done.
Sure.
How do we go about doing that?
And I'm not talking about themeat, actually, I'm talking
about the cleaning aspect.
Sure.
That's, that's not my favorite.
So is there any tips for that?
Bobby (23:12):
The tips or beforehand, before you start the grill up, there's, you
know, a couple things you wanna look at.
Get it hot, you know, brush it downreally good and keep it well oiled.
That will really minimize.
The, uh, disaster or the cleanupthat you have afterwards.
But to prepare for that, uh, remember allyour drip trays down below, regardless
(23:33):
if they're multiple level drip trays ornot, they should be lined with a foil.
So if they're lined with a foil, maybea heavy gauge shiny side down, so any
of the marinades or fats that drip offof there won't congeal into the pan.
You can change it when it's dirtyenough for you, but it will.
It will eliminate a lot of the, thegrease fires that we have inside of this.
Mike (23:56):
Okay.
BBQ End (23:57):
So I hope you enjoyed the barbecue bits that we just featured today,
and we'll have more coming up next week.
If there's something in particular thatyou're interested for, let us know and
we'll get back into the episode now.
Trey (24:11):
Real quick.
We keep on talking about the trees.
Why are the trees importantwhen we're talking about grade?
Mike (24:16):
Because you don't put a hundred year oak tree and move it.
that's an original grade point.
Trey (24:23):
Okay.
Mike (24:24):
it's really helpful when you're looking at a piece of property to
look at trees because if they've beenthere for 30 or 40 years, or longer
than the house, that's something.
Now you have housesthat are 200 years old.
Yeah.
And do we have a filleddirt issue on a 200 year old
Trey (24:41):
home?
Probably not unless there'san extensive remodel.
Mike (24:45):
Most engineers will say it's settled as much as it's gonna settle.
Yeah.
Over a certain length of time.
Again, that's gonna bedecided by an engineer.
Not by me.
Yeah.
Okay.
So those are things that wanna look at is,but trees give us a, point to understand
what we're dealing with, we deal witha lot of blow it up and start over.
Trey (25:06):
Yes.
Mike (25:06):
And so when we blow it up, a lot of times we're blowing up a diving pool.
And so we're taking out this diving pooland now we have a nine foot deep, 10 foot,
12 foot deep hole that we're coming in.
But we're gonna build a recpool that's only five feet deep.
Spider (25:22):
Yeah.
Mike (25:23):
So now we have a hole underneath our pool structure that we're gonna put in.
And so piers are one way to structurally.
Deal with that.
And that would be sometimeswhy one person has to have it.
And we don't have filldirt in the neighborhood.
We don't have expansive soil in theneighborhood, but one guy's gotta
have them, but the other guy doesn't.
Trey (25:44):
in that situation could you use gravel?
Mike (25:46):
there are different solutions that you can come up with that
engineers are going to look at.
And that is a common situationthat we use is, will come in.
Common situation we'll use is we'llcome in and remove the dirt that
they backfilled the pool with.
Yeah.
'cause sometimes what happensis the pool is taken out by the
(26:07):
builder and we come in and we knewit was an eight foot deep pool.
And they didn't compact it 'cause theyknew we were gonna put a new pool in.
Yeah.
And so we will dig out actually all thedirt they filled the hole in with, and
then we'll bring base in and fill that in.
And that way the wholepool has a stable base.
It's a concept.
Trey (26:26):
The concept of scratching it off the surface we talked about earlier.
Pretty much.
Correct.
Yeah.
Mike (26:31):
I had a project oh, about 15 years ago and the pool
that was there had cracked.
Spider (26:37):
Okay.
Mike (26:38):
So we pulled the pool out.
So we're putting a diving pool back in soit's deeper than the original rec pool.
So we're gonna be into originalgrade, no problem whatsoever.
So we go and we dig the pool, andwhen we dug the pool right at the
very bottom, we found some trash.
What kind of
Trey (26:56):
trash?
It was like construction debris.
Okay.
Nothing exciting like a car or anything?
Mike (27:02):
No, nothing exciting like a car.
We keep the stories of allthe buried treasure we found
over the years to ourselves.
Oh, makes sense.
We don't share that on the podcast.
So we found some trash at thebottom and called up the engineer
and we're like, what do we do?
And he's like, well dig it out.
And I said how much of it?
And he's like, well, all of it.
Spider (27:21):
Yeah.
Mike (27:21):
So we start digging.
We were at 10 feet deepwhen we hit the trash.
I. 10 feet deeper intothe, oh my goodness, crown.
We got rid of all the trash.
This had been a dump site forlike a construction when they
were building a whole subdivision.
It was the house at the very back of thesubdivision, and it was down the hill a
(27:41):
little bit, and so they just dumped stuff.
Trey (27:44):
Y'all weren't trying to use piers, right?
Y'all were just trying to
Mike (27:46):
No, we weren't gonna be using piers 'cause we were gonna be stable.
Trey (27:49):
Yeah, exactly.
So you had to take out the trash.
'cause it's a voidtechnically in the dirt.
Correct.
You gotta get rid of thevoid so you can backfill it.
Mike (27:55):
That's why the original pool cracked.
Trey (27:57):
Oh, because it was sitting
Mike (27:59):
on the trash.
Yeah.
And the trash was settlingslowly over a period of time.
And so we came in anddug all the trash out.
And I wish I had a camera, 'cause this wasback before we had cameras on our phones.
And Oh wow.
This is when dinosaurs roamed earth.
Dinosaurs are roaming the earth.
And so one of my friendscame up to look at something.
(28:19):
He called me on the phone.
He's like, what kind of poolare you building here, dude?
He's like, this hole is huge.
I've never seen a hole this deep.
The hole's deeper than thewidth of the pool anyway.
he said he walked up on the edge andhe almost like, just almost oh my
gosh, I'm on the edge of a cliff.
So we had to backfill it with.
(28:40):
10 feet of road base.
Oh, wow.
And that was what theengineer specified us to do.
Yeah.
And it wasn't for the wholesize of the pool either.
The pool was a good sizepool that we were putting in.
actually they were out not too longago to do some remodel work on the
tile and the guys that do the remodelwork, I asked them, I said, how's
(29:00):
the pool structure and everything?
And this was like 15, 18 years ago.
And they said, looks pristine.
So I bet
Trey (29:07):
y'all didn't have to deal with any weeping before you
plastered because there's somuch gravel underneath that pool.
Yeah.
Mike (29:13):
Not a weeping issue.
So one of the things we keeptalking about peers yeah.
A lot of times people don't understandthere's two different types that
are quite commonly used here andin other parts of the country.
They may be referred to as different.
Installations as well.
So I know in California they doless of them, but they're more
(29:33):
massive and they call 'em cassons.
Okay.
So a typical pier here in Texasis gonna be 12 or 16 inches.
Trey (29:43):
Wait, I thought a cason was a concrete pier.
It is, but they're, that's what we do.
We
Mike (29:47):
do caseon technically okay.
We do.
Okay.
Okay.
But some of them they do outin California, they may only
do like two or three, six.
Yeah.
They may do 36 inch diameter.
Some of 'em are massive.
I've seen on some of the hillsideconstruction that they're trying to build
it so they don't have an issue with creep.
like Tony Stark's house
Trey (30:07):
or
Mike (30:07):
Oprah
Trey (30:08):
Winfrey's house.
Mike (30:09):
where they, creep down the hillside, due to erosion and things like that.
oh, okay.
I gotta tell this story.
we'll talk about concrete pier.
So a concrete pier is gonnabe made of steel and concrete.
You're gonna drill a hole down intothe ground and you're gonna fill
this up until the top of the pieris with the structure's resting on.
At a project in Plano, which was righton the edge of a bluff where it dropped
(30:34):
off, and from the one street to the nextstreet, there was like a 40 foot drop.
Oh wow.
Okay.
Okay.
And so the engineer told uswe need 30 foot deep piers.
Geez.
And I was like 30 feet,I couldn't believe it.
He says, I want to be down inthe bedrock, the blue shale.
I need you to drill at least 30 feet down.
(30:54):
'cause that's what the soilsreport came back inside.
Into the rock or on top of it?
Into the rock.
Geez.
Okay.
We wanted it stable.
Trey (31:00):
like Rome.
Mike (31:01):
Yeah.
So we drilled it, we built thepool, and everything worked great.
I get a call about four or five yearslater, I'm working with a different
company and they said, Hey, haveyou ever done any expert witnessing?
And I was like, oh boy, no, why?
And they said we've got this projectwhere this retaining wall there was
(31:22):
blew out and this retaining wall blewout and the whole hillside fell down.
And the only thing that'skeeping the whole hillside and
the house intact is the pool.
And I said, really?
he said, yeah, the piers are goingall the way from the pool, like
30 feet down into the ground.
And I was like, where's this at?
(31:43):
And he told me where it was at.
And I was like, I thinkwe built that pool.
Anyway, I went over thereriding my dinosaur again
because I don't have a camera.
Yeah.
And I walk up and literally thiswhole, 'cause when we built the
pool, the retaining wall was about.
10, 15 feet from the back of thepool to the back of the property.
(32:03):
And the fence was there?
Room (32:04):
Yeah,
Mike (32:05):
it was all gone.
Oh wow.
And all you saw was these littleskinny things of concrete, 12 inches?
No, they were actually18 inch diameter piers.
There was probably 40 of them going up.
And you could see 'em on theedge of this 'cause the dirt
from the piers out peeled away.
And literally what you could see isthis whole thing was being held in
(32:29):
place and the pool sitting on top of it.
Trey (32:32):
is this water weight that blew out the retaining wall or?
Mike (32:35):
So what they found out was that there was a leak on the neighbor's pool.
And again, with expansive soil,it got in and it eroded down to
the base of this retaining wall.
Yeah.
And it eroded out there.
And then the hole got big pretty quick,and then there was a major storm and a lot
of water went through the hole, and allof a sudden the whole thing started coming
Trey (32:57):
down.
It seems like waterway blows out retainingwalls more than actual carrying weight.
Mike (33:02):
So interesting.
So anyway, but yeah,that's a concrete pier.
Now, when you drill a concrete pier,one of the things you have to be
really careful about is sometimeswhen you're drilling down 20,
25, 30 feet, you can hit water.
Down in the ground Groundwater.
Yeah.
And if you hit groundwater you can'tdo a standard pier because when you
(33:24):
pour the concrete in, it would mix withthe water and it's not stable at all.
Yeah.
It's gonna
Trey (33:28):
keep saturating it.
Yeah.
Mike (33:29):
It's just, it's not a stable situation.
So you have to do what'scalled casing the pier.
And when you case a peer,the cost goes up three times.
Oh wow.
Okay.
So when somebody's expecting mypeers are gonna cost this much,
there's a possibility in some areasthat you're gonna hit water and
it's gonna be significantly more.
Now again, you're dealingwith the engineer.
(33:50):
With the engineer specs.
And a lot of times when theydo the soils report the high
moisture content will show up.
So they'll understand, listen, wedon't wanna take the piers down to 30
feet 'cause we're gonna hit water, sowe're gonna take the piers down to.
20 feet and we're gonna bell 'em.
What does
Trey (34:07):
bell 'em mean?
I've never heard that term.
Mike (34:08):
So if you bell up here, there's a really cool bit on the
end of it, and it actually flaresout to like the shape of a bell.
Trey (34:16):
Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
It's like a a dry wall anchor.
It goes into the wall,then it spreads out.
Yeah, I've seen those before.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Mike (34:23):
So now we're not gonna have to go as deep, but we're gonna put the bell
on it, but we're not gonna have to case'em because we didn't hit the water.
Trey (34:31):
Yeah.
Mike (34:32):
Okay.
So that's the projectwe did in Cedar Hill.
That was what the plan was.
But then when we went to go toBellum, we hit water at that point.
Okay.
Anyway, so we had to dosomething different anyway
from a structural standpoint.
So one of the things that's sometimesbeing recommended more and more
today is actually using steel piers.
Les Al Piers is what they're mostcommonly called, and initially
(34:55):
they were used for foundation.
Okay.
Now the other thing they're used a lotfor is where there is water underwater.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was talking to a builder thatbuilds fabulous, big, massive
projects down in Florida on the coast.
And I said, how do you handle that?
Who was it?
it was Ryan Hughes.
Okay.
(35:15):
We were talking about iton our episode last year.
he talked about that this bigmassive project that they did,
it was the very first one.
And how many he piers that theyhad to do in that situation.
So more and more engineers arenow working with a steel pier,
or he piers as a solution.
And a lot of job sites where you can't,now they're totally done different.
(35:39):
'Cause it's like puttinga corkscrew in the ground.
Trey (35:42):
Yeah, they're a little bit more flexible too.
'cause like we had that onefire pit and we were able to
anchor it down at an angle.
It was interesting how that was done.
Mike (35:51):
Yes, there's a lot more flexibility with them and how they're
used, but they're drilled into theground and it's based on resistance.
Mm-hmm.
So there's a thing that measureshow many Kips that you get to,
and when you get to a certainlevel, that's an acceptable rate.
And that's where you quitdrilling the pier into the ground.
(36:12):
So that's never known whenyou're starting a project.
So it's hard to say, Hey, you're goingto be able to do this with a 15 foot.
Hele pier.
You might need a 30 foot hele pier.
So why is it not known before you start?
Because you don't know whenyou're gonna get the resistance.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So you to end
Trey (36:32):
the field decision.
Mike (36:33):
It's as you drill when it shows up on the chart.
Yeah.
Okay.
You've got enough resistancenow with this pier.
And what's funny is you'lldrill 14 of 'em, they'll all be
different, at what level you getthe resistance and everything.
So
Trey (36:49):
so how does that work?
You used say, what's atypical size heel pier.
Mike (36:53):
Oh, 15 feet.
Trey (36:54):
Typical.
So,
not
Mike (36:55):
the other thing is there's different tips that you can get on these helical
piers to penetrate even deeper, so youcan get 'em deeper into the ground.
Yeah.
So you can get a betterfoundation situation.
Anyway, these are things that youwant to, again, will be specified
by the engineer, which you haveto do and what the specifications
(37:19):
to it and how it's all gonna work.
But,
Trey (37:22):
One thing we didn't talk about and I was thinking about it when we were talking
about the void boxes and and heel peersa little bit too, because I remember when
we had a luncheon and we're talking about,we've talked about it a bunch of times.
We've been through a bunch of classes forthis, but soil injections, soil injections
can play a role in this as well.
It's another option.
Do you wanna talk about those at all or?
Mike (37:40):
I think we need to have a whole episode on soil injection.
Okay.
But what soil
Trey (37:45):
injection, because there was a little bit of controversy at the luncheon.
It was a bunch of like pool professionalsand they were like debating if you
needed void boxes or if you couldjust use soil injections there.
There's a lot of banter back and forth,
Mike (37:59):
right?
Soil injections, you're notgoing to use soil inject 10
inch potential vertical rise.
And having a, a solution that's gonnawork and your soil injection is going
to reduce the amount of expansionthat you're going to have in a space.
Yeah.
So typically you're gonna see a. A certainpercentage of reduction and you're not
(38:22):
gonna get above a certain percentage.
you know, Like a four inch PVR.
Typically soil injection's notgonna work above that 'cause you're
not gonna be able to reduce itenough for it to be effective.
But what soil injection is, there'sdifferent types of injections.
We'll touch briefly on this.
Trey (38:40):
pretty much you inject the soil with acid.
Mike (38:42):
you're addressed putting a chemical into the soil.
Yeah.
Okay.
And that chemical that goes into thesoil is something that's not going
to affect plants or not going to beharmful or anything like that, but
it's something that's gonna be stablein the soil for a long period of time.
Because there's also another situation,which is done with a lot of the
(39:06):
homes in these bad areas is theydo what's called water injection.
Spider (39:10):
Yeah.
Mike (39:11):
Okay.
So they come in and they inject water,they expand the soil, then they put.
Your black plastic on the ground.
Trey (39:18):
This is typically with foundations,
Mike (39:19):
right?
Trey (39:19):
For homes,
Mike (39:20):
it's typical of foundations of homes.
Yeah.
They put the black plastic on the groundand then they build on top of that.
Yeah.
And what happens is that worksbecause it's so saturated.
It's not going to shrink, and the houseacts as a blanket to insulate it, and
then they just tell you, you gottause your sprinklers all around the
perimeter of the house and keep it moist.
(39:41):
Yeah.
Okay.
Now the, it's very common.
It's a very common situation thatworks until you hit a drought.
Okay.
your city comes in and tells youyou can only water once a week.
Mm. Okay.
And then the soil starts shrinking.
And then the other thing is it'sso hot for such a long period
of time and there's no rain.
The ground all starts shrinking around.
And so what happens is that's whythere's a lot of foundation problems
(40:05):
and this part of the country isbecause then it becomes of issue.
Yeah.
So we can't water injectunder a swimming pool?
No.
It's not gonna work.
No.
Okay.
So they do chemical injection.
So the chemical goes inand expands the soil.
It makes it stable for a better.
Situation to build on.
We'll work out getting somebody on here totalk about soil injection Yeah, for sure.
(40:28):
And explaining what that is.
Trey (40:29):
But can I tell you a couple more piers that I just have listed
here, just 'cause I think it's funny.
I've never seen any of these before.
Okay.
I've heard of this, thedriven steel piles push piers.
Then you have the bell under reamed pi.
Maybe that's what you were talkingabout earlier, the, when you
bell it, and then micro piles.
So micro piles are like small six inchto 12 inch high strength piers, or
(40:52):
high strength drilled or driven piles.
So best for tight areas.
Mike (40:57):
there's a lot of things you can look at.
To stabilize a space.
one thing also is, I don't havefill dirt, I don't have bad soil.
So we got a projectthat we're fixing to do.
Yeah.
And we still have piers underneath it.
why would we do pi?
Trey (41:13):
It's probably what we should have started with.
Okay.
This is actually a very big topic.
It's because you don't wantthe pool to move at all.
If it moves at all, itcould affect something.
That's honestly the wholereason you build a pool.
Mike (41:24):
So one of the most popular features on pools today is a bashing edge, 100%
or a negative edge, or an infinity edge,whatever definition you want to call it.
The whole premise of it iswater is perfectly level.
Trey (41:38):
Yeah.
Mike (41:39):
Okay.
Trey (41:39):
It's a pinnacle aesthetic of luxury outdoor living.
Mike (41:42):
Yes.
Very well said.
That pool moves a quarter of an inch.
Well, You have half a spillway now youhave water running all out of this corner.
Yep.
And this corner over here is dry.
Trey (41:53):
And it's white.
It's got what is it?
Florid, destined orwhatever the white patina.
So
Mike (41:59):
what people's compensation for a lot of times with that is more water.
Yeah.
but it's fairly trickling over thiscorner here, and it's pouring over
like Niagara Falls on this side
Trey (42:10):
can work as a solution if it's such a small minute measurement.
It's water doesn't lie.
And so you have to have it level.
Mike (42:19):
only will cover a certain percentage.
So if you're buildinga vanishing edge pool.
The cheapest insurance youcan have to keeping your pool
level is to put peers in.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now I have a structure that we'reattaching the pool to, and so I need this
pool to stay level for the next how long?
(42:41):
10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
What's an acceptable rate, butit's certainly with soil, not pi.
At all, even if you've got the greatestsoil, I'm in Westlake and I'm in great
Sandy soil, I can of course build apool with piers and without piers.
And, my vanishing edge still works.
(43:01):
It's probably not a, an ideal situation.
So the only
Trey (43:04):
time I can think that maybe it would be fine is if you're on rock.
Mike (43:08):
Yeah.
So I'm, digging a pool.
Like I've got a pool that we'refixing the cell and this one's gonna
be tricky and the fact that partof the pool will be in solid rock,
Trey (43:18):
but the tanning ledge and the spa and stuff like that's not
as a deep, the depth isn't as big.
Mike (43:24):
It's not gonna be No.
And so we're probably goingto have to peer this pool.
Yeah.
Even though a lot of it's in solidrock because some of it's not.
And like the spa will be actually sittingbecause of the hillside and the slope and
where they want, the spa is gonna probablybe about five feet above original grade.
so there are reasons that you would do it.
(43:46):
And it's the cheapest formof insurance to stabilize.
The whole thing is to put peers into it.
Now there's
Trey (43:52):
actually one that's more common.
It's the same concept, negative edge spa.
It's done a lot and it's done fromjobs that are a million, $2 million
to $200,000 or whatever it is.
It all range depending on, areaand stuff like that and time.
But still, negative spa is a lotcheaper than a negative pool.
(44:13):
But it's the same concept.
You can't have it not be level.
And if you do.
It's gonna look terrible in my opinion.
Mike (44:19):
And so what some people do with that is they'll tear all the tile off
and re-level it, and then it moves again.
And then it moves again.
And then
Trey (44:27):
do it again.
Mike (44:28):
Do it again.
And again, the issue is are wedealing with a settlement issue?
Yeah.
Or we do with soil expansionand contraction issues.
So that can be an ongoing,horrible situation.
So by all means, peers are abetter situation for that solution.
those are some of the reasonsthat we would use a peer.
(44:50):
We would use a void box.
Oh, didn't talk about a grade beam.
No.
So a grade beam, typicallywhen you build a house.
You're gonna put piers in the groundand then you're gonna connect all
these piers with a concrete footing.
Those are grade beams toconnect the whole thing.
And so that enables the stabilitythat you're gonna, the framework that
(45:13):
you can build something on top of.
Again, that's something that theengineer's gonna specify how big these
are, how deep these are, how muchsteel's in them, how it's actually done.
But that's part of the overallprocess to make everything work.
So if you've got, and there'sdifferent degrees that you're
going to need all these things thatthe engineer is going to specify.
(45:39):
On what's gonna be best.
Trey (45:40):
Yeah.
'cause like a pool, true crime, I'mthinking in my head, 'cause there's a
lot more outdoor kitchens probably thanpools and backyards just 'cause the price.
But still if you just try to put,some columns on your patio and
add a roof to it, you can gettwisting and then it can fall apart.
And Have you seen that happenbefore or heard of it happen before?
(46:01):
Oh yeah.
Mike (46:01):
So you're talking about building a cabana
Trey (46:04):
with no grade beams pretty much with no grade beams or they're too small.
Mike (46:07):
And so what happens is the builder will come in and they'll put a footing
on each corner post, and those fourfootings are independent of each other.
Spider (46:18):
Oh
Mike (46:18):
boy.
And so what can happen over aperiod of time is they can move.
Now, when you have a solid roofthat's above, over a period of
time, what it's gonna do is tear.
Roof apart.
some people are like I'm gonnause bigger footings on the
corners, so it's not gonna move.
And they still can move.
So what a lot of people do is theychoose to use grade beams in between all
(46:39):
those, it stabilize it, it can't move.
So anytime that we're doing astructure, especially ones that attach
to a existing house, very important.
It's very important because we don't wantthings twisting and moving and tearing
the new structure off the old structure.
Yeah, I mean that's a mess.
But again, we're gonnadeal with an engineer.
(47:00):
The engineer's gonna specify that whathas to be done for that situation.
So one last have ideal.
Trey (47:07):
One last thing that we didn't really touch on is piers underneath walls.
Mike (47:11):
again, if you have a wall that's not an original grade,
there's two things to do.
You dig the wall down, so thefooting is an original grade, and
then build the whole thing up.
I've done this a number of times with likeslides where we've done a masonry slide.
Yeah.
And the slide footing is down four feetinto the ground and I'm building up four
(47:32):
feet a block to get it just to grade.
And then we do the masonry on top of that.
That's a solution thatwe've commonly done.
But you could then come in also anddo piers underneath that structure.
And so a lot of times people willhave piers underneath walls as well to
stabilize walls 'cause they're gonnaonly put a wall in that's four feet tall.
(47:54):
But to get down to good soil, itmight need to be 10 feet tall.
Okay it's cheaper to come in and do a peersystem underneath the retaining walls.
We've got another project that's coming upright now that we're doing that as well.
if it's stable, it doesn't move.
Things hold together for a long time.
Trey (48:13):
Yeah I think at the end of the day, a lot of people are paying
a lot of money to have an awesome,luxurious, whatever it might be, just
a peaceful, relaxing backyard, andthey're investing a lot of money into it.
A lot of people want, they'regoing down the route of no
maintenance or less maintenance.
Obviously no maintenance itdoesn't exist, but as least
maintenance as possible.
And if you're spending so much moneyon something like this, your dream, and
(48:37):
if it's not built right, the structuretypically is the first thing to show
signs of stress and you don't want that.
Mike (48:45):
You could build everything perfectly Beautiful.
Yeah.
And in the, foundation thatit's not setting on falls apart.
It's even biblical, you buildon sand, you have problems.
If you build on rock, you gotta,house that stands up a wise man.
Yeah.
So encourage you guys to ask questionsof the people that are going to be
(49:05):
working on your project, so you understandthat they're going to give you a stable
situation to build your dreams on.
Trey (49:12):
Yeah.
And one of the most disappointingthings is probably, Hey, I'm looking
at this 3D and it looks amazing.
But then when you lookat the contract, wow.
Majority of the money that I'm spending isunder the ground and I don't even see it.
But that's just the reality of it.
Repair work is a
Mike (49:28):
lot more expensive.
Yeah.
Trey (49:30):
Especially when you have to overhaul the whole thing and then redo it.
Mike (49:33):
But we do some of those, we do, we wall 'em up and start over.
We
Trey (49:37):
benefit
Mike (49:37):
from other
Trey (49:38):
people's mistakes sometimes.
Yeah.
So
Mike (49:40):
hopefully you won't have those.
Nope.
And if you're in Dallas-Fort Worth and youwanna do some fun stuff, give us a call.
Want
Trey (49:47):
it done the right way.
Mike (49:48):
Yeah.
And we'll look forwardto talking to y'all soon.
If you got questions let usknow in the comments below
Trey (49:55):
and make sure you talk to an engineer.
Mike (49:56):
Yes.
'cause we are not engineer.
We are not.
I guess.
One last thing.
Okay.
Okay.
Who the engineer is.
Trey (50:03):
Ooh, that is actually a big deal.
Mike (50:04):
Who the engineer is important to understand that they've dealt
with structures like this because astructure that's a parking garage versus
a pool is a totally different thing.
So there are loads that go withswimming pools that are different.
So there are people literallythat specialize in swimming pools
that builders that are buildingquality work are sending, people
(50:26):
all over the nation to certainparticular pool structural engineers.
So make sure that the person you'reworking with on their team is not, oh,
he got his engineering degree last year.
And he's going to be figuringthis complex situation out.
That's not a wise situation.
You want something that's usuallythe engineers that are old
(50:47):
and gray have a lot of wisdom.
Although we've had some engineerson the show that aren't old and
gray, and they're very good as well.
Yes.
So anyway, y'all take care.
Have a good one.
Outro (50:59):
This show is all about helping you become a better buyer, a better pool
owner, and hopefully you're gonna findsome insights into how to enjoy your pool
even more so how to help your friends,your family, anybody looking to buy a
pool in the future or that want to remodeltheir backyard, add an outdoor fireplace,
fire pit, add an outdoor kitchen area, addsome shade cells, or whatever else it is.
(51:23):
We wanna be that resource for you, andthat's the end goal here, and we promise.
That there's gonna bea ton of information.
We'll try to go through it, youknow, as relatively quickly, but
also slow so people can understand.
But the intent of the show, thereason Mike and I are doing this
is because we just got a lot inour heads and we wanna share it.
So we hope to see youhere every single week.
Thanks for listening.
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