so the old home had a large pool in the backyard and the dogs would love to get
inside go for a swim and cool off however the new home does not have a
pool so this week I want to make them a small shallow dog wading pool area just
something simple for them to get inside and cool off during heat of summer it
just so happened that my father-in-law was in town so him and Cody were very
kind enough to go gather all of my building materials for me and I stayed
behind and collected rocks and if there is one thing I'm not short on at the new
place it is rocks that entire wall you see
there was actually built from rocks just gathered around the property from the
previous owner and I decided to build this pool inside
of this rock wall just to keep it as organic and natural looking as possible
and the first thing I needed to do was build up a form or a wall so that I
could pour a concrete floor I did this by cutting a few strips of masonite
board and then holding it up using some stakes driven into the ground without
set next I started mixing concrete and at this point I have learned my lesson
with mixing concrete it is well worth the money to just go ahead and rent the
mixer I purchased the three bag mixer so that I could dump in three bags of
concrete per load and I don't have a lot of area to maneuver this mixer around so
I would always just pour it in at one location then use a rake in order to
push the concrete around and spread it evenly in this location is actually on a
slight slope so the front of it where that masonite board is is going to be
the deeper end and in the back is going to be the shallow end after getting
around an inch of concrete spread I then inserted some rebar import in another
inch on top of it at this point using the back of the rake so that the prongs
wouldn't uproot that rebar and it was a little sketchy breaking that concrete
along the back wall oh boy I'm a billy goat
and that was that after letting a dry overnight
I removed these stakes as well as those masonite boards and now had the
foundation to my dog wading pool so next I moved on to mixing up the
mortar another reason I chose this location for the pool is so I wouldn't
have to dig into the ground since on on nothing but raw but instead just build
up the front and the walls to do that I'm going to be using all the rocks that
I found around the property and stacking them on top of one another using the
mortar as a way to glue them together essentially I started with the very back
of the pool what I would do is apply a good amount of mortar to the location
where I wanted to place the rock then I would also apply mortar to the back of
the rock I would want to stick into place at first I was a little reserved
with the mortar but then very quickly figured out I needed to apply enough so
that it would actually move out along the sides of it and this will help later
on whenever I go to waterproof it because if this thing doesn't hold water
then of course it's no good to me after I would squish the rock into place and
the mortar would ooze out I would then use my trowel to either scrape away the
excess or use the back of the trail to smooth it out and make it look nice and
neat I would also do my best to keep the face of rock as mortar free as possible
after getting the entire back of the pool completed I then moved on to
building up the front wall since this requires a lot more mortar I used a
shovel to apply the bulk of the mortar then use my trowel to apply to the back
of the rock out setting in place and for this first row of rock I tried to pick
the larger flat rocks that I could find
whenever I got to the very far end I then inserted a drain because this is
going to be the lowest point of the pool the drain is simple is just a piece of
PVC pipe with a ball valve attachment on the end I'm ordered it in place and then
started in on the second row of rocks then I repeated this process until I
built up I believe four layers total for this wall and keep in mind even though
I'm using this as a dog bowl the same exact process if you're looking to build
a koi fish pond or even a turtle pond now for the front I for one wanted to
cover up the concrete lip which I guess I could have done by just moving dirt up
to it but I needed to build some steps anyways
I went ahead and lined the entire front with raw while also building as he steps
yep some of those rocks was dead heavy I certainly got a workout in during this
project with all of the rocks in place I then took my leaf blower to blot all
of the dust that had accumulated inside of the pool and I also used my small
sawzall to cut that drain pipe as close to the rock as possible already the last
step is to make this thing waterproof and to do that I'm using a product
called dry lock made by UGL and this is a product made especially for
waterproofing masonry so this actually comes in white but you can have the Home
Center tinted and so I said let's go with a brown sandy color and it came out
a little yellow so the dogs are going to have a yellow pool UGL actually has tent
formulas available online so that the store can match the specific color so if
you do this be sure to pick out your color before actually going to the store
and the way this stuff works is the latex paint penetrates the pores of the
masonry and creates a waterproof barrier all in all I apply three codes using a
brush however you can also use a roller and yes I did double check with the
company to make sure this wasn't going to be harmful to my pup if they did
drink the water all in all it was very happy with just how easy this was to
apply and just how well it worked big thank you to you Gio for supporting
my channel if you'd like to check them out there is a link down in the
description maybe doesn't look so yellow or maybe it just looks yellow
hey Bubba alright so now I'm just going to fill it
up and introduce the dogs through their new pool I really think that they're
going to get a lot of use out of this once I understand what it is but I have
a drain so I can drain it whenever the water needs changing and I plan to use
those tablets that are non-toxic the to prevent mosquito eggs from hatching in
the water so that's it for this one I hope that you enjoyed it and I will see
you next time