Any apocalyptic way to kill nutgrass?

[Kyle_in_Tex]

I'm glad y'all are OK. sorry about your garden and stuff getting torn up. Especially the garden.

 

[s219]

Thanks for the compliments on the pool and the garden! I was feeling pretty good about them too. **** this meteorology "science!" If the weather advisory had said anything at all about gale force winds or half-ashed wanna-be tornadoes, I would have waited to install the pool. The garden and pool are both damaged now. Not ready to call either of them "ruined" until damage has been fully assessed, but we just had winds come through here that I estimate were no less than 40-50mph. I couldn't stand up in them. Had to abandon my pool rescue effort and hunch-walk/crawl back to the safety of the house and just watch through the window as mother earth had her way with my investments. I don't know if it was a tornado or not. Winds lasted about 10 minutes. I thought it was just straight-line winds but lots of neighbors are saying they saw a tornado. I didn't, and I was outside in it. But to be fair I couldn't see much more than the spray of a fire hydrant in my face and I was panicking as the wind was forcing the breath right out of my lungs. I wasn't gazing up at the sky. Many around me lost large trees but I didn't. We got 4" of rain in about 30 minutes. Everything in the garden over 6" tall is now listing somewhere between 45 and 90 degrees to starboard. The steel wall of the pool was lifted up out of the track, bent at unnatural angles, and dunked into the water in the middle. I am optimistic about salvaging it, if I can just get it back into the track now that sand has been laid inside.

I've been through a couple weather related defeats on projects, and maybe it's a mental thing, but I felt a lot better after I admitted defeat and accepted it was going to take time and/or money to fix it. That of course came after hours of ranting and raving. Sometimes stuff like this can break your heart, and it's even worse if you had been clever with time/money to make the project happen in the first place. Weather/nature doesn't offer any respect sometimes.

Maybe a combination of gentle rinse and a powerful wet shop vac can help you clear sand out of the track. That would probably be my approach, and start with the vac first to see how much it can do.

 

[strantor]

I'm glad y'all are OK. sorry about your garden and stuff getting torn up. Especially the garden.

Thank you. I see you're in Giddings; small world. I'll be in Giddings at the end of this month to help a friend with some cows.

 

[strantor]

I've been through a couple weather related defeats on projects, and maybe it's a mental thing, but I felt a lot better after I admitted defeat and accepted it was going to take time and/or money to fix it. That of course came after hours of ranting and raving. Sometimes stuff like this can break your heart, and it's even worse if you had been clever with time/money to make the project happen in the first place. Weather/nature doesn't offer any respect sometimes.

Maybe a combination of gentle rinse and a powerful wet shop vac can help you clear sand out of the track. That would probably be my approach, and start with the vac first to see how much it can do.

Thank you for the encouragement. I was able to salvage the pool. There are no wrinkles in the liner bottom; I made sure of that as it was filling with rain water the other day. All the wrinkles are in the steel wall, painfully conspicuous and all along the side most visible from the direction everyone will be looking at it. The pool will wear these battle scars with pride.

When I referred to sand having been laid, I wasn't even considering sand being in the groove of the track to be much of a problem. It was, I painstakingly dug it out with a nail. I was thinking of the 4+ inches sand, with the new weight of water on top of it and no wall to contain it, pushing the track outward and creating a circle larger than the circle of the pool wall. And the difficulty of shrinking the track circle back into spec with sand behind it and water on top of the sand. That also proved to be a real problem. The track moved outward along 1/4 of the circumference of the circle, by 2" at the worst part. I was afraid it would be impossible to fix. I envisioned a scenario where everything I try to do just causes a disturbance which forces more sand down and outward, pushing the track even farther from the intended position.

But it wasn't impossible, just difficult. Tools were thrown, curses were uttered, children and yard birds were frightened. I gave up more than once but kept coming back. One little bit at a time, I excavated dirt and sand by fingers, and gingerly shoved the track back under the steel wall. Pulling the wall back down into the track was difficult as well, as it wanted to buckle everywhere there was a wrinkle.

Eventually got it all back together. And then picked up where I left off with the assembly. Now with the uprights and top rails installed, and another 12" of water in it, I'm hopeful that it's "safe" now and can't be further molested by wind.

The garden seems to be recovering better than expected as well. Several of the plants are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, starting to point skyward again. Others are adapting to the supine position. Some are obviously done though.

 

[AWSubie]

Can’t wait to see the deck!

 

[MossRoad]

Looking better! :thumbsup:

Did you put blocks under each vertical?

 

[strantor]

Can’t wait to see the deck!

How did you know? Haha.
I wanted the deck on the side facing the house. My wife wanted it on the far side. Now that this damage is so obvious from the house I think she will agree with me. The deck would hide it.

Looking better! :thumbsup:

Did you put blocks under each vertical?

No. I watched some videos on pool installation while shopping for pools. Some showed using blocks, others didn't. One websites I read, said that putting blocks under the uprights is a common cause of liners getting ripped. I downloaded the pool assembly instructions while waiting on pool deliver and it said to use blocks, so I had the blocks waiting when the pool arrived. The instructions in the box were different than what I had downloaded. They made no mention of blocks. So I didn't use the blocks I had bought. Until I had to excavate the supporting dirt under a section of track to get it pushed back where it was supposed to go after the high winds. I didn't think shoving mud under the track would be sufficient, so I shoved blocks under that section of track. But none under the uprights.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

glad you got it fixed.

Glad your garden is coming back.

 

[radios1]

if I had seen your post earlier, I would have suggested using a shop vac to get the sand out of the tracks.. I use a shop vac to get dirt away from roots I want to cut, and also it works wonders getting crushed concrete out of the way, you certainly can't put a shovel in that, but the shop vac does the trick.. I'm glad you got everything fixed, but you know Texas can get some really nasty storms..

 

[AWSubie]

”How did you know? Haha.
I wanted the deck on the side facing the house. My wife wanted it on the far side. Now that this damage is so obvious from the house I think she will agree with me. The deck would hide it.”

I know because after one season of climbing up and over a ladder my wife made an “executive decision “ that “we” needed a deck.