TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2005 On Tuesday, our Project Manager arrived with two rail bases to be imbedded into the deck for our rails at the shallow end of the pool and the whirlpool. I had called to ask about them and found out that our salesman had left them off the contract. We had to pay $405, but I insisted that he get them over here so as not to hold up the deck construction. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2005 The concrete contractor, Yanus Concrete our of Doylestown, arrives with a crew of five men at 6:45AM to pour the deck around the pool. I showed Alesio Yanus, how I wanted the deck layed out and he marked it with spray paint and measure the square footage. It was within 5 sq.ft. of the contract. Not bad. He said he wouldn't charge me anything extra. Nice guy. He leveled out the dirt around the pool with a Bobcat and his men started to build a form for the deck and tape plastic over the coping to protect it when they spread the concrete. They also put a strip of foam on the edge of the coping to act as an expansion joint. Alesio told me it would have to be replaced with caulk in about a year or two. He also fixed the broken plastic on the return, which was really great. They must have put about 5 tons of stone down as a base and tamped it down with this gas power tamper, about the size of a small lawn mover. Then they dumped the concrete from wheelbarrows and spread into the form. After that it took about 1.5 hours to smooth the surface, install plastic joints at intervals, brush the surface of the concrete and run curved trowels on all the edges between the coping and the deck. They were done by 2PM and cleaned up the site and were gone. A great job. They really were meticulous. NEXT