Our Stock Tank Pool Transformation
If you’ve followed us on Instagram, you’ve probably been confused about what stock tank pool is actually ours. The truth is, so many of them are! Actually, we’ve had the same stock tank for 4+ years now, but it’s gone through some changes over the years. Today we are showing you all the phases of our pool!
Before we had a stock tank pool, we had just moved into our current house and Casey had been wanting a stock tank pool for a while. She had seen a couple people who filled stock tanks will water to swim in and she liked the way they looked. She had to convince me (Savannah) that they were cool. I thought it was just a metal tank and why not just get a big above ground pool? Over time I came to realize that they are actually the perfect situation! So we decided we had to have one.
We first had our stock tank pool set up by our landscaper in May of 2016. We were clueless about how to make the stock tank a pool. Most people we had seen using these as pools didn’t have a filter pump. We really wanted ours to have moving water and wanted to put chlorine in it to keep it clean, keep mosquitoes away, and keep the maintenance down. We couldn’t find ANY info out there! Our landscaper said he could figure something out so we hired the project out.
We had pavers and gravel laid as the space previously was broken up asphalt. We spent the summer enjoying the fact that we had a place to float and cool off in. Unfortunately, we started to realize that there was gritty debris falling to the bottom of the pool, and it was not ideal. Every time you stepped in, your foot would land on a pile of dirt, essentially. We decided that we needed to change something but weren’t worried about doing it that summer.
One of our favorite DIYs was painting our chairs white and gold- we really hated the black and tan. We get asked about the chairs ALL the time. Want to see how we did it? Click the link below.
The first year I also made a pool cover out of wood, but never made a tutorial about it, smh! It was heavy and we actually didn’t use it that much so we ended up giving it to our friends.
In 2017 we knew we were going to change some things up. We wanted a real pool pump and we wanted to figure it out on our own. We searched the internet high and low and there was not any info on how to install an above ground pool pump on a stock tank. Back then you couldn’t even find many stock tank pools period! Oh how the times have changed. We pieced together information, ordered a pump off Amazon, and got to work.
In this time, our concrete slab was laid and our gravel was no more! It was way too uncomfortable to walk on and we didn’t care for the look too much. So concrete it was! Much smoother and less fussy.
After we figured out the problems and ironed out some kinks, we got our stock tank pool up and running! We had been blogging over on Hey Wanderer for 5.5 years, so we knew how important it was to get this information out to the public. We knew that if we were looking for this info, other people were too. And if they weren’t already, they would eventually. So we recorded the whole process and brought the very first DIY Stock Tank Pool Video Tutorial to the internet! Click below to see that video!
In our first year of stock tank pooling, we knew we needed a way to sit on the edge of the pool and put our feet in the water. We wanted more space for friends right at the pool. We came up with this bench idea and it was a great solution for everything we wanted! It took me a while to figure it out and it wasn’t perfect (our pool is not an exact circle, unfortunately) but we loved it. We could fit 8-10 people sitting on the bench + people could sit in the pool. Check out how we made it below.
As you can see, the bottom of our tank on the inside was starting to wear down.
In the summer of 2018 we painted our concrete and whitewashed our bench. If you look closely at the bottom of our stock tank, it’s starting to rust and it’s worn down in places.
We decided we needed to paint the inside to protect it from rusting more. We did a lot of research and chose the best painting situation we could find. If you have questions about painting the inside of your pool, definitely check out our most recent update about it first!
In the Spring of 2020, we decided we wanted to change it up a bit. We wanted the tank to fit better in the space and I had been wanting to expose one side of the stock tank pool, so we took the bench apart and sold it. I then proceeded to build a deck around the back side that connects to our deck. The deck is supposed to hair stairs in the front on either side of the pool, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Whenever I finally get the DIY up about this project I will definitely post about it!
Next we decided on painting the outside of the pool! We had a naked tank for 4.5 seasons before we finally decided to take the plunge in painting the outside. Our stock tank had become very dull and grungy, which isn’t really the vibe we were going for. We were asked to work with PlastiDip on our blog and thought it would be the perfect thing to spruce up the outside of our pool. Check out the whole process below!
In the summer of 2021 we upgraded our tank to a brand new 10 ft. stock tank. We had been wanting one for a while and since we were selling them and had large stock, we decided to finally upgrade. You may be wondering what happened to the original old one… well we still have it to this day! We have plans to re-finish the older stock tank and turn it into something useful or beautiful like a garden bed or pond. TBD.
But back to our new 10 ft. We had to re-arrange the deck a little bit to fit in a 10 ft. instead of an 8 ft. which took a good amount of finagling. But we did it!
Then we built some stairs and painted our stock tank pool a coral color. We also designed some custom daisy stickers to make a pattern on the outside of the stock tank. We think this turned out amazing which is good since we spent a couple months planning and designing to make it happen.
In 2022 we sold this 10 ft. stock tank and deck and moved to raw land. We spent a good amount of time in the summer restoring an old rusty stock tank. Now it is 2023 and we are making plans to upgrade this stock tank pool, paint it, and build a deck around it.
If you take anything away from this, I hope you realize that something that looks like our 2021 stock tank pool area takes time and money. We loved that space so much and were very proud of what we were able to build, but it didn’t happen in one season. We can’t wait for our new space to be as fun an beautiful as our old one.
We hope you enjoyed seeing the entire process our stock tank pool has been through over the years. Even with the rusting problem, I think this tank will be in service for many years to come! We will continue to upgrade where needed and take care of the tank to get the most use out of it. And we have loved our stock tank pool at all stages!
If you liked this tour and would like to see more like it, please share any of the photos from this post on Pinterest! The more popular the tours become, the more tours we will bring to you!
Want to be featured on one of our stock tank pool tours? Go fill out this form and we will get back to you if we think you’d be a good fit!
