May 2009 - Tennis court

Well I am about 2/3 finished with resurfacing my tennis court. It has been four years since I originally built it and typically it should last 6 or 7 years between resurfacing but I had a problem with my underlying asphalt layer. It turns out the asphalt my contractor used had a high iron content. As moisture went down thru the acrylic top coat it reacted with the iron to form iron oxide and expand. The expansion pops off the acrylic top coat. I wrote to the coating supplier about my problem and he indicated that the only true fix was to remove the top inch of asphalt and replace it with low iron content asphalt. Well that would have cost about 10K. I noticed that the problem was worst on the green area of the court (the inbounds area) then less on the red areas and no problem at all on the while lined area. The coating expert explained this was due to lower surface temps for the white area. I then noticed that areas of the court that have shade parts of the day also were unaffected.

My solution was to resurface the inbounds area with a light sand stone color which will drop the surface temperatures. I left the red outbounds area red. Prior to resurfacing I hired 8 teenagers to work for about 6 hours patching all the small holes with using a filling compound and putty knives then smoothing the patches down after they had partially set.

I also took the opportunity to level out some of the low "bird bath" areas of the court that tend to retain puddled water after a rain.

I have now put on 2 coats of the in bounds sand stone coating and 2 coats of the red out bounds area and could paint the lines on this weekend but I have enough extra red acrylic coating material left to do a third coat (about $300 of material) and so I might as well do a third coat.

I am hoping that all the iron that was going to react has already reacted along with the cooler color of the inbounds area to keep the court in good shape for at least 6 years.

While I did have a problem with the asphalt at least my foundation is good and my court has no cracks whatsoever. Once you get a crack in your court you can never really fix it. You just need to patch it every couple of years. Cracks always come back.

Anyway I hope to get the third outbound coating done on Monday morning, repaint my net posts back a nice glossy green and put the lines on Monday afternoon.

I will put some photos up on my other blog "Thoughts on a rainy day" when I get the whole thing finished.

May 2009 - Cuenca Ecuador

Cuenca, Ecuador! That is a place we might wind up moving to when I retire in 2010 - 2011 time frame. Over the past month I have been following several blogs of US and Canadian expats who have moved to Ecuador. Some move to the beach and some move to the mountains and some maintain residences at both locations (which seems like a great idea to me). The cost of living is low (it appears you can rent a great place for < $700 per month or buy a place for about 100K). The climate is great (cool mountains or warmer beaches). The culture is interesting (indigenous people and decedents of European colonists). The food is great and varied (Cuenca is the 3rd largest city in Ecuador and has nearly any type of food you would desire). Beach areas are obviously much less developed but the native fare sounds fine. Medical costs are very reasonable. Basically not much to dislike and much to enjoy all at about 1/4 the cost of living in the USA. Why wait until your 65 to retire? We would make a trip down and spend about 4 weeks about a year from now then decide if it is really the place for us. Likely we would buy a place in Cuenca and rent a place on the beach when we wanted to enjoy the ocean.