LD, maybe I should send my PB down to you. He is a basic PB but the price is right and I added the rest after his pool build

I don't know about salt and a slide, but you should check with your homeowner's insurance company. A fellow at work told his agent he had a slide - they gave him 30 days to remove or have his policy revoked - and this is a highly regarded company. YMMV

I have a salt water pool with a slide. No problems here.

I for one don't see how you can build that pool for 20-30k. In our area, the basic gunite pebbletec pool started higher than that.

As for quote 2, he should be able to estimate the amount of retaining walls he will need to build the pool. I would not leave that up in the air after the contract is signed. Our PB did say we would need fill dirt at $50 a truck and that was left in the air, but he ended up bringing in about 18 truckloads and never charged me for them.

Thanks - I will check with our insurer on the slide. Going after a 4th bid - I still think they all need to sharpen their pencils or kick in a nice feature. I expect a good value in this economy.

The 3rd bidder said he uses all 2" plumbing - Am I supposed to be excited about this? What is the significance of that?

Signficance:
The larger the plumbing pipe diameter (up to some point) the less friction there is between the water moving and the walls of the piping. In plumbing terms it's known as "head". All other things equal, more head (friction) means your filter pump uses more electricity use to move the same amount of water (wasted energy). I have no idea how to calculate the payback period of going for bigger pipe vice energy savings, wear on pump motor, etc.