Pool Build Post Mortem
We are scheduled for Pool School / Handover / Final payment this afternoon. So I thought I would post a final review of the build process, what we learned in the process, what we would do different if we did it over again and final recommendation on our PB.
The Build Dates (some of these I'm going off of pictures so +/- 1 day)
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Sept 5th - Dig
Sept 8th - Plumbing Stub
Sept 9th - Rebar
Sept 10th - Gunite
Sept 22nd - Coping / Stone work completed.
Sept 23rd - Plumbing / Equipment setup completed.
Sept 24th - Electrical
Oct 12th - Deck formed
Oct 22nd - Deck poured
Nov 4th - Pebble Tec
Nov 5th - Acid wash / begin fill
Nov 7th - Fill Complete
Nov 24th - Auto fill leak repaired / Deck repaired.
Dec 26th - First actual swim!
As you can see we went gangbusters from dig to electrical - 20 days. Then got held up at the decking stage. From there it just dragged on.
What went well / right
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1. Well, everything up to electrical. We had no complaints. The stone guys had to replace one piece of flagstone on the spa, but otherwise everything went smoothly.
2. All of the equipment pretty much works. I think they found a bad board or something on the PV3 and replaced that immediately. Otherwise, all of the equipment just works.
3. So I'd give these sub crews thumbs up - excavation, rebar, gunite, stone, electrical.
What didn't go well / right
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1. The auto-fill system had a leak. This was not found until AFTER the deck had been poured. The reason we were given was that you can not pressure test the auto-fill line. Um. OK.
2. The deck repair (related to above) was not done to match the rest of the deck. There were 2 mostly symmetrical sections of the deck. When the one section was busted up to repair the auto-fill line, they only replaced half of that section. So the symmetry was removed. Very few people will notice, but we do.
3. The center spa fountain pipe has a noticeable lean to it. See pic at the end of this post. Apparently, when the gunite was shot, no one cared to position the fitting properly. We're considering just removing it and let the water just bubble up. It's not that great anyway.
4. The final cleanup and grading of the yard was nearly for naught as we could not lay sod until the deck crew had repaired the auto-fill leak and replaced the section of deck. This meant rain would push the top soil off into the street and into other parts of the yard. As you can see from the timeline, this was several days.
5. The back wash pipe was not well placed. It was basically placed in the yard outside of the area that was landscaped. Easily visible from the street. We had to remap that piece of landscaping and paint the pipes so they would blend more easily.
6. The spa jets are not symmetrical. Some are closer to one another than others. And we're talking 3 or 4 inches or so. there's one that right on the border where the coping stops and the spill over starts. One of the nice things about the spillover is you can rest your head on it and get the jet to hit your mid to upper back. Well, because this jet was placed right where the coping and spillover meet, that's not possible.
7. The Pebble Sheen install turned out very splotchy. The company sent a rep out early in December to review and he immediately suggested a drain / acid-wash / refill. Didn't even want to try either an acid bath or localized in-water treatment. So far, we have not seen progress on this.
8. So I'd give these sub crews less than satisfactory reviews - decking, plumbing and PebbleTec.
What we learned and would do different
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1. Trust. I'm quite trusting and in this case it had the negative impacts listed above. Basically, I trusted this PB with a great reputation to do his job and do it well. He did his job, but not well, in my opinion. I'd be surprised if he wanted to use this as a reference build.
If we were to do this over again, I'd have to take a more active role. Unfortunately, since we rarely got any notice of when contractors were coming, this would have been very difficult and/or contentious (e.g., having to turn away contractors until I could be home).
2. The other thing I would do different is either a sport pool or a 5 foot deep end. The 6 foot deep end is OK for cannonballs, though. Also, I would add more benches. I think we got placement of shallow end, deep end, entrance and spa right, though.
Conclusion
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Our build suffered from 3 diseases:
1. Lack of attention. The PB just wasn't around to check things like the auto-fill leak or that the deck crew had the updated layout (they didn't - we made a minor change just before the deck was to be formed) or that the Pebble Sheen was installed satisfactorily.
2. Lack of attention to detail. Nothing in the list above prevents us from enjoying our pool, but for the money that was paid and the expectation given, it does not match up. Too many little things that just say - we just want to get this done and we don't really care how it looks beyond it works.
3. Lack of communication. Our PB would answer questions and talk your ear off - if he was around or you called him. We couldn't get dates (particularly as it pertained to the deck work or the PT work) and that was the most frustrating part. We were just in the dark for the later 2/3 of the build.
If we had to do this over again, we would not go with this builder.
We had it down to our final 2 choices (who we narrowed down based on reputation, experience and features) and we chose this builder based on 2 criteria - a) we preferred his design over the competitor's and b) we dealt directly with the owner. It turned out in our case that we had no one higher to appeal to when things got off track so we were at his mercy.
So, I'm less that thrilled with our nearly 4 month experience, but the pool is done and we are looking forward to forgetting this and enjoying the pool next summer.
