Houston, TX Pool Build Diary - From Design to Dive-In
- Thread starter platipus
- Start date
We received official notice on permit rejection (as expected) from the City of Houston Stormwater department. Now we need to get a detention plan engineered. We had to go through this when we did the patio a few years ago and I swear we only paid about $600 for the plan at that time. Our pool builder has a firm they refer out to but their engineering charge (no builder markup, this is just a direct bill to the firm) runs about $3000 on average!!!!!! Great googely moogely Batman!
Needless to say, I have a call into the firm that did our first stormwater design to get a price.
Anyone else in Houston have a recommendation (with their cost range) for this from another firm?
Thanks!!
plat
Needless to say, I have a call into the firm that did our first stormwater design to get a price.
Anyone else in Houston have a recommendation (with their cost range) for this from another firm?
Thanks!!
plat
I believe it needs to be a Civil Engineer, but not sure if there is some sub-specialty.
plat.
Any CE can do that. If you dig long enough your bound to find someone experienced that does a lot of small stuff regularly and doesn't charge an eyeball. Keep in mind any TX PE will be able to do that for you, so CEs from the outskirts of Houston will be familiar with Houston protocols and searching there wouldn't be a bad idea either. I don't see a complete site plan from your posted drawings so I don't know how much engineering it would take to judge the pricing fair or not. However, designing a detention area is usually pretty simple and fast. It really boils down to city requirements and what they want to see. If after calling 6 or 7 of these guys you are still around that price, its due to red tape. :-/
Good Luck!
Good Luck!
I paid $2,000 with Texas Permits. Although after going through the process I found out my neighbor did it herself. She said it was not too difficult and if you have a survey that is all you need with the number for retention the City will provide which will likely be .20. I think she said she had to go to the office once or twice and spend time on the phone with them but otherwise it just took her time. May want to consider that route.
Well, some minor good news. I contacted the CE that did the stormwater plan for our patio build. He said he'd knock this out for $850. At that cost, I am not going to complain. If I had to go deal with the planning office myself, y'all would probably be reading about me on the news that night... LOL.
So now we wait some more. Yay. :-|
plat.
So now we wait some more. Yay. :-|
plat.
Honestly, its hard for me to imagine Texas having more stringent stormwater laws than Maryland, but its looking like this is the case! Wow, and... congrats?? Over 5000 sf of disturbance is the rule here, even in our most protected areas.
We received the completed PE drawings on Monday and our builder picked them up yesterday.
Everything seems to be 2 weeks with this city Stormwater office. Our builder said they will either accept it and let us know in two weeks or ask for a revision then at which point the PE makes the adjustment and we resubmit and wait another two weeks.
Our builder also advised us about getting in front of the Riverflow swimjet order so that was available sooner rather than later, so we are probably going to be writing a check to get that delivered soon.
With Christmas coming up, this is going to be interesting. I don't really want anything to start unless we are 100% sure that we'll be gunited before all of the local labor disappears for Christmas. I think it's safe to say timing-wise we'll be looking at a January dig now... It partly depends on whether or not Stormwater approves us on the first round. If they did that, we could theoretically make that happen.
Meh... We'll see.
plat.
Everything seems to be 2 weeks with this city Stormwater office. Our builder said they will either accept it and let us know in two weeks or ask for a revision then at which point the PE makes the adjustment and we resubmit and wait another two weeks.
Our builder also advised us about getting in front of the Riverflow swimjet order so that was available sooner rather than later, so we are probably going to be writing a check to get that delivered soon.
With Christmas coming up, this is going to be interesting. I don't really want anything to start unless we are 100% sure that we'll be gunited before all of the local labor disappears for Christmas. I think it's safe to say timing-wise we'll be looking at a January dig now... It partly depends on whether or not Stormwater approves us on the first round. If they did that, we could theoretically make that happen.
Meh... We'll see.
plat.
Well, the builder just stopped by and gave us the rejected stormwater plan. This was somewhat expected. It goes back to the PE now for revision and then we resubmit and then hopefully from that point we are approved. I just hope we get that before Christmas as it will line us up for a dig as soon as labor is back online again in January which correlates to an early April water fill. Still a bit chilly, but we would hopefully have solid water chemistry from that point for a Memorial Day "official opening"...
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!
plat.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!
plat.
Happy Thanksgiving. This is why I live in the county. I have heard nothing but horror stories about COH permits.
It's written in "City Code-speak", but it seems like it's just some elevation callouts and some other details. Nothing major as far as I can tell. I'm not stressing over this yet since our builder said up front that this was almost a given (50/50) to happen.
On a completely separate note, we went and looked at decking options last weekend. I have spent so much time on the overall design before we even went to the builders that most things were solidified except for waterline tile and decking. We're 80% sure on the general style of the waterline tile which will be a glass mosaic in the blue range.
Decking though, we're kind of stuck. We like travertine, but we need to try and tie the pool decking seamlessly into the ceramic tile we used on the patio. This is either going to mean going with some that matches (tan/cream) or purposefully different like a slate grey.
We're also considering concrete and would like to look at blue stone or maybe even granite. So many choices....
plat.
At least you were expecting it! It is just a small bump in the road to a pool!
Patio/decking=TOO many choices! Put them on a board and play darts to see which one wins! LOL
Kim
Patio/decking=TOO many choices! Put them on a board and play darts to see which one wins! LOL
Kim
Plat, can you post pics of the area you are trying to match? I'm sure you've already done that but I'm too lazy to search (I should be working on Thanksgiving dinner anyway!)
I'll post some pictures once we narrow things down a bit.
You can see the patio tile in the "Link to my patio build, completed 2013" thread in my signature. Scroll down a little past half way and there are some pictures that show it pretty well.
Thanks!
plat.
Well it's been over 60 days since my last update.
Digging has finally begun in the yard!!!!
..... For our main power line move :-(.... Sadly the main pool dig has yet to begin.
The main electrical power line to the house ran right through the pool dig area(we've known this for years), so we're getting that move done now as we are waiting for the final Stormwater plan to get approved by the city. We're hoping to hear back on that this week finally. They rejected the first one because they wanted topographic marking added to the plan. Between the Christmas slowdown on everyone's part and a PE who was not super-responsive in getting us what we needed, we lost a good 45 days there.
HOA approval happened weeks ago. That was a no-hassle item for the most part since we were familiar with the covenants and designed the pool with that in mind to begin with.
We're also scheduled to get a couple of trees removed that have to go. That should happen next week.
We've paid for and and received (I am told) the Riverflow Current system so we wouldn't be delayed by that once things start since it's kind of special.
From there, it hopefully is a typical start with dig to gunite happening all in one week and then the long slow finish. If we're lucky with the permit issue this week, I would say by the week of Feb 22 or maybe the 29th at the latest we'll have a hole in the ground.
We've started trying to pick finishes now.
We're going Cool Blue PebbleSheen with Shimmering Sea for sure. We're trying to go see a Luminous Beads add-in and may do that in addition to or instead of depending on how it looks.
All the raised beam will be in grey quartzite stacked stone to match what we already have in the patio.
We still need to pick:
Coping and Decking, but it looks like some kind of cream-ish travertine. We'll also need to choose a pattern.
Waterline tile
Tile for perimeter overflow spa (if not the same as waterline)
The material for the 3 "floating steps".
Final design on the water feature "waterfall wall".
Not too bad really, but some of these could be a struggle to find the "perfect" selection.
plat.
Digging has finally begun in the yard!!!!
..... For our main power line move :-(.... Sadly the main pool dig has yet to begin. The main electrical power line to the house ran right through the pool dig area(we've known this for years), so we're getting that move done now as we are waiting for the final Stormwater plan to get approved by the city. We're hoping to hear back on that this week finally. They rejected the first one because they wanted topographic marking added to the plan. Between the Christmas slowdown on everyone's part and a PE who was not super-responsive in getting us what we needed, we lost a good 45 days there.
HOA approval happened weeks ago. That was a no-hassle item for the most part since we were familiar with the covenants and designed the pool with that in mind to begin with.
We're also scheduled to get a couple of trees removed that have to go. That should happen next week.
We've paid for and and received (I am told) the Riverflow Current system so we wouldn't be delayed by that once things start since it's kind of special.
From there, it hopefully is a typical start with dig to gunite happening all in one week and then the long slow finish. If we're lucky with the permit issue this week, I would say by the week of Feb 22 or maybe the 29th at the latest we'll have a hole in the ground.
We've started trying to pick finishes now.
We're going Cool Blue PebbleSheen with Shimmering Sea for sure. We're trying to go see a Luminous Beads add-in and may do that in addition to or instead of depending on how it looks.
All the raised beam will be in grey quartzite stacked stone to match what we already have in the patio.
We still need to pick:
Coping and Decking, but it looks like some kind of cream-ish travertine. We'll also need to choose a pattern.
Waterline tile
Tile for perimeter overflow spa (if not the same as waterline)
The material for the 3 "floating steps".
Final design on the water feature "waterfall wall".
Not too bad really, but some of these could be a struggle to find the "perfect" selection.
plat.