Signed the contract this morning, New build Orange County, CA

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Titan7

LifeTime Supporter
May 9, 2015
768
Peoria, AZ
Finally found a builder we really like and saved $7k for a better build. PB let us do the deck, masonary, and, drains off contract with their sub which saved about $4000! Met with the soils engineer yesterday who told us we should have no issues with the slope at the rear, they will do a soil compression test at excavation. I will post photos as we proceed, demo will not start for another week or so.

Made some revisions to the steps on the "house side" that I think looks better on the plot drawing, they were not updated on Pool Studio rendering. the Reef step is about 14ft-8-10ft x about 15" of water. Pool is 33x19 ft at it's widest point, 3.5 to 5.5 ft deep. Spa is 7ft wide and raised 18" off the deck. We dumped the idea of the planter wall and redwood fence at the rear in favor of the same slump stone wall (6ft) at the rear, same as the wall on the right side. The planter wall will stay on the left.

We did add another bench in the deep end (Spa side) on the other side of the spa, closer to the house.

Will need to stub out H20 and 110v to the planter at the left and the small planter on the right.

Bond Beam 4 x #4 rebar.
Pebble finish Stonescape mini Tropics Blue or Aqua ( will need to see some real pools, but Tropics is winning.)
Deck, ALOT of DECK, 2,350 sf of Belgard Catalina or Olsen Infinity pavers.

Equipment: All Jandy:
Heater: Jandy Pro Series, JXi 400k Natural gas Pool Heater: Model: JXi400n
Pump: Jandy VSPlus Variable Speed Pump 2.7 HP: Model: VSPHP270
Valves: Jandy Pro Series Versa Plumb Universal Unions Packout Assembly
Filter: Jandy CV 580sf cartridge filter
Salt Cell: Jandy Aquapure PLC 1400.
Automation: Jandy AquaLink RS: RS-PS8, AquaLink Interface: iQ20-A, Power Center: PureLink Power center for automation and Salt Water Chlorination.
Lights: Jandy Nichless RGBW color ligt LED (4) pool (1) Spa.
Plaster Finish: National Pool Tile Group: Stonescapes Mini Pebble: Color to be either Tropics Blue or Aqua Blue, customer to choose color prior to plastering.
Water line tile: TBD, but will be a natural stone color.
Coping: Gold Rush Quartize, flagstone.
Stacked stone for raised spa and fire pit both 18” above the deck:
Plumbing PVC: (PVC sizing for suction and return) ,number of returns, deep heating return, etc. (2.5” and 3” to spa and pool)
Automated pool cleaner: MX6
Dedicated 2” suction port for autocleaner.

Total pool cost including demo of 1000 SF of concrete decking: $66k
Landscape, decking, drains, walls, irrigation, lighting, concrete, fire pit $48k



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Piequet_Xavier8_001.jpg
 
Okay so the 2nd guessing starts, of course sparked by friends.

Baja shelf: currently we have it at 12" of water, friends now freaking me out saying I should have gone 16-18"
Width of pool, 17 ft now, was told at a minimum 18ft is where I should be.
Placement of pool, should we shift the pool to the right a few feet? The sun hits the rear left of the yard all day which is why I placed the Baja step on that side. The pool is centered with the house in the drawing, but there is about 8-9 feet of decking on the left between the pool and the wall and 11-12 ft on the spa side.

Any suggestions from you guys with real pool experience?


Thanks.
 
Congratulations!!!! It's so exciting to finally have a builder!!

Get ready for the second guessing. It seems to be part of the process! But it helped me a lot to put that out to the TFP folks - sort of like thinking out loud, but better!

I'm only 12 weeks into a filled pool, so keep that in mind about anything I say.

Our Baja shelf is 6" deep and I love it. It all depends on how you plan to use it. For me, I do yoga on it, so that depth is perfect for me on the sit down exercises. 16-18" is about the depth of an in-water bench. If you like that, it's ok, too. For me, that would almost be like a very shallow end, and I wouldn't like that so much. We went with a four foot shallow end and love it. 12" seems to be a better compromise on the Baja shelf. But again, it all comes down to what you plan to do with your Baja shelf. Some people want to set a lounger on it and be partially underwater to cool off their legs, etc. Others want a lounger on the shelf and keep their bodies dry except maybe the feet. So measure out what you want. Or try sitting in a bathtub with a yard stick handy to give you a feel of different depths. Just don't let friends freak you out about changes. At this stage, you should still have time to make changes.

Minimum width of a pool???? Well, again, that's up to you. One of our widths is about 13 feet. I was concerned that would be too narrow especially with floats, etc, but it seems more than enough. I don't feel cramped at all. But..... if I had had the room to go bigger, I would have! I LOVE being in the water, and I don't think I could have a pool too big!!!! I would have filled up most of the space of any size yard I had and probably still wanted it bigger!!! (I'm a greedy girl)

Shifting the pool to the right.... Again, what do you want? I wanted our Baja shelf more in the shade so I didn't bake when exercising. But since many people call it a sun shelf..... well, that's self explanatory. For the reason of viewing the pool from inside the house, I like the idea of the pool being centered with the house. But you do have plenty of space and room. Why not stretch out the pool a little longer still keeping it centered? Or do you need more deck area? You can see my pool dimensions in my signature. I know for just the two of us, we wouldn't have wanted it any shorter. We pushed the limits of pool size while maintaining some space for landscaping. We went very small on decking since we don't have big parties. Just enough for a few loungers and space to walk around the entire pool.

Not really much help, am I? Maybe there will be something in here to help you sort through your thinking.

Take care,
Suz.
 
Thanks for the suggestions and you did help me. It hard to know if we are doing this right since we have never had a pool, I am really just trying to avoid a decision we end up regretting after the fact.
 
I am going to be watching this one for sure! Listen to Suz! She has awesome ideas. You really need to pop over to her build thread and read it! Her pool is one of the prettiest I have ever seen and helped build!

Kim
 
Its about time!

Reef:
16"-18" is very deep in my opinion. 8"-12" (max) is what prefer. My reef area starts at 4" and slopes to 12" over 16'. I love it since its the closest thing I could do to a beach entry without the troubles they can cause.

Equipment:
I am a Pentair guy so I can't comment on the equipment since I don't know Jandy's line very well.

Placement:
You can't have enough deck space, and your pool can't be too big. You'll just have to find a compromise between the two and place the pool where it would look best from the inside of the house and typical seating arrangements outside.

I actually like the placement on the plan.

Good luck!
 
Our Baja step is 18" because I wanted the majority of our bodies covered when are sitting on it. It's very nice and we all like it, and I think it will be the perfect play area when we get grandkids one day, but it's deeper than most. So, if I ever wanted to break the bank and buy one of those awesome loungers that go in the pool, they wouldn't have one for my depth. Further, I'd better be wearing my bathing suit when I sit in my plastic Adirondack chairs on the Baja step, because my bottom is going to be submerged. That means if I was just wearing shorts, I can't sit in those chairs on the Baja step to put my feet and shins in the water. So, maybe 12" is the sweet spot.
 
Placement------------stand at your windows and look out. You want to be able to see the pool. I like it centered.

The one thing I would question is the grass to the right of the pool. Do you REALLY want to deal with grass there? Mowing it or trimming it will be a pain due to trying to keep the clippings out of the pool not to mention you will have to edge it to keep it off the patio.

I have an aboveground pool so cannot help with the shelf/ledge depth.

Kim
 

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bdavis466 said:
Its about time!

Reef:
16"-18" is very deep in my opinion. 8"-12" (max) is what prefer. My reef area starts at 4" and slopes to 12" over 16'. I love it since its the closest thing I could do to a beach entry without the troubles they can cause.

Equipment:
I am a Pentair guy so I can't comment on the equipment since I don't know Jandy's line very well.

Placement:
You can't have enough deck space, and your pool can't be too big. You'll just have to find a compromise between the two and place the pool where it would look best from the inside of the house and typical seating arrangements outside.

I actually like the placement on the plan.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

LOL, I know this took 6 months of planning, I contacted 6 PB met with 4 PB, a couple never got back with us, and I was just about ready to do OB when I found another company in Ontario with excellent reviews, I contacted all the Yelp folks who emailed me back about their great experience, so we met with the PB and we really connected. They had a better build and other things we really liked and apples to apples they were actually about $10k less expensive, more responsive, and had better ideas for the plan. I also could not do OB due to work, I will still be here for major items as my wife will help, but we had to use a PB.

We are going to leave the pool where it is currenly centered in the yard, but we are widening it to 18" same exact shape just a foot wider 33x18.

On the baja step, we are thinking that will be either 12" or 15" deep. I will need to see how high recliners and chairs are so see which works better. That baja step is going to be pretty large, 9x12 feet at the widest point.

I will keep this tread updated as the build progresses with photos! We are estimating excavation by 11-15.

We are doing the Savi nitchless LEDs, 4 in the pool 1 in the spa, these are the multi colored small lights that seem to be the rage, except you need more of them and they are not cheap.

As for the Pentair/Jandy, I wanted Pentair at first but as I did more research I actually liked the Jandy the same and in some ways more, it's the Ford/Chevy debate. they use Jandy and design their systems around it so I am fine. I am doing all of Jandy's flagship equip.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I really helped us a lot, to get exactly what we wanted. Keep them coming, I am sure I will have other panic attacks, I mean questions for you!
 
Some BIG, brightly colored pots would work also to help break up the look of the pavers if that is what you want. They would be movable as well as changeable.

It is up to you but plants are just something else to take care of to me! LOL I already have my hands full without having to worry about how long it will take a plant to die under my care.

Kim
 
So question, how much space between the wall at the rear and the edge of the pool? Is 5 feet between the spa and back wall too little the left side will have 7.5 feet The other option is to move it closer to the house a couple feet. How much space do you have between wall/ fence and pool?
 
I don't know what the building codes are for where you live but 5feet sounds about as far as you can go to your property line. I just gone done building my second pool, but at my old house my spa was 5 feet from the back fence and I planted some eureka palms behind the spa and that framed it really nicely. Also, just my opinion, I like the planters with some green to break from the pavers, plants really add to the atmosphere and architecture design, you can't go wrong.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
5 foot setback is required in your area. I wouldn't want it any closer than that anyway.

3' for a walkway is the minimum but I feel that is too narrow. 5' is fine, 7' would be great. If someone was sitting in a chair, its nice to be able to comfortably walk around them.
 
Finally broke ground yesterday, excavators here again today and tomorrow. There was 1100 SF of old concrete to tear out. All seems to be going well, I think steel will go in Friday and plumbing Monday/Tuesday. The baja shelf looked a foot short, they told me with steel and shotcrete that will make up the difference. They told me the seats and shells are 100% to final spec with the dirt. I have been taking photos, will post some this weekend. They think shotcrete will go in the first week in December. Need to finalize pebble finish, it's between Aqua and tropics blue.
 

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