If your wife will be handling the chemical balance for the pool I would urge her to spend some time here reading BEFORE making any final decisions on the pool (see the pool school link in the upper right of this page as a good place to start). There may be some seemingly minor things that can have big side effects on ease of pool care that are much easier to address before they are buried under concrete. It is all too common that we see people here with build threads that get so caught up in LED lights, and automation systems that they miss details like skimmer placement when considering prevailing wind patterns, or water flow issues leaving dead spots where chlorine levels drop too low and allow algae to grow (this also applies to nooks in pool finish, steps, etc.). As to your comment on hiring a pool service, you will find that in general we do not hold them in very high regard, it is really not entirely their fault, most people are not willing to pay for the level of service a pool really needs to be properly balanced, so they instead end up with a pool service that visits once per week which leads to wild swings in chemical levels, and lots of tricks to make it that long between adding chemicals. In addition many pool services have poorly trained technicians that don't know why they do what they do, and many skip proper water testing, or do it so sloppily that they might as well skip it. Instead at a minimum a pool needs 5-10 minutes of attention about 3 times per week once it is up and going, and daily attention for the first month or two after starting with fresh plaster, and those logistics just don't work for your typical pool service company when you consider travel time, etc. You may think your pool builder should catch these things, but the truth is most pool builders have little knowledge about maintaining and living with a pool long term, and these issues never occur to them as they never see the recurring issues that develop 1, 2, or 5 years down the road.
