Michael in Mckinney

[mmurray21]

Hey guys,

We are in the process of getting bids for a new pool when I found this site. Hopefully you guys can help me through the process.

We are going to get several estimates from the northern dfw area. We are looking at Sylvan, Robertson, Foley, Premier, Clear Tech as well as others.

We will probably be getting a gunite, free form pool, that is approximately 36' X 19' with a spa (and a water slide if my son has any say so). 6' on the deep end and 3+ on the shallow end. Most of the builders are pushing ozone, but we have heard good things about salt systems as well.

On what basis, besides price, can we judge the estimates. I saw a thread about joint vs heated pvc piping. Were there any other things I should be looking out for?

Any help wpuld be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bama Rambler]

Welcome. Your best bet is to read through the construction threads. There's a lot of good advice and gotchas in there. Take a lot of it with a grain of salt but by reading plenty you can tell what's important enough to stand your ground on.

 

[woodyp]

Scratch the ozone and go ahead and order one of the test kits recommended here. Good luck and Welcome!

 

[mmurray21]

Scratch the ozone and go ahead and order one of the test kits recommended here. Good luck and Welcome!

What is the basis for your take on ozone? Is it overkill for residential? Too costly? Ineffective?

 

[257WbyMag]

Welcome to TFP!

 

[dmanb2b]

Welcome to TFP

Ozone is just not needed in an outdoor residential pool. To the extent it were an indoor pool it may be an option, but since you'll have UV ray to help chlorine oxidize bather waste, there is not much left for ozone to do. If you use the search funtion at the bottom of the page, you'll see this topic has been debated over and over again. We'd rather see you spend the $ on a good Saltwater Chlorine generator

 

[dmanb2b]

Also, ozone is not a residual sanitizer, like chlorine. A salt water pool is a chlorine pool

 

[PKDallas]

I'm just a little south of you in NE Richardson. We have a Foley pool in our new house that was put in by a previous owner. The pool is fantastic, and is almost exactly what you mentioned you were looking for (about 38'X18', free form gunite with spillover spa, 6' in the middle, about 3.5' on the sides). I don't know anything about the other builders you are looking into, but we are very happy with out pool. I feel it is very well made. My only complaint, and since we didn't put the pool in, I don't know if it was the builder or the owner being cheap, is the control system. Our (former) pool company looked into it, and it is so old he said they must have found it in the back corner of an old warehouse. It was obsolete well before our pool was put in. Since we weren't here when the pool was put in, I don't know if this is Foley or the prior owner being cheap. I'm sure when you start getting your quotes, if you post the details here, someone will point out if they try to give you anything they shouldn't on the equipment.

On the ozonator, we actually have a Del Eclipse II that was sold to us by our pool guy. I say sold, because he promised us many things, none of which turned out to be true. He told us we wouldn't have to use any chlorine (if we used it along with mineral packs), wouldn't have to run our pumps as long, etc. When we started getting algae, the story quickly changed to us having to have a normal amount of chlorine, and we had to run the pump even longer than we were before the ozonator, in order to keep the ozone in the pool. The ozonator doesn't keep a residual sanitizer in the pool, so it's only working when it is on. Looking back now, I wouldn't order it again, and when the thing needs any repairs, I'll just unplug it.

We didn't go with a salt system in our pool, because we have a lot of stone coping around the pool, and on the spillover around the waterfall. I didn't want to have to worry about the salt eating away any of it, so we decided to go with the Liquidator. If you haven't already looked at this as another option, you might consider it. We are very happy with it, and are considering a peristaltic pump also for metering in the acid to keep our ph down.

Good luck with whichever builder you choose.

 

[mmurray21]

Thanks PK. We met with Foley last week and should be getting their formal quote this week. We are going to go SWG(against the foley recommedation) and probably go with the intelliflo pump recommended by foley.

I'll defintely post all of the bids as we get them.