I know this is an old post but I'm going through the same right now. My pool's deep end was contracted to be 6' deep. I made it very clear that I wanted 6 feet of water in my deep end. The very back of the pool at the back wall is about 5'8 inches or so and immediately gets more shallow as soon as you take a step back There was supposed to be, according to the drawings, a flat section of the pool that was to be 6' deep.
When I brought it to the attention of the PB, first they tried to say that the contract did not call for a 6' deep pool. The very first sentence of the contract states that they were building me a 6' deep gunite pool. It says it in multiple places and even says it on the drawing. When I showed them in their own contract that the pool was to be 6' deep, they then tried to pull the measuring from the top of the coping thing. I can't find anything that says it's industry standard to measure the depth of the pool from the top of the coping. The so called project manager even had the nerve to tell me I should have been out there when they were digging to make sure they did it right. Even if it's industry standard, that should have been put into the contract or at least brought to my attention. I would have had them dig it a few inches deeper. To me, any reasonable person buying a 6' deep pool would expect 6' of water unless told otherwise. Also, my drawings called for a flat section of the the deep end to be 6' deep and it's 6' even measuring to the top of the coping. So not only is my pool not 6' deep, it doesn't have the flat section in the drawing either.
