I tried to get this out before Turkey day, but couldn't and now it appears I have unintentionally deleted my msg while trying to edit. So, I'm going to start over.Noobie here, first post, so please bear with me.. I just had my 30 year old plaster pool and concrete deck refurbished. Pool is now a 13,000 gal Gemstone blue diamond pebble (exposed aggregate) with an 800 sqft two color stone stamped deck. I'm not happy with either one. But the water chemistry is going great with the TF-100 kit!
The most pressing issue is the pool deck so I will address that first. I hope the attached pictures (photobucket) will show the problem well enough and let you zoom into the best resolution. Much of the deck has areas that look like a moonscape. Many areas look like decomposed granite and look nothing like the sample he showed me before starting on demo day. The concrete sub is here today trying to fix several other issues and when I asked him to see that sample (sandstone & walnut), he claims he doesn't have it. The deck has a kind of a purple, chalky appearance with very little contrast for two color (for which I paid $2 sqft extra) but he says after it is sealed that it will look great. I have seen it wet after a rain and there is really not much improvement in the contrasting color.
Now the rest of the story. He ordered the concrete from Teichert in Roseville, CA about a 1+ hour uphill drive from my house near Grass Valley, CA. We have a concrete plant about 10 minutes away, but he must have got a "deal" for himself in Roseville. The truck arrived at 11:00 AM on Nov 4, but no pumper! The sub claims the pumper just didn't show . So, his laborers had to wheel barrow 10 yards of concrete with ONE wheelbarrow (and my small garden wheel barrow until the tire blew) about 120 ft to my pool. They emptied the truck 3 hrs later at 2PM. So that concrete was up to 4 hours old. The did a sloppy job screeding and floating it, by the time they got to stamping, it was already pretty hard. I asked him today what happened, why do these areas look like the moon. He said that's the way it's supposed to look! That was the stamp. Well, I ask you for your opinion... is that the way stamped concrete should look? I am having another contractor come over next week for his opinion, (but he will want to sell me a new deck
). He demanded payment in cash the day of the pour as negotiated through the general pool contractor. I have not paid the general contractor for his Gemstone finish, but now he claims he is not responsible for the deck work. If you click on the photo below it should take you to photobucket and you can zoom or enlarge 4 pictures.
I will now try to post the issues with the Gemstone finish in another msg.
