Hello,
I'm completely new to the forum but have already learned a lot via Pool School. This is a great community, with tons of useful information for pool newbies like myself.
My story is that my wife and I started to build a pool in our backyard in May 2014. It was just completed a week ago. We're in Sunnyvale, CA. We chose our builder because the company is Diamond-rated, and with good online reviews. They have been in business for a very, very long time.
Anyway up to recently everything went smoothly except for delays, caused by us as we were remodeling our yard at the same time as the pool was being built. About 2 weeks ago a crew of 2 guys came to do an acid wash and polish of our freshly-plastered pool; we used the Pebble Plus finish, in Sapphire Blue. These cretins ruined it for us. They thought it was a good idea to scrub our beautiful glass trim tiles with stiff (metal?) brushes and scratched every single one of them. In addition, they left water pool up in the shallow end once they were done with the acid wash. This created sort of a lighter ring in the plaster that we noticed after the fact, one evening just after sunset. It was very visible then. I'm attaching pictures of both issues.
Of course we're mad as **** and had someone from the company (high-ranking) come to check the problems immediately after the mess up. This person, unlike the rest of the company's staff, was very agressive and condescendent. It's almost like we were bothering him with things that his company messed up. It took him 30 minutes to apologize. After asking us if we'd ever made mistakes in our lives, he agreed to redo the trim tiles but as expected the result it not up to par with our expectations. You can see blue grout along the exterior edges of the tile strips, to fill in the tiny gap between the plaster and the new tiles. A gap that wasn't there before, since the old tiles had to be cut out. It now looks like the tiles were installed after the plastering, which is of course exactly what happened. It doesn't look "integrated" like with the old tiles, if I may say. According to another person working for the company, over time the blue will soften up a bit but I'm not buying it. It's like what they said wit the ring in the shallow end: "you won't see it with the pool full of water". We're indeed not seeing much of it now but I bet the first time I go underwater I'll notice it. I don't see why not? It's there.
The "agressive" guy is coming back tomorrow since we asked him to check on the repair in person, with the pool full of water. Surely he's going to tell us that we'll enjoy our pool no matter what, and that this is the best he can do.
My question: what are we supposed to do? To us, a complete replaster is necessary. They'll have redo the trim tiles, too. The fact the company sent an inexperienced crew (that's what they told us - business is good so they have lots of new hires!) to do the acid wash and in the process destroy our trim tiles is not our problem. We paid almost $100k for this, and it's not a new pool. It's a patched-up pool. We'd accept the repair if we had damaged the tiles ourselves over a period of years, but here it's a different issue. We're getting an ugly look right from the start. And it's not our fault.
I'd love to get opinions as to what we could ask for. Is replastering a realisitic option, since it might create other problems? Will the blue grout soften up? Should we accept to "live" with this? Ask for some money back? Honestly we don't want any money back. We just want the pool we paid in full for, and that's not it.
Thanks for your help.
NJ
I'm completely new to the forum but have already learned a lot via Pool School. This is a great community, with tons of useful information for pool newbies like myself.
My story is that my wife and I started to build a pool in our backyard in May 2014. It was just completed a week ago. We're in Sunnyvale, CA. We chose our builder because the company is Diamond-rated, and with good online reviews. They have been in business for a very, very long time.
Anyway up to recently everything went smoothly except for delays, caused by us as we were remodeling our yard at the same time as the pool was being built. About 2 weeks ago a crew of 2 guys came to do an acid wash and polish of our freshly-plastered pool; we used the Pebble Plus finish, in Sapphire Blue. These cretins ruined it for us. They thought it was a good idea to scrub our beautiful glass trim tiles with stiff (metal?) brushes and scratched every single one of them. In addition, they left water pool up in the shallow end once they were done with the acid wash. This created sort of a lighter ring in the plaster that we noticed after the fact, one evening just after sunset. It was very visible then. I'm attaching pictures of both issues.
Of course we're mad as **** and had someone from the company (high-ranking) come to check the problems immediately after the mess up. This person, unlike the rest of the company's staff, was very agressive and condescendent. It's almost like we were bothering him with things that his company messed up. It took him 30 minutes to apologize. After asking us if we'd ever made mistakes in our lives, he agreed to redo the trim tiles but as expected the result it not up to par with our expectations. You can see blue grout along the exterior edges of the tile strips, to fill in the tiny gap between the plaster and the new tiles. A gap that wasn't there before, since the old tiles had to be cut out. It now looks like the tiles were installed after the plastering, which is of course exactly what happened. It doesn't look "integrated" like with the old tiles, if I may say. According to another person working for the company, over time the blue will soften up a bit but I'm not buying it. It's like what they said wit the ring in the shallow end: "you won't see it with the pool full of water". We're indeed not seeing much of it now but I bet the first time I go underwater I'll notice it. I don't see why not? It's there.
The "agressive" guy is coming back tomorrow since we asked him to check on the repair in person, with the pool full of water. Surely he's going to tell us that we'll enjoy our pool no matter what, and that this is the best he can do.
My question: what are we supposed to do? To us, a complete replaster is necessary. They'll have redo the trim tiles, too. The fact the company sent an inexperienced crew (that's what they told us - business is good so they have lots of new hires!) to do the acid wash and in the process destroy our trim tiles is not our problem. We paid almost $100k for this, and it's not a new pool. It's a patched-up pool. We'd accept the repair if we had damaged the tiles ourselves over a period of years, but here it's a different issue. We're getting an ugly look right from the start. And it's not our fault.
I'd love to get opinions as to what we could ask for. Is replastering a realisitic option, since it might create other problems? Will the blue grout soften up? Should we accept to "live" with this? Ask for some money back? Honestly we don't want any money back. We just want the pool we paid in full for, and that's not it.
Thanks for your help.
NJ
