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I originally had 8' in the design, but changed this...I agree, I'll go wider. Way too many decisions when building a pool. We are thinking of having the planters at 24" so they can also be used as seating...albeit on the high side.

Good one Just-a-PB, lol.


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Love the entire design so far! Esp the glass tiles. To be honest, I was like your wife when we started our design choices too and was anti blue and also glass tile. Super blingy ya know? Until I found a pic on pinterest of blue glass tiles from Lightstream. I am now a bit obsessed. We are waiting to hear how many linear feet will be needed to do the water line with it in 3x3 tiles (2 rows to make a 6" line) and see if we want to swing for the extra cost (more than double in labor and $11 more a square foot in product). If not, we will use the 2x2 tiles for accents only on the steps, ledge, and seats. We are doing natural ledge stone but a similar look to your stone too so its nice to see a similar look for someone elses pool. Can't wait to see yours installed. Is the stone going on the raise spa?
 
ShantellyLace said:
Is the stone going on the raise spa?
Click to expand...
We went back and forth on stone vs. tile for the outside of the spa and finally settled on stone. The front and overflow will be tile, but sides and back stone. Regarding your 3x3 tile decision, we found a very similar tile to Rustic Blue from Mastertile except it reflected more light and it was considered too blingy. However, it also came in 3x3. I thought doing 3x3 waterline tiles would have looked awesome. You do need to be careful on costs with tile. In our case the tile is $11.30 sq ft, sold in 10 sq ft boxes, so we needed 9 boxes or about $1K in material...labor is $7 linear foot. No pool builder mark up. Our tile is made in China and not comparable to the craftsmanship of Lightsream from what I can tell.
 
Thanks for sharing. Yes the tile adds a lot of cost, more in labor than anything. Our allowed budget for tile that fits the quote our PB gave us is $6 for a 6x6 tile (so $24 a sq ft) and the Lightstream ones are $8.75 for 6x6 size or $35 a sq ft. But the labor to install the solid 6x6 tile is $7 (can't remember if its linear foot or hourly) but with the glass ans more grout lines it makes the labor around $18. So the labor is going to sting! If I could, I woukd get in there and start doing it myself lol

Are you doing travertine as the coping along the top edge of the spa? We are sourcing coping for the top of the spa and fire pit in either slate or poured concrete etc. I like bigger, thicker pieces with the least amount of joints. If I could find a grey travertine to fit the color scheme, we are thinking it could work too.

I think your design is going to look amazing. I need to go pick out some "stock" tiles to go with the Lightstream if we don't want to swing the extra cost.

Can't wait go see your pool come together.
 
The labor for glass is much higher because it involves several extra steps to install a water proof semi-flexible barrier to prevent efflorescence from the concrete from coming through and cracking. We are using Travertine for the top of the spa. Common travertine sizes are: 6x12, 12x12, 12x24 and 16x24. I was under strict orders to not have 2 side-by-side pieces of travertine along the spa. This is tricky as you want about 1.5" of overhang on each side and the spa walls (bond beam) is 12" wide. If you use 16x24" travertine laid lengthwise, this leaves you about 1" total on the inner and outer walls for tile/stone. This is one reason we used ledgestone, the 2x4" split travertine, (it is thinner) versus actual stone pavers, etc on the spa outer walls. If you use bullnose, you'll need 2 side-by-side pieces or they can grind the non-bull nose side down, but it won't match exactly the bull-nose from the manufacturer.
 
kimkats said:
NICE! They got a lot done! Looks like they did great work from the pics! Does it look as good up close?

Kim:kim:
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The work is outstanding. I had them fill in holes with grout and in some areas the grout was a little darker than I'd like. I think it's in areas of very white travertine. The travertine is very light and it gives it a little more character. Speaking of travertine...we looked at a lot of travertine samples. Around here most people use limestone as a light stone, which has a flawless finish as it's cut on site from slabs. I liked the finish on the bullnose/honed travertine samples the best as it was the least "rustic", but worried it is too slippery. We also preferred a square edge. We ended up using pavers and ordered a lot extra, as we are also doing a raised planter coping with them. They did a good job cherry picking the pieces and turning nicer edges inward. We are very pleased and the variation in the travertine means I don't have to sweat stains as much. Note: the installer told me to trim back a branch that was over hanging. Before I had a chance, birds arrived and dined on berries and already left a few stains...I will try to get them out, but again...adds character :)
 

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Foosman said:
Another rebar shot:
View attachment 56480

Action shot. The gunite crew left an absolute mess in my backyard. Pretty much about 60% of my yard was covered in 4-8" of gunite. Some parts were busted up by the plumber to continue to run pipes. Yes, the gunite was shot prior to finishing the plumbing...it was just stubbed out. I was not happy, as I wanted to see it under pressure prior to the shoot...but, my plumber was in Miami and we had a window to hit between COLD and rain to shoot the gunite. All is well now, but it created a lot of clean up to get rid of the un-wanted gunite. On a bright note it seemed no rebound was used in this pool!
View attachment 56481

14 days of watering wasn't too bad until it turned cold, 19 degrees cold. Guys told me to keep watering. I did wet vac up any water in the deep end to keep the weep hole clean and from freezing.
View attachment 56482

Picture from last Friday (Friday the 13th). You can see the dark area around the pool which is the waterproof membrane that was applied as we are using glass tile. I know...I know, glass tile for the waterline is a bad idea :) Started off great, perfect 70 degree weather for the install of the waterproofing. This lasted about 1 day and it has now rained on and off for 4 days. Most of the rain has been drizzle. A little stressed as I hope the membrane had enough time to cure...I haven't seen any hazing, etc. so it looks okay.
View attachment 56486

IF THIS RAIN EVER STOPS then the tile and coping will go on. I'll post more on the tile and coping in a follow-up.
Click to expand...

What sealing product did you use?

I like the pool. Do you have any pictures or links to the water bowls? I am starting a pool in a few weeks and I have not selected my scupper bowls yet. I have 2 with lit bubblers in them planned.

Doing the GC as well in Austin. I sent you a PM about it.


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Ramdough, we were considering the water bowls too (are likely doing just fire bowls instead) but have a product booklet for Fire FX water bowls. They have a huge selection of finishes and colors and even have stone columns you can buy from them with the bowls. The website on the booklet says backyardxpo.com if you want to check them out. I saw one in person when we went to the place to pick out our items for the pool and they are very nice.
 
For my spa I have 2 return paths: 1) Through the spa jets, 2) Direct pipe for filling the spa. The spa fill is designed for when I want the spa in spillover mode so I can get ~80GPM flow and it will also be used at a lower speed to circulate the spa water.
I have two actuated valves on the output plumbing. From an automation standpoint does it matter if the spa fill is switched with the pool return or if the spa fill is switched with the spa jets. See attachment
output compare.JPG
 

Attachments

  • Output comparison.pdf
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You want the right one if you're going to use standard automation. The thinking goes like this -

When drawing water from the pool, you want your return path to be towards the pool. When drawing water from the spa, you want the return path towards the spa. Since the "spa fill" line primarily is used for a spillway, that clearly means the water is going back to the pool. You always want the actuator handles pointing the same way.

Can the left side be automated, sure. But it means at some point you have to have the actuator handles pointed in opposite directions.

Also, if you have only one "spa fill" line, it's dangerous to have it on the spa side because you could inadvertently end up in a situation where the 3HP VSP is running full-tilt and trying to push all that water and pressure through a single 1-1/2" line. Is it likely to happen? No. If it does happen, can you break stuff doing that? Yes. Better to be safe than sorry.

(And yes, the same dangers can occur on the pool side return path but were historically lower risk because the splitter valve was typically manually set with locking pins to avoid the problem)


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This one is better -

9e5dd1f3e85853e2c668e9f727bba896.jpg



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