Sanity Check on Pricing of Austin, TX Pool Build (Hillside Pool, Complex Elevation)

[DB-Cooper]

Hi all, I'm about to build a pool in our home in NW Hills Austin. I was working with three vendors, but widdled it down to two vendors. One is a smaller and more custom, and one is a larger national franchise. The designs are similar, but the national franchise offers better warranty and is the safer bet. They're also slightly less expensive and are building at a higher elevation which notably adds a lot more engineering cost, so factoring that in, it's a much better deal.
My home sits on a canyon, I literally have 15'-20' slab on the rear side of my home and a massive elevated wood deck. I'm building down below the deck, I've provided some pictures below.

Regardless, as a first time pool owner, I'm not sure if this is good, bad or great pricing and whether I should shop around more. I know the devil is in the details, but the best I can do to describe it is:

21' x 31' free form pool, depth of ~6.5' at max:
- Knifed edge of about 12' on exposed radius/arc that looks over the canyon
- Exterior shell on far side just brownstone (I plan to build planters up as a safety net and to hide the concrete superstructure)
- 600+ sq ft of coping, maybe more. Lueder stone
- Raised spa with spillway into pool, wrap around staircase around spa down to dirt
- Sunken kitchen/bar (~12'x12') with water/gas/GFCI (they're building it up to posts, but I need to finish out interior and add roof structure). Four bar stools in pool and swim up bar. Cabana is sunken with steps down into it from main coping so people inside will be roughly at the same level as those in the pool, so there's a bit of engineering involved in this.
- Self-cleaning floor system and pool heater (A&A)
- Baja shelf with bubblers, umbrella sleeves, etc.
- LED lightning, etc.

The pool sits about 8' out of the ground on the back side, the near side basically (from pictures below), starts at the top part of my backyard.

As the designs are somewhat proprietary, and some sales people spent a lot of time on them, so I don't want to post them, but PM me if you're interested in more detail.

The builder already submitted and received the detailed engineering, to which they said added over $50K to the project. I additionally need a lot of landscaping after this as an 8' fall off the back of the pool would be rough (intend to build raised planters about 3' lower than the pool height).

Long story short, the pool build, all-in without the finishing of the swim up bar/cabana is just short of $170K. That also excludes landscaping, railing elevated areas as needed. I need to build a landscaping tear around the back of the pool in case anyone decides to leap out, I need to finish out the cabana, put some lattice gate under my deck so I'm not staring at foundation, plant some Cypress trees to block the neighbor (I had an oak removed that was providing that prior). I'm guessing I'll be at $200K in the blink of an eye. My particular area of Austin (NW Hills), homes with pools are selling much faster, given the schools, anyone who pays the premiums to live in my neighborhood is buying for family and it seems the pools are driving good value (not 1:1 but not horrible either).


Here's from my deck. Where you see the grass would be the level of the pool. That'd be coping and the pool goes out towards where the wood gym equipment is. You can see the natural grade, each grade is 3-4' lower, with the base being a good 8-9' lower than the grass area. A good chunk of change will go into lining the fence with Italian Cypress to sort of close off the pool.



Looking up, you can see where the staircase ends, that'll be effectively the level of the pool. Where I"m standing will be where the end of the pool is.



Standing where the pool level will start, it'll be built out. The pool will sort of vanish into the view line and be out of the water on the back half and no coping, knife edge, etc.



Standing at pool height looking the direction the pool will generally orient.

 

[Jimrahbe]

DB,

If anything, the price sounds a little low to me... ?

You want everything, and at the same time have everything going against you location wise..

That said, pool costs in the same city can be different just depending on which side of the tracks you live on..

Your spa, infinity edge, in-floor system, and swim up bar, all add to the costs, not to mention the extra engineering and construction of the pool itself just because of the location..

It should be very pretty, but that will come at a significant cost.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[DB-Cooper]

DB,

If anything, the price sounds a little low to me... ?

You want everything, and at the same time have everything going against you location wise..

That said, pool costs in the same city can be different just depending on which side of the tracks you live on..

Your spa, infinity edge, in-floor system, and swim up bar, all add to the costs, not to mention the extra engineering and construction of the pool itself just because of the location..

It should be very pretty, but that will come at a significant cost.

Thanks,

Jim R.

Thanks, admittedly we do want a lot, and we definitely agree on the geology we are presented with. I appreciate your input. One correction though, we opted against the infinity edge because in reality, nobody will ever really be able to see it, so we opted for the knifed edge which should look good from inside the pool. I hope I don't regret that, but the maintenance and cost of infinity (at this elevation) didn't make sense, and considering it won't be visible from the home or exterior of the pool, it seemed like not the best investment.

 

[Jimrahbe]

DB,

You got me on that one, I assumed that the infinity edge and knife edge were the same thing..

Just like you, I am here for an education, so please explain the difference between the two..

I also did not see any reference to the pool equipment, which can also impact the overall cost..

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[kimkats]

I love what I read about your dream pool. Like Jim said it will come with a cost. There is no real way any one can tell you if it is too high or too low. The best way to do that is to have several quotes done then pick the one you like the best and try to get them to work with you in some way to lower the cost if possible.

 

[DB-Cooper]

DB,

You got me on that one, I assumed that the infinity edge and knife edge were the same thing..

Just like you, I am here for an education, so please explain the difference between the two..

I also did not see any reference to the pool equipment, which can also impact the overall cost..

Thanks,

Jim R.

It's A&A QuikSkim Venturi equipment.

As best I can explain, Infinity means there is a catch basin considerably below where water flows over and gets caught down below and recycled. There's pumps involved and the catch bin needs a level of cleaning/maintenace. There's also effectively a structure to contain this catch basin/containment pool. Whereas, a knifed edge is more an aesthetic design element where some part of the top coping is removed and cut to give a very clean and near flush look with the water line. While some water will spill over it, in this case the water isn't caught in a catch basin and is lost. To mitigate water spillage, a small cut is made in the far edge to serve as a rain gutter of sorts. So effectively, it someone did a huge canonball near it, maybe a surplus of water would pass the gutter and be lost (in my case spilling over into wilderness), but normal wind, surge, swimming activity would be caught. My builder suggested this as a sort of fake "infinity look" and a notably cheaper alternative. As stated, since there's really nothing going on behind my pool in terms of people (it's a forest effectively), designing some gorgeous catch basin spillover feature that would never be seen.

 

[jimbethesda]

I live in the Great Hills neighborhood. We just finished our pool, spa, arbor, and outdoor kitchen. We also started with a big slope. We spent about the same. PM me who your picking between if you want any feedback on them.

Good luck!

 

[Jimrahbe]

DB,

Thanks for the info.. I understand what you are saying, I just can't envision how it will work, without dumping a ton of water.. It will be interesting to see how it works, so please keep us updated when done.

Jim R.

 

[swreeder70]

My neighbor has a knife edge, when his pool was built they did not put in an auto fill. He claims that his kids splash a ton of water out and that he has to put a hose in his pool daily when they are swimming. I have both an auto fill and an overflow drain line. Would never own another pool without these two features.

 

[DB-Cooper]

My neighbor has a knife edge, when his pool was built they did not put in an auto fill. He claims that his kids splash a ton of water out and that he has to put a hose in his pool daily when they are swimming. I have both an auto fill and an overflow drain line. Would never own another pool without these two features.

Thanks swreeder70