Austin, TX - Above Ground Salt Water Pool in Canyon - Construction Started 09/30/19

I'm starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. The electricians came by today to wire me up, no more extension cords. I also got my mini-split going, and wow it's amazing and so efficient. I wish I had these in various spots of my home, but the cooling power is incredible and it uses so little power. My plumber no showed me last Friday, I was expecting all my fixtures to be put in. Hopefully he comes this week.

Shower door and TV is being hung tomorrow! That was scheduled today but we had a huge down pour this morning, the electricians worked through it. I got all my power hooked up, mini-split, lights installed, switches and my fan. I will say I ordered a Minka Aire 84" fan, it cost $600. It's really lackluster. There was a tiny broken part in it and the company really wanted to push me to my distributor (I bought it on Amazon). Really bad support, but my electricians were able to replace the broken part with some washers acquired at Lowes. Desipte the poor customer service, the fan actually is pretty weak. It only rotates at 70 rpm and doesn't put out substantial wind, I'm really disappointed considering the price point. I swear my 60" Hunter in my master bedroom puts out way more CFM. I might just bite the bullet and replace it with a Big Rear Fan next year; I'm really disappointed with this thing, but it does look great and matches perfectly.

Pics:

Cool rain shot:


Fan and light - really love how it looks, bad support and really weak CFM


Lights!


Some shots from Father's Day, just because:




From the hot-tub looking into the pool:

Getting so close to the finish line. I can't tell you how awesome it was to enjoy a cold one while watching TV last night from the bar and then from my floating sling.

I've got small thinks left and my frameless shower door is coming in next week (the pre-fab was too narrow, another costly surprise):

BUT ITS A DRY HEAT said:

that turned out amazing. i love the coping and didnt see any details on it. i think i remember you saying it was precast, but was curious, size and where you got it from. i am looking for some right now for my project that is going to start any day now.

thanks

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my PB ordered it, I don’t know from where, but I know the lead time was really long.

Nikilyn said:

This pool makes my fear of heights go off. I would always think someone was going to tumble over that edge . I felt it just looking at the picture of you sitting in the corner. It’s gorgeous but I couldn’t handle it .

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Ironically, I’m fearful of heights but don’t have any issues. When you’re in the pool, you’re not above it, you’re in it so it has a different effect.

Since this thread has come back to life, I'll provide a few quick updates:

1) Pool was awesome all Summer. We used it from April through early October and used the hot tub from October on.
2) I can heat the hot-tub in about 30 minutes. It costs me just under $1 / hour in gas to run the heater
3) I can heat the pool about 1-2 degrees per hour at the same cost. There were two late September/early October weekends where I was able to have an awesome 87F pool. We had friends with pools over that didn't have heaters. It cost me about $10 in gas to have a pool we could enjoy all weekend.

Permit Nightmares:

1) I still have my pool and building permits open. City of Austin is very particular. I had to redesign stair cases (PB did it at his cost) since my landing wasn't big enough (was 1" too small), and I had a double step and tread depth needs to remain the same.
2) I had to add railing to one part of stairs
3) Since I added a bathroom, the city said I need to increase my meter size, despite I have the same meter size as my neighbor that has more restrooms than I. Not a big deal, until I went to upgrade the meter and was stopped by the city because they said their service lines are too fragile to support any meter upgrades now. They said I would have to replace THEIR service line at my cost, roughly $30,000. That obviously caused a nightmarish reaction, and I'm currently negotiating with the city, and they've provided some alternative approaches, so I'm going to work with my plumber to shutdown some unused fixtures in the home to get my WSFU under their threshold.

What I'd do differently:

1) I'd ditch the fountains. They're just too noisy when in operation, and it's one more pump, one more freeze thing, etc. The kids like them, and I thought I'd run them for ambiance, but the sound of crashing water even from just a few feet above the water impedes conversations or TV/music watching
2) I'd still do the splash pad/shelf, but we don't use it ANYWHERE near as much as I expected. We hardly use it. A few people with toddlers that can't swim that have come over have used it, but my 5 year old and his friends have no interest in it. It's nice for entering the pool, but it's not the lounge area I thought it'd be, the bar stools are much more attractive to guests of all ages.
3) I put too many umbrella sleeves down, the two on the benches are just not used. I didn't pay extra for these, and I've had no issues, but now knowing how the sun works, there are only 2 or 3 sleeves that get constant use, the other 3 don't get used at all.

I'm really hopeful I can get these permits wrapped up in the next month or so just to close that chapter and then go on to landscaping and other various things for a nice 2021 pool season.

Dirk said:

I wonder if a sharply-worded letter on some attorney letterhead would get the city to back down. Demarcation point! They seem way out of bounds, expecting you to service the lines on their side of the demarcation point, especially considering they approved the plans for the bath beforehand (assuming). Craziness. Just because they "say it is so" does not mean it's legal.

I never understood the appeal of lounging in 6" of water. Where to you put your book/phone/snack/drink/pillow/towel?!? Especially with kids running around. I'm sure folks figure it out, or just like to lay in a puddle on a hot day, but "lounge on the deck, swim in the water" I say. I wonder how many others regret their shelves. Thanks for sharing about that.

So, the SuperFlo booster. Is that one speed? Is it on its own dedicated circuit (separate suction port) or does it share the pool's main filter circuit? The reason I ask: I wonder if you could use a three-way valve somehow to route some of the pump's flow back to one of the returns, to dial down the flow to the scuppers and make them less noisy. Or replace the pump with something smaller, or swap out the motor with a VS motor? Seems a shame not to be able to enjoy them more. Kinda the same deal. I wonder how many other pool owners overestimate the value they get out of water features. They look great on the plans. Great for the PB's bottomline, for sure. But real world? Thanks for sharing about that, too. Helpful for folks "shopping" here for their dream pool ideas...

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The city did approve our plans, but apparently whenever you add plumbing fixtures you have to fill out a tap plan which my PB did not do. Why it wasn't caught during plan review and only brought up when we called in for final is a miss, but we would've faced the same issue then or now. They've given us some outs which either require shutting down some fixtures (which in spirit could be reconnected later, or whenever the city finally upgrades it's lines) or get a state engineer out to measure water flow on the service line with all my fixtures running and making sure it is less than 10 feet per second through the 3/4" service line (use of restrictors and my PRV could get us there). Again, the issue is the material they used in their service lines is polybutylene and apparently over time it weakens, and it's no longer in use, so they don't allow people to change plumbing demands on those lines and won't replace them unless they break (ironically a few houses up the street's just broke and the city replaced it on their dime). I'll get through it one way or another.

On the scuppers, yes it's on a 3/4HP SuperFlo. It is fed off the main drainsm but it's got a dedicated home run though, so no way for me to combine it back into the pool returns. In terms of noise, I've got scupper return valves pretty closed down, I do need this degree of power otherwise they dribble down and hit coping instead of pool. There's no way to reduce the crashing water noise without it missing the pool. The pump itself is on the noisy side as well,but that's less an issue as the equipment isn't really in ear shot most of the time. Basically, if I was doing it again, I'd save the money/hassle and just have put nice bowls with agave plants in them (something with basically no maintenance). Chances are the cost of the plant/pots would've been substantial given the size so it probably wouldn't have saved me much money. My pool builder didn't charge extra for the pump or plumbing of the scuppers even though they were added after the contract. The pump was repurposed from a side cleaner that I swapped out for a robot (which he provided). So fiscally it was actually a good deal, only paying for the pots, but they're just not used due to the aforementioned issues.

Splash pad, yeah I will continue to advise people who consider them must-haves, that they're not. In my case, I'm not sure what I'd do differently, my topology allowed for it and I don't know that I'd want multiple shallow areas, but I read on here so many times people having space constraints and wanting the splash pad. I always recommend ditching it for swim lane. I'm glad we have it, it looks cool and serves as a really nice ingress, but if you have space constraints, I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT RECOMMEND giving up precious water real-estate for splash pads. Reduce size as needed if you really need one.

Sparks22 said:

I am surprised that it is that cheap to run the heater (which is a welcome surprise compared to my preconceived thoughts). Do you think that the heater is running at full capacity that it is capable of, or is it being throttled by the gas supply to something less than it is rated to handle?

With my back of the napkin math (not actually having any equipment installed yet to get empirical results), I was coming up with about $2.40 per hour to run the heater using our recent gas rates (which may be different than yours). I was calculating it as $0.60 per Therm from the gas bill times 4 Therms per hour that the heater can use (400k BTU) for about $2.40 per hour. I haven't done too many gas calculations, so not sure if I have oversimplified something in the calculation somewhere that is throwing me off.

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Im running at full capacity, but Texas Gas Service is like $.19 per therm plus a small delivery fee. It comes close to $0.25 per therm. Roughly 4 therms an hour. I’ve tracked it on the meter. I’ll check my bill out later and give the breakdown.

Sparks22 said:

Huh. Well that seems to explain my confusion. Your gas is much cheaper than mine even though we are in the same area (I am in Cedar Park).

I just checked my last Atmos bill and the per CCF charge was about $0.85 per CCF. Seems like a crazy price difference for us being in the same metro area.

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I had Atmos before when I lived in Pflugerville and North Austin/WilCo, but since I moved to interior Austin, my gas has become much cheaper with Texas Gas Service (TGS (a Kansas company ironically)).

I just did re-check and combined with delivery it is $0.35 / CCF delivered + taxes (out the door). Maybe it was less than during Summer, but my memory was stuck at $1/hour. As a CCF is ~4% more than a therm, my calculation was a bit off, but let's call it $0.33 / therm (or $1.20 / hour). My meter is maybe a touch undersized if other things are running, but I will say Texas Gas Service has been notably less expensive than Atmos. Maybe it's $1.20 an hour, hard to tell. That said, CoA Water and CoA Power has been more money than options I had when I was outside the limits. However, I have Solar (9.3 kWh system (LG+SolarEdge)), and CoA's solar program is pretty advantageous to citizen solar providers, so it nets out to better than when I was on Atmos+Deregulated Power+Manville.