New (+1st timer) Pool Build - North DFW

Builder just texted me. Gunite in the morning! FINALLY! 10.5 weeks from dig to gunite. The rain has been killer...to anyone that digs in April or May, please get your builder to flash the pool.

Here's current photos of what the hole looks like over the weekend. I've gotten pretty good at tarping down the pool before rain. The rain this morning in DFW caused ZERO cave in or soil movement.

I think our builder thinks I'm crazy. After the muck-out crew left I jumped in the hole and shoveled out another ~30 gallons of mud to make sure we hit spec all the way around. Between that and the tarps... ah well.

Gunite got delayed to today....but it's done! Apparently their sand got too wet in the rain Sunday morning and so they couldn't shoot on Monday. They're a smaller company based out of Waxahachie that our builder has recently started using in addition to their other gunite crews to keep up.

I think they did a good job - they were here for nearly 8 hours! Took their time with everything, measured constantly as they went along. Measured and adjusted rebar before shooting, even made sure to push back any twist ties holding the rebar together.

The only surprise: our pool features a 9" water depth tanning ledge that was supposed to be attached to the first step into the pool. The plan had the first step and tanning ledge at the same height, but that would mean that the first step was also at 9" water depth which isn't to code. So we now have this awkward 3" step from the first step to the ledge, but I think we are okay with this and prefer it to the alternative (6" tanning ledge).

On to the next!

Spoke with scheduler this morning. Here’s what I was told for timing. Anyone else that’s building or thinking of building right now here’s what to expect:

Tile and Coping
4-6 weeks behind, that trade is slammed right now both in supply and labor shortages. Our tile is already set aside for us, so we’re just waiting for labor.

Equipment
Plumbing trade isn’t as backed up, but still have supply shortages. All of our equipment are on hand and set aside for us, but we are still waiting on a Jandy 3-way valve.

Electrical
To my surprise, electrical isn’t backed up right now, and we should expect them over the next week. For reference, when we went under contract, electrical was stated to be the most behind

Arbor / Structure
Will be started this week or next.

Plaster
Will be prescheduled for after estimated tile/coping date

Decking, cleanup, etc
We are just concrete decking, so nothing major there to impact timeline

Some fun numbers, and a few questions.

I had taken some measurements prior to gunite going in because I was nervous that they'd be able to hit the water depths we wanted due to all of the mud that caved into the pool. For reference, there is probably 2-3 feet of gunite all around our tanning ledge that they had to shoot because that's how much it caved in - all that dirt ended up in the bottom of our pool. We actually ended up pretty close, and I'm happy with the thickness of the gunite that was shot.

By my estimates:

• Shallow end: Planned for 3.5 feet water depth, top of beam depth varies between 3' 10" to just over 4'
• Deep end: Planned for 5 feet water depth, top of beam depth probably maxes out to around 5ft or so to top of beam
• Other end: Planned for 4 feet water depth, top of beam depth varies between 4' 6" to 4' 3"

Subtracting 3" for waterline means the only thing that came up short is the deep end. That's a little bit of a bummer, but I was expecting that due to how much mud seeped in. I'm glad we're this close. At the end of the day, my wife and I are short, most 5 foot pools we get in we don't enjoy a ton, and I was more worried about the shallow sides coming in too shallow which would've been more noticeable.

Now for the fun numbers (gunite thickness):

• Around all 4 walls, there is a minimum of 12" of gunite. Our builder sets up the walls to all be 12" thick, but due to the cave ins our walls probably average closer to 18" or so.
• The tanning ledge has 2-3 feet of gunite on the walls due to cave-ins
• For the floor, by my best estimate, ranges from 7" to 12". Builder aims for 9-12" on the floors...so I do believe we came up a little short but I'm glad we did as they balanced depths pretty well. I know most builders around here only do 8-10" so I'm sure we have plenty.

Lastly, a few quick questions:

• There is a fair amount of loose "aggregate" (?) on the shell - sand, pebbles, dried bits of gunite...especially in the corners of the steps and such. Some of it dried enough to stick to the surface. I assume this is typical? Do I need to make sure it's all cleaned out before plaster?
• The steps and tanning ledge seem to be either flat or sloped slightly towards the back, where I'd expect them to be sloped towards the pool (downward). Is this correct?

For depth I measured from the floor to the top of the beam. Subtract 3” for water depth…granted that’s a little off since the plaster will have some thickness to it. Is that what you were asking about? I used a long framing level to make sure my measurement was level with the top of the beam even if I was measuring a few feet out.

For the gunite thickness estimates…I did similar except I took depth measurements from the soil line to top of the form boards…the subtracted the new measurements from that to get estimates gunite thickness.

Another month past. We did get the structure built, and electrical did come out and do some things.

Still hoping this week we get tile installed, and electrical is supposed to come back out and run service from the house. Their plumbers are still so backed up that they’re not expecting equipment will be installed until we are plastering. And they have (and have had) all of our equipment on hand.



I also finished an outdoor kitchen area that I’ve been working on…solid teak front with granite counters. Came out pretty nice!

Tile and coping done. We are out of town so having to watch through a security camera. Had my father in law go out (who used to build pools and still maintains them) check on everything. He sent me photos of the worst spots. Already forwarded to builder asking to see what we can do. Construction manager hasn’t been on site in weeks. Thoughts? I’m very much a practical person and if I was told the solution could make things worse I’m happy to live with it, but if they can effectively repair I’ll happily push. FIL said they probably won’t fix, but seems like atleast the corner on the tanning ledge I’ve seen fixed on this forum before?

Builder agreed to get the tile fixed. Also, they’re going to give us free tile stripes/borders on the 3 steps. A few steps forward!

Decking crew out today to do form boards, FINALLY. So many highs and lows with this builder:

Lows = no contact for weeks, they don't really "schedule" the next trade until the previous has finished, but all trades are weeks behind.
Highs = all their trades so far seem amazing and really care about what they do (except for maybe Tile + and their sloppy work, but I wasn't there TBD).

Deck crew were no different...that crews' super stayed on site all day, talked to me several times and had some great ideas. Also we learned that they're going to stamp the salt-finish on the concrete instead of just throwing salt on it, which we greatly prefer. Our home builder did typical thrown-salt salt finish and it's so un-even, we were tempted to do a different finish but wanted it to kinda match. The photos of their work is so much better. Hopefully that holds true! Photos for now...looks like I'm a little late with some of the video uploads I'll work on getting them up.

Decking poured today. Cleanup and final grade soon after. Right now our plaster date is October 20, which seems awfully far away, and PB is trying to push up. We'll see.

Made a last minute purchase of some Hide Skimmer Covers. Expensive as *** but glad we got them...we didn't realize the skimmers would interfere with a continuous turf line around the pool. Since the Hide covers are metal and don't have to mount centered over the skimmer, we were able to have them all the way to the edge of the concrete and keep the turf continuous. PS... if anyone reading wants some Pour-a-lid plastic covers - I have a bunch Round and square, both skimmer and auto-fill covers. I'll post them on the BTS forum later...but PM me if interested now.

Plaster today. As well as electrical. Lots at once.

Talked to builder about startup today. They use the plaster company's (which is 1 of 2 authorized WetEdge plaster companies in DFW) recommended startup company to handle the first 5 days of startup. This startup company uses the Orenda Startup procedure. I am not familiar with Orenda, but I do know the general consensus of this forum is to go with your pool builder's startup process...so we will follow along. From what I can tell, the Orenda method does seem like a sound process. Essentially they treat the pool water as it fills the pool, as opposed to after treating it.

Will post photos later!

Yeah @mknauss, I found/read that forum post. Couldn't gather much consensus on it. My pool builder doesn't use WetEdge often, and so they're basically just going with what their plaster company recommends and I'm sure I could tell them to do whatever. But they're going to pay for the startup company to do everything (which is not something they were planning on doing, I don't think they realized how involved Primera Stone startup was), which is nice as up until now I figured I'd be following the WetEdge 28-day startup process on my own.

Welp, the saga continues.

Let's play a game. Here's a freeze frame of the plaster at the end of the day yesterday. Can anyone spot the problem? (HINT: I'm rather blue about this mistake)




So, this is what our plaster was supposed to be:


WetEdge Sky Blue Treasure

And instead, they shot this:


WetEdge Sapphire Treasure


Yeah. Imagine the feeling thinking you were going to walk outside to a white pool....and well, you see that.


Long story short, our "pool" now looks like this:



This is after a bunch of grinding, chipping, and a bond coat as they prep to shoot the correct plaster at a To Be Determined date.


Should we have let them keep the Sapphire Treasure? A question that will forever haunt me.

Here's a play by play if you're so interested:

1. 6:00AM Plaster shows up before sunlight to clean the pool. They walk into the back yard, and see well, the pool is already cleaned. "Oh yeah, that's right, we sent someone a few days ago to clean the pool." Okay, there rest of the crew will be here in the PM

2. 8:00AM Electricians show up . Which is great, cuz the pool lights haven't been ran yet and plaster won't start shooting unless the lights are ran. So far, we have only had equipment set, and a rough-in at the patio cover, but no other electrical work done. They get to work. They're a hilarious bunch, my favorite subs so far.

3. 2:30PM Plaster crew shows up. Starts getting prepped and set up.

4. 3:38PM I hear the plaster rig spin up (my cue that they are about to start shooting). I've already checked their pebble mixture and everything looked right. So, I finish up my work call before I head outside.

5. 3:44PM (6 minutes later!) I walk outside to a blue pool. They have already shot 3/4 walls of the pool, the steps, and are starting on the tanning ledge. I yell "wrong color" and they look at my like I'm insane. I run inside, grab the plaster sample that I have and bring it outside to show them. Several obscenities are exchanged. The electricians standing nearby drop their tools and grab some popcorn.

The next 3 hours until we sit down for dinner (with some much needed alcohol) are a blur. We actually left the electricians at the house with attic access so they could finish their work, that's how much we didn't care at that point. Here's bullet points of what happened:

- "Sapphire Treasure" was a color we had originally selected, but the builder came back to us and recommend that we change it because they've had issues with it mottling. After much debate, we decided Sky Blue Treasure, which is the same stone/glass mixture, but with a white plaster base, would be best. Cooler in the summer, thought it'd look better with our turf/modern aesthetic, AND we changed our waterline tile after this to complement a white plaster.

- The sales manager submitted the change to the construction department, but the construction department never printed the updated selection sheet and put it in our paper file, which the paper file is what the scheduler users when she calls in orders, like for the plaster company.

- The pool builder pretty quickly recognized their fault (even though I didn't have great documentation of this change, since it wasn't a change order and not explicitly documented) and they offered to do whatever we wanted: Keep the plaster with extended warranty and cash back, or they would change the plaster to make it right.

We tried to convince ourselves all afternoon that we liked the color. But I think anyone will tell you that the way it was looking yesterday it completely clashed with our waterline tile:


Both of these photos make the plaster look kind of green/teal, where our waterline is very royal blue.

So, crew back out this morning chipping out the new/old plaster and putting on a bond coat. They chipped a lot of the tile getting the plaster out so they'll also have to come back and replace a bunch of tile. (also, notice how much bluer the plaster remnants look today vs yesterday , if they were this blue yesterday we might've kept it):



So...that's where we are now. One step forward, a few massive steps back.

Pool builder has been gracious and continues to assure us that they're going to make this right / etc, and so far I trust that they will. Granted, we're also now fully "paid" (assuming they still cash our last check) so we'll see how this goes. I think we at least have a lot of goodwill built up with them because we've been overly nice/understanding through this whole process - this was a Darn mistake by one person and it happens.

Update:
Re-tile scheduled for Monday (bringing enough tile to re-tile whole pool if they have to)
Re-plaster scheduled for Tuesday
Fill on Wednesday, using a 3rd party startup company (that specializes in startups for our plaster) that PB is paying for.

Here's photos of the equipment pad and electrical! They're going to come back and install a heater bypass when they install the SWG. I didn't realize they weren't planning on a heater bypass already...would be nice to have heater bypassed during startup but at least the Orenda process that the startup company uses should minimize plaster dust.