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Being in Arizona, our primary consideration was how hot the coping/decking would feel to the touch. We went with tumbled travertine because it is much cooler than concrete pavers and cools off almost instantly if you splash water on it or put shade over it. We were concerned about how slippery...

Based on my limited experience, the PBs I talked with seem to use linear feet or square feet as a shortcut for pricing. The shotcrete company we used simply charged by the cubic yard, and it didn't matter whether the shotcrete was being applied to walls, benches, floor, or raised wall for water...

Re: New Owner Build Pool with Rock Blasting - Loomis, CA What are the four holes for that lead down the slope towards your deep end?

So far we love our fake grass. Green with no maintenance - of course keeping things green may not be as big of a hassle in California. It is considerably hotter in the sun than real grass. On hot sunny days we'll burn our feet if we are not wearing shoes. Supposedly you can spray it down and it...

You probably know that costs (and thus potential cost-savings) vary quite a bit by region. For what it is worth, here in southern AZ I paid for 40 yards of shotcrete at $150/yd and $2,520 for white plaster as part of my OB 16x32 pool+spa. Your best bet may be to call shotcrete and plaster...

Re: New Pool IG - Inland Empire, CA - Stonework! (cautiously moving forward)- I learned some of the same lessons in my build - they always give you way too optimistic timeline for finishing the build, and for some reason they underestimate the materials needed. I noticed my contractors...

The snarky and vitriolic post that I was responding to has now been completely removed by the mods or by that poster, which makes my first post (now listed as post #7, originally it was #8) a little out of context. I appreciate TFP and all of the posts aimed at educating others and avoiding...

Like Isaac-1 said, the big concern seems to be potential damage to stone coping/decking from the salt. You hear stories of some PBs refusing to do both SWG and travertine - you have to pick one or the other with them. If you google the issue, most of the travertine sellers include disclaimers...

Wow. Really surprised at the venom aimed at the OP. I don't think he is suggesting anyone not follow the TFP-approved process, just explaining what he has done so far. I ordered the test kit, and my pool consultant also threw in a container of test strips. I don't blame the OP for not wanting...

I agree with the others. Don't fight the elevation drop. I don't know how much space you have, but having a terraced look with decks, spa, pool at different heights could look really nice. You could add a swim-up bar/kitchen area on the downhill side of the pool.

Re: New Pool IG - Inland Empire, CA - Stonework! (cautiously moving forward)- The curve looks great in the picture. I think having chiseled edges really helps avoid the octagon look.

Everything is possible... it just may cost someone (hopefully not you) more money to do it right. Hopefully their solution of extending the retaining wall solves any problems, or they can come up with another solution that will.

About local inspectors - I had one PB suggest that his design would have a large "landscape rock" instead of a jumping rock so that it could pass inspections. Not only is your depth a little shallow for my tastes, but I would be worried about kids jumping from your rock and going just a little...

Very cool design. With that surface area but only 18,000 gallons, do you not have a deep end? Your design has a lot of enticing rocks to jump from and plenty of space, so I'd make sure there was a deep end somewhere. I would also want to make sure there was plenty of above-water lighting to...

Ours was always going to be + or - a few inches. Did you upgrade to 9' to the waterline, or to the coping? It seems to me that if you specifically upgraded from 8' to 9', and the PB only got about half-way there, you should get back at least half of the upgrade cost.

I assume you are thinking shotcrete/gunite, like most pools in AZ, and I think you can absolutely do an Owner Build. There are lots of recent owner-builds in the Phoenix area on this site and others who you can find via google. Send them a message or wait for them to comment, and I bet someone...

My pool is 32' long with one LED light at the end. It is ok, but we wish we had a second light at the other end. We have white plaster, which is supposed to help, so your light needs may be greater with blue pebbletec. For location, the advice is usually point lights away from your seating...

Our consultant assured us that one light in the pool was enough. Depending on which color is on, it meets the minimum needs, but we are definitely wishing we had added at least one more light. Its enough to get by for now, but my wife is already asking "if/when we redo the plaster in 10-15...

Thanks. Luckily his fee was relatively low. -- edit -- To be fair, he was very nice, some of the challenges of working with him we knew about up front, he had some unexpected family emergencies come up during our build, and our build did not fit inside his standard, bread-and-butter...

At this point, we were at about the middle of June and would be leaving town for 10 days for the 4th of July. We were trying to get as much done beforehand as we could, but ended up at the mercy of materials and sub availability. Our tile guy could fit in the coping job, but it would be...

They were having so much fun that it was a struggle to get them to take a break for supper. They sure slept good that night.

Thanks Helen. We were told a couple of times along the way that we were making design mistakes, and our consultant tried hard to convince us to change the design. He ​really did not like a rock grotto/waterfall with an otherwise geometric pool, and I was worried he might be right since we...

After the grotto, we entered the excruciatingly slow phase of tile/stacked stone/coping/decking. Before the build even started, we picked out tile at NPT, and thought that we had just a generic, simple tile. Since each PB has their own individual markups, NPT wouldn't tell us the price and would...

A few days after shotcrete, the grotto guys got to work. They used a backhoe to lift the large flagstone cap over the wall and into place, but then had a pile of boulders they positioned by hand. My goal was to avoid having an odd thumb of rock/grotto stick up from the edge of the pool, so...

Shotcrete had a bigger backlog than our consultant expected, but it allowed us to fix a major problem with our grotto. Even back in the initial design phase I had been asking our consultant/designer "which subs do we need to talk to now to make sure we are taking into account their...

Going back to finish this build thread .... Plumbing was mostly non-eventful, and mostly happened while I was busy at work. If I had been on top of things, I probably should have had them do a full loop around the pool for the returns. Oh well. We also told him we weren't using salt water, but...

Re: A few off measurements after pool was shot. The plaster layer is relatively thin, so you aren't going to move things as far as you want just by adding plaster. You might be able to get the step measurements closer, but for 1.5" difference you are probably better off either adding or...

Our HOA was much more restrictive on setbacks than the Town of Marana, and both were easy to get variances from when our layout and dig ended up a little over the lines. I don't know your intended use for the pool, if you have kids, or how deep your deep-end is, but I would consider adding...

Just finished my owner build with no prior experience working directly with contractors. If I ever build pool 2.0, I would still get quotes from PBs, but expect to end up doing an OB again. Most of the issues I worried about before the build ended up not being issues, and it was things I didn't...

Whatever you pay, it's effectively 100% profit for your pool builder or subcontractor. For my owner-build, we picked out 2x2 step markers, and NPT's invoice came in at under $5 for the tile. Between ordering them and plaster day, they got lost. When plaster guys showed up bright and early, I was...