Search results

If you didn’t have drainage problems prior to building the pool, from an ethics or integrity perspective, you can challenge your builder, but the terms of your agreement will probably govern whether you have a legal case or not. Personally, based on the builder’s stance, I’d look to someone else...

We have a Katchaleaf cover, which isn’t a safety net, but is necessary in our yard to keep leaves out in the fall, as our pool is surrounded by lots of trees. They have a safety net add-on that is called Katchakid. We have a freeform pool and spa and the cover is custom fit. We’ve had it for...

I always look for seating/entertainment space around the pool and it looks as if you have plenty! I’ve seen so many pools where builders concentrated on getting the largest possible pool but ignored the surrounding space leaving very little gathering space. With an outdoor kitchen, we use our...

This is significant and often overlooked. We ended up with the highest bidder on our pool because of the attention to elevation and flooding. Prior to building our pool, it had taken years to get the drainage correct so that our yard wouldn’t flood. Most homes our our cul-de-sac have a pool and...

You might want to check out Claffey Pools out of Southlake. They built our pool 15 years ago and I can’t say enough good things about them. I know they have services like what you describe, but don’t know if they only provide them for pools they original built or not.

I couldn’t agree more. A salt water pool isn’t corrosive like many builders will tell you - the salt content is less than 10% of the salt content of sea water, so it’s more like your tears. You’ll also enjoy the feel of the water. And the luxury of not buying and storing chlorine??? Truly a...

That’s a beautiful design! As a point of comparison, we spent right around $100k 15 years ago for 25,500 gallon diving pool. We have quite a bit of decking, with 3 distinct patio areas and an outdoor kitchen. We pretty quickly weeded through some of the builders and narrowed it down to 2...

I had my mastic replaced a year or 2 ago and it was set within a day or 2. Properly mixed and installed mastic shouldn’t take weeks to set.

That’s a lot of gravel! Well done by your builder! When we had our pool built 15 years ago, Claffey didn’t normally put a gravel base down, but I insisted. I didn’t get THAT kind of coverage!

That seems like a great price in this environment. As recommended above, get a SWCG. I wouldn’t own a pool without one. It will reduce your pool maintenance time drastically and you’ll be able to enjoy the pool more. I’d also recommend that you get as much decking as possible. Make sure you have...

Beautiful design! Our builder was out of Southlake (Claffey Pools) and they did a fantastic job. I didn’t see the name of your builder, but if it’s Claffey, you’ll be happy with your decision.

Love your decking! Enjoy the pool!

These are all cedar elms from virtually the same area you’re in. Yes, they drop small leaves and worse, they put out even smaller seeds by the millions in the spring and fall. I also have a couple of red oaks not in the picture but on the other side of the pool. I have to clean the filter more...

Definitely feels like we’ve gone through the looking glass. We rebuilt our outdoor kitchen this past year and it was pretty pricey, but I think it’s only gotten worse. I don’t really believe that costs have increased as much as there is just a lot of pent up demand among people with...

I have a side pressure cleaner that picks up relatively fine debris, but I don’t know about sand. Most on this site will recommend a robot, like a Dolphin. Reports are that they do a great job with fine debris.

In regards to chlorination, I wouldn’t own a pool without a SWCG. I also struggled with pH rise for years, but then someone on this forum recommended lowering my TA from 70 to 50 or 60. It worked! My pH still rises, but not nearly as rapidly as it used to. I’m sure many others will weigh in on...

I doubt that white noise from a water feature would have much of an impact. I believe pitch/frequency are also factors and the barking would be at a different level. That bark control emitter is genius!

Some can, but I think they need a “chiller” mode, so if that’s what you’re after, make sure that it includes that mode. If you are primarily interested in cooling, you may want to consider an evaporative chiller, which costs much less to operate than a heat pump with a chiller mode. A heat pump...

What’s on the backside of the coping where it drops the 5” to the ground? If that’s a layer of concrete, I wonder if they could put hooks in or even the same kind of anchor that gets embedded into concrete decking. Your hooks from the net would just need to loop over to the back instead of...

We had a 2nd home in a retirement community that we sold recently. The running joke was that every time you heard an ambulance, you knew a used golf cart was about to be on the market.

And I thought we had a long wait. Our project is pretty small, especially compared to yours, as we’re just tearing out our existing uncovered kitchen and bar area and rebuilding it with a small, shed-style cover. We signed the contract back in April and had our pre-construction meeting...

The chiller itself isn’t expensive to run because the only power draw is a fan motor. However, the pool pump also must be running when running the chiller. I run my pump 17 hours a day during the summer to keep the water cool. If you let the water heat up, it can take a couple of days or more to...

I would have added a chiller as part of the original build. I finally added one several years later, but before I added it, our water temp would hit mid-90s by mid-summer and no one was enjoying the pool.

Our neighbors let us use their driveway for some of the heavy equipment path to our backyard to prevent destruction of our front lawn. We treated them to a VERY nice dinner out and I have smoked a turkey for them on several Thanksgivings. It’s always good to acknowledge anything your neighbors...

Completely different scenario, as our pool was built in ‘07, but builder was claiming he couldn’t get the sump pump we needed for drainage. I got online and found one in OKC and had it shipped. Saved a month based on what the builder was telling me.

Love the design - especially the spa and it’s spillover. Very unique!

I paid roughly $3500 - completely installed, including electrical work and adding to the automation system. That was around 5 years ago. If you can do the installation yourself, I think the chiller alone was around $2k.

As long as you have equipment space, adding a chiller after the initial build is viable. That’s what we did, but only because I didn’t know they existed until I started searching for a way to cool the pool. It got to where we didn’t really enjoy getting in the pool once we got to the middle of...

Our pool is surrounded by trees so a mesh cover is a necessity. We went with the Katchaleaf version which won’t support a person, but does a great job of keeping debris out of the pool. It is custom fit with anchors in the concrete. We put a couple of styrofoam floats underneath for additional...

Our pool is almost 15 years old, so I’ll leave it to others to advise on current technology. Since you’re in north Texas, one thing you may want to think about is a chiller, especially if your pool will have full sun exposure. It was by far the best investment we made in our pool. We added it...