22 May 2024 Update Problem: need Spa Jets help please!

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setsailsoon said:
Folks,

I definitely picked about the most difficult time to build a house and pool. Price and delivery time for almost everything are so wonky that we had to do a lot more direct bidding and hard quotes to confirm we can afford to build the house as planned and that it will reasonably appraise for that cost or more. That's all finally behind us so we're moving ahead with permits for the house and awarding some of the major contracts over the next few weeks. We'll also be completing the detailed design for the pool and begin to get the same financial information on the pool before we commit. DIY has given us a preliminary estimate but given the situation I think this is prudent. I'll update as we get pricing for the major subs.

Chris
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It’s crazy in my area. All my buddy’s and my dad’s friends are presently in the trades. A lot of them are saying they r pretty much telling people we will bill you for material when it arrives and their time is hourly. They aren’t even giving estimates cause the days end up being so wonky they can’t give estimates. Some days they get a ton done others nothing cause of material. And doing it this way hasn’t touched business. They are all jammed all day everyday. It’s into the winter here and the outside guys are still going. My good friend who builds kitchens, furniture, steps, and thing else a custom shop can do has no room to move in it and it’s a gigantic warehouse. He hs stuff shoved everywhere. They are non stop. It’s nuts. My other good friend who is a general contractor is doing 4 jobs we’re people didn’t even ask for estimates. People are spending here. I don’t know how bit they are. I don’t get it. I’m packing it away like a squirrel cause who knows what will happen. Takes me 80 dollars every few days to fill my Jeep.

Good luck! I love the process as those who know me on here. It’s in my family’s blood but I wouldn’t want the stress. I have been waiting 3 months for all new smokes for my house from our one distributer.
 
setsailsoon said:
Folks,

I definitely picked about the most difficult time to build a house and pool. Price and delivery time for almost everything are so wonky that we had to do a lot more direct bidding and hard quotes to confirm we can afford to build the house as planned and that it will reasonably appraise for that cost or more. That's all finally behind us so we're moving ahead with permits for the house and awarding some of the major contracts over the next few weeks. We'll also be completing the detailed design for the pool and begin to get the same financial information on the pool before we commit. DIY has given us a preliminary estimate but given the situation I think this is prudent. I'll update as we get pricing for the major subs.

Chris
Click to expand...
When we lost the house (fire) last year right after covid, I decided it wouldnt be worth it to rebuild. We bought another one and I feel like it was the best decision I made for the money. I dont think I'd of been able to get it rebuilt due to the cost of everything.
 
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Folks,

Here's the progress for the house and pool for December:
  • Got our septic permit. Yes!! This is critical for the entire build since it sets the grade for the entire project and identifies the water table location.
  • The building permit was submitted on the 6th and has completed most of the discipline reviews. I need to submit a couple additional drawings that were awaiting the septic to set the slab elevation. I'll be running down a number of findings but all are pretty minor (such as left out smoke detector in the quilt room). If all goes well we'll get this approved by end of December.
  • Excavation bids will be due 1st week of Jan. Should be able to select and award excavation by end of Jan.
  • Next big milestone is starting the slab - hopefully Feb.
  • Will purchase the detailed pool design this month or next month. No big hurry on this other than knowing where the underground work will have to be planned for.
  • Lumber is going crazy again. This year it went all the way up to unaffordium levels of 4-5 times normal. Two months ago it bottomed out at about 20% above normal. Jan 22 is forecast to be 2x again. We have flexibility to slide truss lumber as late as March if needed.
  • As mentioned several times before it's amazing how much has to be ordered up front because of supply chain issues. These include:
    • Trusses (already ordered and in detail design now)
    • Roof materials
    • Cabinets
    • Windows and exterior doors (including garage doors)
    • CMU block
    • Flooring
    • Roof sheathing and framing components
  • There are some slight indications the world may be getting a little normal. Appliance delivery is way better than just a few months ago except Wolf brand stoves which are 8 months! We don't have this so we are price covered until late Feb order and we can actually defer ordering to at least March.
Jan 22 is shaping up for ground breaking at this point. Finally! If all goes well we'll be starting excavation for the pool just before summer.

Chris
 
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So sad to say we've had a couple covid delays. There were a few submittals required for my building permit and sequential cases by critical people cost me about 3 weeks! First we were required to add some information on a site clearing plan and grading plan. My architect needed to update this but got covid. He is over 65 and has serious risk factors that made his doctors order some kind of special antibody injections in Orlando. He's really a great guy and was trying to fit us in to his schedule but we told him to get his health addressed and we'd wait. Once he got done we had to get the surveyor to update a drawing then you guessed it... He got covid! A couple days later we got this done too. We also learned a lot the hard way about the building department review cycle. It's a great system but first time through it can be tough. So what happens is you make all applications and any required revisions electronically by uploading drawings and documents into your account on their site. This triggers a multi-discipline review and takes 7-10 business days. While it's being reviewed you can't submit any updates. With covid the review cycle is a little longer but eventually you get an email with OK to submit updates and revisions. I made the mistake of updating a document before my final grading plan was ready. This meant I had to wait an extra cycle. Finally got the OK email today and uploaded what I hope is the final document today... building permit is so close I can taste it! The reason I mention this is it may be worthwhile for anybody submitting an OB application to talk with the administrator to make sure you know the details about how the process works so you don't shoot self in foot like I did.

So here's the next challenge I discovered today. Since I'm so close on the permit I've gotten everything ready to go with the grading prep for excavation. The surveyor had marked elevations and corner stakes for the cuts. It looked like the slab location was way too low relative to other slabs close by so I got the contractor to meet me at the site. He agreed and thought we needed to re-survey. That would take at least a week or two. So I used my zip level to check the levels from existing benchmarks and then compare my slab to both neighbors. All the elevations were actually correct and the problem is the septic permitting department set the elevation way too low. We should be able to get a verbal approval since we're going higher not lower. Fingers crossed we don't need to revise the application before it's approved. If you've never used a zip level and you're a diy type you should check this thing out! It's amazing easily and quickly measures elevation difference of 1mm in 100'! Also can handle over 20' elevation change very easily. What's best of all is you can do it all by yourself. No helper needed. The excavation contractor was amazed.

In parallel with the house structure I'll be having two wells drilled at the rear of the property. There are over 200 homes in this community and everybody is on well water. I've found out the water is worse than just very hard (~18 gr/gal). It appears a lot of wells have iron, tannin, and some also have sulfur. This is clearly going to impact the pool as well. So I'll need more than a softener and am researching best options and will probably a separate iron removal bed and possible tannin filter.

Regardless of how these items get addressed we should be ready to start excavation and the foundation, block, and roof framing contractors are ready to go in sequence. This means I'll finally be able to start work on the pool building permit also!

Chris
 
You might want to ask the well driller how deep they are going. My neighbors well was terrible (only about 40’ deep). Had rust stains on the sidewalk everywhere. When I had my well done, they went 135’ deep. The water is better. You are never going to get good well water in Florida, but you might be able to get less bad.
 
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See if your nearest neighbors will give you a couple of bottles of well water from their taps (closet to the well would be best) and then have the water tested. That’ll give you an idea of what you’re dealing with and the ability to spec a filtration system better.

Tannins can be reduced by going with a deeper well but sulfur is really bad. Sulfur can poison a exchange resin bed. If you do have sulfur in appreciable levels then you might need to go with a super fancy (aka, expensive) RO system. You’ll need to plan for that as it typically requires a 200 gallon water storage tank in your garage and a booster pump to pressurize your household plumbing.

Consider a rain harvesting tank on site hooked up unto your roof gutters. Rain water is free of all contaminants and it’s plentiful where you are …
 

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kimkats said:
What a roller coaster for sure! Glad you have figured out the cycle but still what a pain :roll:


Why 2?

@JoyfulNoise might have some ideas on the water treatment filters. That sounds like it is going to need to be a couple of filters.
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Yep, it's been a ride but all in all it's not too bad if you back out the covid and holiday delays it's still about 30 days. Just frustrating when I was in the middle of it. So why 2 wells? It's weird but most people have a sulfur well and an iron well. All well drillers with experience in the area are doing it this way. There are about 300 homes in this area and about 3 well drilling companies... it's kind of a racket because if you search around it's easy to find 15 or more "well drilling" companies but when you quiz them most they are really "well treatment companies" and they sub out to the 3 real drillers and of course they mark up the well 50% or more. My previous experience with wells tells me to only use drillers with experience in the area if at all possible. The water table around here is 5-6' below like most parts of Florida and wells are 30-175' deep. It seems all go into the same aquifer. The sulfur well is used to run irrigation and the iron goes to the house.. I kid you not! I think it's stupid because I would think it makes more sense to just treat the well appropriately for the service. I'm getting a sample of my neighbor's wells that will be about 12-15' from mine. I've looked and smelled water from several homes prior to treatment. Some are slightly sulfur smelling and several have a very slight tint of rust color after sitting a while. Well depths vary a lot also. Some around 50', quite a few at 90' and several 130-150. People have a wide range of treatments including chlorine injection, carbon oxidation beds, birm, and katalox. I'm thinking to go with Katalox. It has the widest range of pH, iron, and sulfur removal plus no chemicals to inject. I'll follow this with a salt based softener. Would be interesting to see what @JoyfulNoise thinks about this approach. Total hardness seems to run 10-15 gr/gal in the area.

Chris
 
JoyfulNoise said:
See if your nearest neighbors will give you a couple of bottles of well water from their taps (closet to the well would be best) and then have the water tested. That’ll give you an idea of what you’re dealing with and the ability to spec a filtration system better.

Tannins can be reduced by going with a deeper well but sulfur is really bad. Sulfur can poison a exchange resin bed. If you do have sulfur in appreciable levels then you might need to go with a super fancy (aka, expensive) RO system. You’ll need to plan for that as it typically requires a 200 gallon water storage tank in your garage and a booster pump to pressurize your household plumbing.

Consider a rain harvesting tank on site hooked up unto your roof gutters. Rain water is free of all contaminants and it’s plentiful where you are …
Click to expand...
On yeah, a rain tank... that would make my wife's eyebrows flutter which is never good. What do you think about katalox bed filter? They claim to be good up to 15 ppm sulfur and 30 ppm iron. I expect we're at 2-3 iron and about 1 sulfur. But will confirm with neighbor's water I'll test next week. Nobody out there has an ro for whole house and I hope I can avoid it but I plan to use under counter units in the kitchen. I've had superb results with them here in Florida for years. I use i.t for drinking water and the ice machine in the fridge.

Chris
 
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setsailsoon said:
On yeah, a rain tank... that would make my wife's eyebrows flutter which is never good. What do you think about katalox bed filter? They claim their good up to 15 ppm sulfur and 30 ppm iron. I expect we're at 2-3 iron and about 1 sulfur. But will confirm with neighbor's water I'll test next week. Nobody out there has an ro for whole house and I hope I can avoid it but I plan to use under counter units in the kitchen. I've had superb results with them here in Florida for years. I use i.t for drinking water and the ice machine in the fridge.

Chris
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I can totally see the utility of having two wells as it's very similar to what's done around here for irrigation. Municipal suppliers run two lines - potable drinking water (very high $$$$) and non-potable reclaim water, or grey water (lower $$$$). If Tuscon water supplies grey water to an area (which it does not in my case :mad::mad::mad:) then you hook up your irrigation system (aka, "irritation" system) to it and you pay a much lower price per gallon. Using highly treated potable drinking water to irrigate potted plants with is just plain wasteful .... which is why my irrigation system has been shut off for a few years now. In your case it's a similar cost/benefit argument - why use treated, deep well water that is lower in iron and sulfide when you can drill a shallow well and just use that garbage water to irrigate with? No one cares that your lawn smells like rotten eggs, just that it looks green and you don't waste good water on it!!

As for your filtration situation, the Katalox filter media is probably fine. The upside of Katalox is that it doesn't (always) require chemical injection (either permanganate or chlorine) which many people find to be a pain in the keister. The downside is that the resin bed is solely relying on passive catalytic oxidation which can be very sensitive to pH and flow rate. You'll want to get a very good reading of the well water pH because catalytic media like Katalox typically require higher pH (above 8.0) to be very efficient. If your well water is very acidic, it might still need chemical injection of sodium hydroxide to raise the pH.

And yes, you definitely want to have your mineral hardness removed AFTER iron removal. A good sized salt-based ion exchange system, perhaps with a granulated active carbon filter as well, will go a long way to keeping your pool (and household plumbing) in good shape. You just want to make sure that you do a really good job on maintaining the iron pre filter because iron and manganese will poison an ion exchange resin irreversibly. I would even suggest that you use a softener salt that has sodium hexametaphosphate (SHMP) in it to keep the resin bed as iron free as possible. There are liquid additives that you can use also with a salt system that add a resin cleaner.
 
Posting so I can follow this thread. I got sucked in while reading and it seems like it’s quite an endeavor. Can’t wait to see the progress. Sounds like it’s going to be amazing @setsailsoon
 
JoyfulNoise said:
I can totally see the utility of having two wells as it's very similar to what's done around here for irrigation. Municipal suppliers run two lines - potable drinking water (very high $$$$) and non-potable reclaim water, or grey water (lower $$$$). If Tuscon water supplies grey water to an area (which it does not in my case :mad::mad::mad:) then you hook up your irrigation system (aka, "irritation" system) to it and you pay a much lower price per gallon. Using highly treated potable drinking water to irrigate potted plants with is just plain wasteful .... which is why my irrigation system has been shut off for a few years now. In your case it's a similar cost/benefit argument - why use treated, deep well water that is lower in iron and sulfide when you can drill a shallow well and just use that garbage water to irrigate with? No one cares that your lawn smells like rotten eggs, just that it looks green and you don't waste good water on it!!

As for your filtration situation, the Katalox filter media is probably fine. The upside of Katalox is that it doesn't (always) require chemical injection (either permanganate or chlorine) which many people find to be a pain in the keister. The downside is that the resin bed is solely relying on passive catalytic oxidation which can be very sensitive to pH and flow rate. You'll want to get a very good reading of the well water pH because catalytic media like Katalox typically require higher pH (above 8.0) to be very efficient. If your well water is very acidic, it might still need chemical injection of sodium hydroxide to raise the pH.

And yes, you definitely want to have your mineral hardness removed AFTER iron removal. A good sized salt-based ion exchange system, perhaps with a granulated active carbon filter as well, will go a long way to keeping your pool (and household plumbing) in good shape. You just want to make sure that you do a really good job on maintaining the iron pre filter because iron and manganese will poison an ion exchange resin irreversibly. I would even suggest that you use a softener salt that has sodium hexametaphosphate (SHMP) in it to keep the resin bed as iron free as possible. There are liquid additives that you can use also with a salt system that add a resin cleaner.
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Very helpful Matt, thanks much! For a one-well system I was thinking to bypass the softener for irrigation to keep from getting iron stains where we get over spray on the house but maybe a better solution is just use drip around the house and use the sulfur so I can reduce elemental sulfur addition to soil. I'll check pH again to double check but at the previous house mine has always been pretty basic, around 8 but not much higher. Farmers and landscapers add elemental sulfur to try to reduce soil pH. Not sure why it's so high but maybe from the limestone formations underground? Wells are not all that expensive around here, about $2000 for the well not including the pump so maybe makes sense to have two anyway so I've got a backup or duel use as you mention. Also a little cheaper since there's only one mobilization of the rig and one permit fee.

Chris

PS water table at my site based on soil borings is about 60".
 
kul said:
Posting so I can follow this thread. I got sucked in while reading and it seems like it’s quite an endeavor. Can’t wait to see the progress. Sounds like it’s going to be amazing @setsailsoon
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Thanks Kul, I hope to soon be breaking ground. Checking Monday to see if I can drill the wells before getting the building permit. I think all that's required to do the wells is a septic permit which I already have. If that's the case I may have photos of the drilling operation next week. We'd like to get them drilled before excavation and foundation.

Chris
 
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Folks,

I'll be drilling 2 wells either this week or next and I'd like to get at least one of them rigged up to supply construction needs so I need to make decisions on treatment for at least one of the wells. Everybody in my area has a softener downstream of an iron/sulfur removal system but iron/sulfur treatment use vary widely. People seem to be able to avoid iron by going deeper than 100' but at this level they have sulfur (rotten egg H2S). Some do one well others do two with a "sulfur well" and an "iron well". There are several ways this is being dealt with and below summarizes treatment options as I understand them. I'd appreciate any comments to help with my selection:

Air Oxidizing Systems use air or dissolved oxygen to oxidize soluble iron and sulfur then "trap" insoluble form in bed and backwash to remove.
  • Birm can be used for the iron removal in shallower wells and works well for this except very shallow wells where iron is pretty high. Also this doesn't work at all for sulfur wells because sulfur removes the catalytic coating.
  • Catalytic carbon is very common and works for moderate iron and sulfur levels. But it's more pH sensitive. This isn't really a problem since our pH falls right in the sweet spot for catalytic carbon.
  • Katalox is a media that works similar to Catalytic carbon but has a proprietary coating that works on higher levels of iron and sulfur plus it has a wider pH range.
Chemical Oxidizing Systems work similar to air but use a different oxidizing agent
  • Chlorine injection oxidizes with chlorine via an injector pump then has a pressure cylinder that traps the insoluble forms of H2S and iron. It appears quite a few homes use this.
  • There is a peroxide version but I can't find anyone that uses it, it's expensive, and I don't know where to get a good supply of peroxide.
My Thoughts and Questions:
  1. Birm, catalytic carbon, and Katalox are all about in order of cost with Birm being slightly lower and they are all $1000-$2000. Media last 3-5 years for iron and sulfur, media for softeners last over 10 years. Catalytic carbon is probably the most prevalent in the neighborhood and there are a few Katalox systems.
  2. Chlorine injection is good since it provides bacterial protection but it does require chlorine addition. Doesn't seem to be a big problem to find chlorine and it only requires fill every other month or less
  3. It seems I can get a sulfur well with no iron by drilling deeper (over 100') and an iron well with no sulfur at about 70'. Incremental cost of well is ~$500.
  4. Birm is eliminated since I could end up with sulfur even if it isn't apparent initially. I'm leaning toward Katalox since it's so versatile and almost no maintenance. We'll have under counter RO for drinking water do bacteria and most viruses are rejected here. But I'm still a little uneasy about no chlorine. The entire development uses septic systems for each house but wells are way deeper and locations are regulated to provide good separation from septic systems. Wells last so long that cost of well isn't all that significant so I think it makes sense to go with deeper well for both wells. In a pinch I could always irrigate with sulfur water and drink it after it gasses off if I ever have a failure of treatment system but Iron could be a big problem in the pool even for short periods of time.
  5. Are there any other systems that might be practical other than whole house RO (super expensive).
I'd appreciate your thoughts/comments on any of this, especially my rationale and decision in item 4.

Thanks much!

Chris
 

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