Hello everyone,
Frequent lurker, first time poster. We bought our house about a year an a half ago not knowing anything about pool care. I thankfully found this site fairly early on and learned a lot. However, the pool's plaster was already degraded, with gouges and crumbly bits all over and black algae an ever recurrent problem. I got the algae in check, but once the pool pump died, we decided to dive in and remodel to our tastes and our budget. We raised the depth, resurfaced with pebble sheen, and got a VS pump and SWG, all of which should be in my signature. The company we hired to do all of this quoted an outrageous (but probably typical) price to redo our deck with pavers, which is something we also wanted as our current kool deck is chipping away and stained. We decided to hold off on the deck and get everything else done, as with a dead pump our green pool/swamp was becoming a nuisance.
The remodel experience was frustrating, but when is it not when contractors are constantly on your property. They did, however, leave our deck in very poor condition, but we decided to let bygones be bygones as we had found a locally acclaimed independent concrete guy to resurface our deck with stamped concrete. He had told us previously that pouring concrete over a cantilevered coping (what we previously had) was difficult, so we had the first company saw-cut the cantilever coping and replace with a cap tile. Now that the independent concrete guy has seen the cap tile for the first time, he says it's not level and it'll require 2-3 days more work so that he can level it out, additional bond coat, etc... (something about flash drying...?) and an additional $1200-$1500.
The deep end cap tile is visibly above the level of the current concrete deck while the shallow end is not, and I measure about half an inch different from the top of the waterline tile to the actual water line from the shallow end to the deep end. He says there is an inch and a half difference for his purposes (I don't know what he's measuring exactly, and i'm obviously no expert). I know our deck could have been un-level to begin with, but I would have hoped the first company would have compensated for this when placing the waterline/cap tile. If this is actually a problem I am looking to pursue monetary compensation for the additional cost from the first company, if they, in fact, did it wrong. I wasn't particularly happy with their work to begin with and am more inclined to believe the independent concrete guy who actually informed me of a problem, disrupted his schedule to do so, and is willing to put his opinion out to the other company to help my case. However, I thought I'd try here first, to get an an unbiased opinion from someone who doesn't have a monetary interest in my property! I've attached a few pictures, to get an idea of the overall pool, and a couple shots of the saw cuts and raised cap tiles. Keep in mind the concrete guy cleaned the deck while he was here, so it looks much better than it was.
Frequent lurker, first time poster. We bought our house about a year an a half ago not knowing anything about pool care. I thankfully found this site fairly early on and learned a lot. However, the pool's plaster was already degraded, with gouges and crumbly bits all over and black algae an ever recurrent problem. I got the algae in check, but once the pool pump died, we decided to dive in and remodel to our tastes and our budget. We raised the depth, resurfaced with pebble sheen, and got a VS pump and SWG, all of which should be in my signature. The company we hired to do all of this quoted an outrageous (but probably typical) price to redo our deck with pavers, which is something we also wanted as our current kool deck is chipping away and stained. We decided to hold off on the deck and get everything else done, as with a dead pump our green pool/swamp was becoming a nuisance.
The remodel experience was frustrating, but when is it not when contractors are constantly on your property. They did, however, leave our deck in very poor condition, but we decided to let bygones be bygones as we had found a locally acclaimed independent concrete guy to resurface our deck with stamped concrete. He had told us previously that pouring concrete over a cantilevered coping (what we previously had) was difficult, so we had the first company saw-cut the cantilever coping and replace with a cap tile. Now that the independent concrete guy has seen the cap tile for the first time, he says it's not level and it'll require 2-3 days more work so that he can level it out, additional bond coat, etc... (something about flash drying...?) and an additional $1200-$1500.
The deep end cap tile is visibly above the level of the current concrete deck while the shallow end is not, and I measure about half an inch different from the top of the waterline tile to the actual water line from the shallow end to the deep end. He says there is an inch and a half difference for his purposes (I don't know what he's measuring exactly, and i'm obviously no expert). I know our deck could have been un-level to begin with, but I would have hoped the first company would have compensated for this when placing the waterline/cap tile. If this is actually a problem I am looking to pursue monetary compensation for the additional cost from the first company, if they, in fact, did it wrong. I wasn't particularly happy with their work to begin with and am more inclined to believe the independent concrete guy who actually informed me of a problem, disrupted his schedule to do so, and is willing to put his opinion out to the other company to help my case. However, I thought I'd try here first, to get an an unbiased opinion from someone who doesn't have a monetary interest in my property! I've attached a few pictures, to get an idea of the overall pool, and a couple shots of the saw cuts and raised cap tiles. Keep in mind the concrete guy cleaned the deck while he was here, so it looks much better than it was.
