This thread is going to be the diary of my pool build. I wish I had started this thread sooner but I haven't had time with having to get bids, lining up contractors, getting permits, and scheduling.
Here is a little background on the situation. The girlfriend really wanted a pool/spa but after talking to a few pool builders we were getting the feeling that we were being taken advantage of. We are modest people though, and were not looking for anything extravagant but all of the pool builders acted like we were just gonna pay anything they quoted. The base prices for their pools actually were not too bad, but every change really seemed to add up and the idea of a pool quickly seemed like it would never happen. We decided that maybe it was time to think about doing it ourselves. It just so happened that we met somebody who built their own pool and it saved them a ton of money and they had a great looking pool for about half the price it would have cost through a pool company. We started asking around and found several people who built their pools themselves but it had been several years and things change so we decided to hit the library and read some books on it. At this point it seemed like it was going to be impossible because all of the books said different things and none of them were really tailored to our locality, which by the way is Las Vegas NV. We decided to just try and jump into it all by contacting an engineer. The engineer we contacted asked if we had the pool designed yet and we told him that we had some ideas but not permanent yet. So he told us about a pool designer(draftsman) that would not only design our pool, but also walk us through building it step by step. Now we were feeling like we had no idea what we were doing since we weren't even talking to the right people yet. We must have sounded like total idiots. We made an appointment to talk to this designer and it went great. All of our fears were put to rest and the originally $42,000 pool is now closer to a $50,000 pool that will only cost us $25-28,000 by doing it ourselves. We could have done it for much less but we want to do the infloor cleaning system, salt chlorinator, as well as install a couple bullfrog jetpaks in the spa.
So tomorrow we have the digger coming out with a mini-bobcat to dig the hole. This of course cost more money with the mini-bobcat because it takes them longer but it is our only choice because we have a very small access gate. Hopefully the HOA and Master Association don't notice construction going on since we don't have their approval yet, but we did get our permits from the county. I will be taking pictures every step of the way and will be posting them in this thread. If anybody wants pictures of specific items, feel free to ask and I will be sure to post them as well. I better get to bed...and pray for no caliche
Costs at this point
$900 designer
$250 engineer
$200 sanitation department
$650 permits
$120 tile
$40 tank of gas running around looking for tile and getting permits
Here is a little background on the situation. The girlfriend really wanted a pool/spa but after talking to a few pool builders we were getting the feeling that we were being taken advantage of. We are modest people though, and were not looking for anything extravagant but all of the pool builders acted like we were just gonna pay anything they quoted. The base prices for their pools actually were not too bad, but every change really seemed to add up and the idea of a pool quickly seemed like it would never happen. We decided that maybe it was time to think about doing it ourselves. It just so happened that we met somebody who built their own pool and it saved them a ton of money and they had a great looking pool for about half the price it would have cost through a pool company. We started asking around and found several people who built their pools themselves but it had been several years and things change so we decided to hit the library and read some books on it. At this point it seemed like it was going to be impossible because all of the books said different things and none of them were really tailored to our locality, which by the way is Las Vegas NV. We decided to just try and jump into it all by contacting an engineer. The engineer we contacted asked if we had the pool designed yet and we told him that we had some ideas but not permanent yet. So he told us about a pool designer(draftsman) that would not only design our pool, but also walk us through building it step by step. Now we were feeling like we had no idea what we were doing since we weren't even talking to the right people yet. We must have sounded like total idiots. We made an appointment to talk to this designer and it went great. All of our fears were put to rest and the originally $42,000 pool is now closer to a $50,000 pool that will only cost us $25-28,000 by doing it ourselves. We could have done it for much less but we want to do the infloor cleaning system, salt chlorinator, as well as install a couple bullfrog jetpaks in the spa.
So tomorrow we have the digger coming out with a mini-bobcat to dig the hole. This of course cost more money with the mini-bobcat because it takes them longer but it is our only choice because we have a very small access gate. Hopefully the HOA and Master Association don't notice construction going on since we don't have their approval yet, but we did get our permits from the county. I will be taking pictures every step of the way and will be posting them in this thread. If anybody wants pictures of specific items, feel free to ask and I will be sure to post them as well. I better get to bed...and pray for no caliche
Costs at this point
$900 designer
$250 engineer
$200 sanitation department
$650 permits
$120 tile
$40 tank of gas running around looking for tile and getting permits
