Julie's Pool

I have been reading your thread and I must say your pool is FABULOUS and I can NOT wait to see it finished! You must be so anxious and excited! Please post more pics when you get a chance!
 
Decking completed

Our decking was completed on Thursday, along with install of solar panels, barrier stuff (change the way the gate swings at dog door, one more course on wall by propane, and alarms on patio doors)
The company for the rock and tile was supposed to be here on Saturday, but were a no show. They advised it will take a week to get the stone, columns on eaither side of the pool, firepit and tile compeletd. I will post pics of their work once they actually get something done. I think I will be about 1 week behind on my scheduled swim date...fingers crossed!
Looking out from great room of house:
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Looking east:
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Looking west:
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Yippi - th etile and rock guy showed up today...I hope this stage goes smoothly.
My plumber sent a new guy out to correct the pipe broken durung the deck install....I am VERY happy he speaks fluent english and we can communicate. He agreed that the backwash plumbing was installed incorrectly and will be fixed this week too. Yikes - I hope this is it for plumbing problems with all that PVC that was laid.

My solid copper scuppers showed up today too - I am very stoked with the way they look since I bought them using a picture and had not viewed in person until today. Just wish copper prices weren't so high - I paid a premium for them. They should patina out to a very lovely color as they age....smells like a bunch of pennies and have a few fingerprints already :-D
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Scuppwers, or at least that is what they said I should call them are areas that will allow water to flow out of the rock wall behind the pool. We have 5 of them to be placed into the wall.

Good news - I got my final approval and barrier sign off from the county :party:
 
I love my scuppers, but they are becoming such a pain :x
My rock guys say they do not install them, my plumber says he doesn't install them - they each point at each other. It is now on me to get these suckers installed...how hard can it be :lol: really, not like I haven't done some constructions before :roll:
I have one of those nasty summer cold/flu things going one, but figured this would be an ok project to tackle to keep us on track for a water fill by the weekend. I found that with this cold I am moving like a sloth, especially in the 97 degree temps and sun. Two of the pipes sticking out of the RBB wall are stuck solid in the shotcrete and will not move so I am tackling those first.
I am sure my rock guy is laughing at me under my breath as I pull every tool possible to try to cut this darn pipe. The pipe has to be recessed into the wall in order for the scupper to fit correctly. Well, after many attempts with various hand tools, I pulled the air compresser out and using my hubbies blue point air tools, chissels, hammer andf the core/ hammer drill I rented from home depot this am. After 3 hours I have one installed and the second halfway there, I am taking a cool air conditioned break right now.
I will show pictures later once they are all set. Please wish me luck!!
 

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DH got home and helped with the last few scupper installs. Each has it's copper wire running to the back of the wall where it will be connected to the rebar. What an absolute pain! I will take some pics tomorrow, heading off to an early bedtime with a full dose of nyquil.

Yes - found the dremmel as well as other air tools that made life a bit easier - all back in their appropriate happy place now :-D
 
Ooooh, sorry to hear you have a summer cold. It just has to be miserable with the heat. You poor thing - and then having to hassle with the finger pointing on the scuppers and then doing it yourself. Hope you feel much better, soon.
 
Ahhh, I can breath a bit better today :-D The stone guys are back and have promised they will be done with the back wall and grout by end of day today. The pool is scheduled for cleaning tomorrow and interior Friday and Saturday. We decided on using Beadcrete for the interior since the glass beads feel so smooth.

Firepit w/ rock - still needs stone on top and interior completed:
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Stacked stone and copper scuppers at back wall - side view:
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Stacked stone & scuppers - center rounded area view:
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Stool tile installed, but not grouted - detail pic;
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The pool water is soooo close, I can almost taste it - NOT :x

Well, I am quite dissapointed today.... the grout color the installers were putting on the waterline tile was incorrect.

I left out the grout color I wanted for the tile and the stone and even told them before that I wanted to go with the brown for the stacked stone. The second color we selected was a dark green for the tile. Well, the grout they started applying around the waterline tile was brown and they said they had not even planned to place any grout around the stone. WHAT? :eek: :shock: Well, needless to say all other progress has come to a screeching stop.

Stone/tile guys - they will be back tomorrow to start grouting the dark green around the watreline tile (that has green in it) and the brown aroound the stone. That is correct, I did not ask for DRY STACK stone and if I had, there project would be unacceptable due to the wide gaps around it anyways.

Since I leave on vacation the 18th, wedecided this evening that it will be best to wait until we return before interior and pool fill. Yes, another delay and veeery disapointed pool builder here. I am now going to look at everyone elses progress and cool blue water on the site to get my mind off this delay.

One piece of good news...my gas guy returned to connect the BBQ and firepit to our propane system. No more buying 5 gallon tanks fills to BBQ :)
 
The rock grout was done before we left on vacation, we returned Sunday evening and had the interior beadcrete installed yesterday. The acid wash and fill is to be done today, I am waiting for the acid wash person to get here. This person is supposed to speak english and address the problems I saw with the beadcrete yesterday.

I am extremely disappointed with the interior install :x and furious with them after getting off the phone with the company yesterday. I carefully reviewed who to use and saw examples of their work, seems that they used the unexperienced crew to install my interior. I have an extremely wavey edge across my baja step, where it meets the main body of the pool. There is a gap/hole in the corner where the interior should meet the tile. The surface of much of the rear wall looks like a roller coaster. They covered two return lines on back wall and the line between the tile and interior in non-consistant. Some areas next to the tile meet the tile as it should, but most is either too little or too much and leaves a distinct ridge.

I just want an interior that looks professional, now I have a mess. I beleive the only way to correct this is to have it chipped out since the interior agregate should not be applied over itself. I am heading out to take pics now....
The company said that the acid wash would correct all this....acid wash does not add more material so I do not think much of this will be corrected today. Am I off my rocker in expecting a better job from a reputable company? Any thoughts on the best way to resolve this? I paid a premium for the beadcrete product, more than pebble-tec and a worse install than most bad pebble tec installs I have seen...unfoirtunately I have seena few around here too.

Hard to see in this pic how wavy the edge is:
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Holes in the interior at tile:
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Gap under tile (quarter sized):
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Where is the professional install skill to wrap the tile edge with beadcrete as I was told:
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Here is the tile on the baja step - a thick coat of beadcrete extends up onto the tile in places:
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That is very unfortunate.

If they are as good as their reputation they will fix it without making a fuss about it. If they don't fix it right away you should withold payment until the issues are resolved.
 
Thank you Jason, I sure hope they stand behind their work.

So far their customer service SUCKS! I called yesterday since I could not communicate well with the workers, I do not speak spanish. When I spoke with their saes department they siad they noted my concerns and if they still were concerns after the acid wash I would have to speak with their warranty department - even though I am calling same day they are installing???

Well, the guy came out to acid wash the pool today, I met him and he reassured me that everything would look much better and all my concerns would be taken care of after the acid wash. I told him I wanted to walk him around the pool to point out the top areas in question, he walked with me begrudgingly and said next week he will have to schedule a repair for the hole in the beadcrete where the tile meets and that there really wasn't much that can be done about the uneven smoothing across the baja step - huh? This is the company that represents Beadcrete in the USA and I expected better reposnse than this.

Anyways, I keep checking every 15-20 minutes as I am working in my home office and the guy knows I am already unhappy. So you would think that they would ensure I walk the pool again and am happy - right? WRONG - they finish and pack it up 15 minutes after I viewed them in working on the pool and speed out of my driveway leaving a small cloud of dust. This is NOT giving me the warm fuzzy feeling so far UGH.

Good news is that I went to the meter and took a reading as I ran out the door to try to flag them down, I will have an accurate measurement of the gallon capacity of the pool. Bad news is that I am sure they will have to drain it since they have large areas that were not acid washed and scrubbed to display the beadcrete below. What areas were scrubbed are glsitening in the sun and I have two hoses filling at this point - YIPPI looks like we will be swimming this weekend!

Curbing install went well today and they took their time to ensure the product met my expectations, nice to have that experience same day as the other. I would have given my eye teeth to have the experiences reversed! Hmmmm $450 vs. $7K....yes probbaly would have given up my dogs manberries too - oh ya that was already done today :lol:

Trying to maintain the sense of humopr through all this, I am sure that the cool water will soon ease some of the pain! Heading off to the yard to have a cold one on the hot AZ afternoon!

Thanks again for letting me rant as well as share the experience!
 
F_AZ,

I seldom comment on pool builds because I am not in the business and am reluctant to second-guess the work of someone who is.

That said, I have some knowledge of masonry and that tile and finish work on the stool is absolutely marginal, at best. They need some type of finished edge (I assume that's where the beadcrete was supposed to go) where the vertical surface meets the horizontal and it appears they have made no allowance for that.

Additionally, I'm not crazy about the technique they used of putting the cut tiles on the outside. While I have not installed irregular rounds like that, it would seem fairly simple to me to place complete tiles around the perimeter and then fill towards the middle. With some care and thought about placement, I think that work could've been done with no cut tiles. However, I've not done it before so there may be issues I'm not aware of.

If it were my pool, I think I would document my dissatisfaction at least with that feature.
 

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