How to Calculate Size of Pool for Contractual Purposes?

[Species 8472]

I have spoken with several pool companies which claim that a free form pool's dimensions are calculated as the longest length by the widest width. This seems like a very inaccurate way to calculate the total square footage of a pool. Does anyone have any knowledge of what the industry standard is for calculating the total square footage of a pool? Is it really that simplistic which means that a PB can claim a 700 sf pool and actually only deliver something like a 575 sf pool if one gets creative.

 

[ellsian]

I actually can't offer much help here, other than that seems to be how my local PBs are calculating freeforms too (width by length) and not accounting much for the curves. It is inaccurate, but for pool chemistry reasons it's probably okay to be a bit off. For builder/cost reasons, dunno :/

But hey, it could always be worse!

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PS. I'll be selling this plan to anyone interested for the bargain price of $10k, just pm me, lol

 

[Bama Rambler]

I don't have a clue what the industry standard is, but I would take the final design and model it in a cad program. That way I would know exactly how many sqft the surface was.

 

[Species 8472]

I researched and located the answer, which will hopefully help someone in the future.

The area of a free form pool is indeed calculated accurately using either CAD or hand drawn design on a grid with the surface area calculated as accurately as possible. The industry allows a 5% deviation from the contractually indicated square footage. This means that one may have contracted for an 900 SF pool and could be as low as 855. I have also learned that one can ask for a post construction as built design to see if it matches the pre-construction design.

 

[jro33176]

Do you have a copy of the pool plans? You could obtain a separate CAD rendering from a 3rd party to compare the #s...

 

[gwegan]

In my experience all the pool contracts I've looked at talk in terms of square footage of the pool and length of the bond beam. Many pools are not designed on CAD systems.

The PBs Ive dealt with all required the owner to be present at commencement to approve the pool as marked out on the ground to make sure it was the size and dimensions as shown on the plans. That way you have signed off on the size and can't complain later.