Hi,
After spending considerable time researching pool builds (i.e., spending a lot of time on troublefreepool.com), I felt that I could get a lot more pool for my money by doing an owner build verses hiring a pool builder. I called one pool builder, and he said (without knowing how big of a pool that I wanted) that it would cost at least $150,000 to build a pool for me. The sky high price is mainly due to a couple factors: We wanted an infinity edge pool and virtually the entire gunite pool would be raised out of the ground.
Thus, we have decided to do an owner build for our pool. I am normally a very private person, but I felt that the forum has already helped me tremendously and hopefully my build will help someone along the way. Plus, there are very few builds that I could find in which the pool build, being mostly above ground, has been detailed.
Some time back, I posted a mock up created in pool studios and got some great feedback from the members here. Now, we are finally moving forward with the build. If anyone is considering building their own pool and is concerned about hiring a designer, just know that pool studios is very user friendly. I am not an IT person or computer whiz, but the software is incredibly easy to use (I watched a few videos and was off and running).
After speaking with my neighbors, they were kind enough to allow us to drive the heavy equipment and dump trucks across their backyard. I cannot being to say how appreciative we are that the neighbors allowed this. Had the neighbors not allowed us this access, we probably would not have built this pool. It would have been simply too difficult to haul that much material back and forth around the side of the house and up the driveway.
To others planning this type of build, be forewarned that it is more costly than a pool that is dug completely in the ground. I hired a structural engineer for the steel/wall thickness of the gunite (pooleng). In addition, I hired a soil engineer. The soil engineer dug three test pits to determine what type of material we were sitting on. Since I live in the western part of Austin, we new we would hit rock, but the question was at what depth. Two pits hit solid rock at 15" and the third hit solid rock at 33".
The engineers decided that the best way to build the pool would be to scrap off all of the topsoil down to the solid rock and build up from there. Piers were discussed but it was decided that piers would be an unnecessary expense considering the pool would be sitting on solid rock. The key to this type of build is a very solid base. The material used to raise up the pool has to be very heavily compacted. For this build, we will use clean/washed gravel to fill and level out the flooring. This type of build also requires a lot of bagging.
We started digging on July 24 and on August 2 fired the excavation guy (So, we are not off to a smooth start). We already have a new excavation company that will finish the dig, they start August 7. So far 15 truck loads (17-18 yards per truck) of material have been hauled off. I only anticipate one or two more truck loads will need to be hauled off.
The pool will be an "L" shaped pool with approximately 36,000 gallons excluding the weir basin and the spa.
We have decided to make a few changes verse the picture below (e.g., two water bowls instead of the stone water fall feature and we will straighten out the wier basin walls so that they are straight with the pool walls instead of angled). A couple of the photos are my crude attempts to show measurements and depths (While not as fancy as a pool builder would use, the drawings seem to be sufficient to let the excavator know how to dig the pool).
After spending considerable time researching pool builds (i.e., spending a lot of time on troublefreepool.com), I felt that I could get a lot more pool for my money by doing an owner build verses hiring a pool builder. I called one pool builder, and he said (without knowing how big of a pool that I wanted) that it would cost at least $150,000 to build a pool for me. The sky high price is mainly due to a couple factors: We wanted an infinity edge pool and virtually the entire gunite pool would be raised out of the ground.
Thus, we have decided to do an owner build for our pool. I am normally a very private person, but I felt that the forum has already helped me tremendously and hopefully my build will help someone along the way. Plus, there are very few builds that I could find in which the pool build, being mostly above ground, has been detailed.
Some time back, I posted a mock up created in pool studios and got some great feedback from the members here. Now, we are finally moving forward with the build. If anyone is considering building their own pool and is concerned about hiring a designer, just know that pool studios is very user friendly. I am not an IT person or computer whiz, but the software is incredibly easy to use (I watched a few videos and was off and running).
After speaking with my neighbors, they were kind enough to allow us to drive the heavy equipment and dump trucks across their backyard. I cannot being to say how appreciative we are that the neighbors allowed this. Had the neighbors not allowed us this access, we probably would not have built this pool. It would have been simply too difficult to haul that much material back and forth around the side of the house and up the driveway.
To others planning this type of build, be forewarned that it is more costly than a pool that is dug completely in the ground. I hired a structural engineer for the steel/wall thickness of the gunite (pooleng). In addition, I hired a soil engineer. The soil engineer dug three test pits to determine what type of material we were sitting on. Since I live in the western part of Austin, we new we would hit rock, but the question was at what depth. Two pits hit solid rock at 15" and the third hit solid rock at 33".
The engineers decided that the best way to build the pool would be to scrap off all of the topsoil down to the solid rock and build up from there. Piers were discussed but it was decided that piers would be an unnecessary expense considering the pool would be sitting on solid rock. The key to this type of build is a very solid base. The material used to raise up the pool has to be very heavily compacted. For this build, we will use clean/washed gravel to fill and level out the flooring. This type of build also requires a lot of bagging.
We started digging on July 24 and on August 2 fired the excavation guy (So, we are not off to a smooth start). We already have a new excavation company that will finish the dig, they start August 7. So far 15 truck loads (17-18 yards per truck) of material have been hauled off. I only anticipate one or two more truck loads will need to be hauled off.
The pool will be an "L" shaped pool with approximately 36,000 gallons excluding the weir basin and the spa.
We have decided to make a few changes verse the picture below (e.g., two water bowls instead of the stone water fall feature and we will straighten out the wier basin walls so that they are straight with the pool walls instead of angled). A couple of the photos are my crude attempts to show measurements and depths (While not as fancy as a pool builder would use, the drawings seem to be sufficient to let the excavator know how to dig the pool).
kind of like digging a hole then refilling it.
