Features on a budget - IG build in Central Texas

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CentralTexian said:
Who did you receive bids from and what led you to choose Ocean Quest? You say on a budget, which I take to mean the goal was low cost, but that looks like a very nice pool? Could you message me what the total bid cost was? I am just starting quotes for my Austin area pool and was debating whether or not to put ocean quest on the list - I was thinking hey may be cheaper since they are from outside Austin a bit? Pool quotes are very high, higher than I would have guessed for sure.
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If you are in the Austin area then you are probably referring to the actual Ocean Quest. I’m going through Ocean Quest by Lew Akins up in Belton. Lew was the original owner of the Austin Ocean Quest but sold it when he decided to retire. He ended up coming back from retirement and started up his business again in Belton as a separate entity. So, long story short I can’t attest to how the Austin guys are or their pricing compared to farther north. I did like Anthony & Sylvan as they were my second choice albeit a little more money, but they are down in Austin if you haven’t checked them out.
I say budget because we do have a dollar amount that we are currently at to the penny...not necessarily because it’s cheap. There were a couple other routes we could have gone if we wanted to really limit ourselves dollar-wise, but wouldn’t have the design we truely want or at the quality that I expect.
Best of luck to you though! Everything in Austin seems to be more expensive than up here just because of the growth.
 
CentralTexian said:
Who did you receive bids from and what led you to choose Ocean Quest? You say on a budget, which I take to mean the goal was low cost, but that looks like a very nice pool? Could you message me what the total bid cost was? I am just starting quotes for my Austin area pool and was debating whether or not to put ocean quest on the list - I was thinking hey may be cheaper since they are from outside Austin a bit? Pool quotes are very high, higher than I would have guessed for sure.
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Because Lew wrote the book!! Well, one of the books!

You picked the right guy & team..
 
I would be nervous about a "jumping rock" in a five foot deep pool. Kids are going to see that and see a "diving rock." Also how far is it from the rock to the nearest bar stool?

I have no experience with the modern "spool," but it seems to me you are inviting trouble. You won't be able to guard the rock 24/7, and kids have been known to break the rules when the parents aren't watching. At least I did. Even if the kids never use the pool unsupervised now, at some point they are going to be teenagers and you won't be home....
 
PrehistoricPool said:
I would be nervous about a "jumping rock" in a five foot deep pool. Kids are going to see that and see a "diving rock." Also how far is it from the rock to the nearest bar stool?

I have no experience with the modern "spool," but it seems to me you are inviting trouble. You won't be able to guard the rock 24/7, and kids have been known to break the rules when the parents aren't watching. At least I did. Even if the kids never use the pool unsupervised now, at some point they are going to be teenagers and you won't be home....
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The jump rock will maybe be a foot high at the most, so it's really just for aesthetics. It won't be a ledge or platform like some larger pools so I don't see any more added risk from them trying to dive in from the edge of the pool. The stools are over 10' away and in the shallow end so more than likely they would hit bottom before the stools. There may be a risk, but for now the kids (14 and 9) will not be in the pool by themselves and when they become full-fledged teenagers and decide to do something stupid like diving into a shallow body of water then good life lessons will be learned that day. I have a couple chipped teeth to prove I learned my lesson and it was a pool with a deep end.
 
Finally got approval from the HOA! Only took 2 weeks and several emails to try and expedite the process since I already had city approval. In the mean-time I decided I would try and save some of the irrigation that would be torn up during the dig:


Also had to come up with a way to keep the other zones running since they were going to cut into my irrigation main line. Found a couple of adapters to go from the 1" PVC to a standard garden hose:


Unfortunately, I won't be able to supervise the layout and digging if they start next week so I'm thinking about pushing it back another week so I can be here for the whole process. My wife told me...you'll only be an hour away, can't you just drive back and forth. Mind you this is our family vacation she's wanting me to leave :eek:

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I also got a quote back from the PB about the infinity edge...yeah maybe next time! They have a minimum of 20' so it was of course about double what I figured it would cost since I only have room for about 8'-10'.
 
PoolguyinCT said:
Because Lew wrote the book!! Well, one of the books!

You picked the right guy & team..
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Yeah it really helped make our decision when I found out that he now goes around the country helping people fight the PBs that try to screw them over after a botched pool build. I've spoke with him and the rest of his staff on several occasions. Seems like every time I'm up at the office speaking with my designer about changes either he or one of his staff come in to tell me about their experiences with what I'm thinking about doing. And they aren't trying to up-sell me either...most of the time they were trying to talk me out of spending on "hidden money".
 
Jeffnhelen said:
Yeah it really helped make our decision when I found out that he now goes around the country helping people fight the PBs that try to screw them over after a botched pool build. I've spoke with him and the rest of his staff on several occasions. Seems like every time I'm up at the office speaking with my designer about changes either he or one of his staff come in to tell me about their experiences with what I'm thinking about doing. And they aren't trying to up-sell me either...most of the time they were trying to talk me out of spending on "hidden money".
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It’s not a exactly a crusade, construction defect testimony is a lucrative revenue stream.

Great choice, nonetheless.

You can have a great vacation, while Lew’s boys take care of your build.
 
PoolguyinCT said:
It’s not a exactly a crusade, construction defect testimony is a lucrative revenue stream.

Great choice, nonetheless.

You can have a great vacation, while Lew’s boys take care of your build.
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Interesting, I didn’t really think of it that way. My take on it was more of a “Holmes on Homes” approach where he has to really know how to do things right if he’s telling other pros, or maybe “pros”, they are doing it wrong. My designer had the book on his desk and says he still references it every once in a while. He did explain a lot of the things they do differently either because of the book or from recent experiences so that helped as well. I feel better about a purchase the more that I can understand how it’s going together and lessons learned.

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kimkats said:
Push it back. Do not leave our vacy. You WILL miss something at either place the min you are at the other place :roll: at least if you live in my world!

Kim:kim:
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So I have them scheduled to do the layout after we get back next week and hopefully start the excavation early the following week. I didn’t want to miss my daughters birthday trip or the “birthday” of the pool either :p
 

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Back from vacation and the designer came out with my supervisor this past Friday to do a preliminary layout to make sure everything is where we want it before they make a big hole in the ground:


But after the wife and I walked it and thought about potential occupancy we decided to enlarge it a foot almost all the way around and two feet by the bar area as that seemed a little crowded and almost made that part of the pool useless for swimming. Here is the proposed change to our PB:

I estimate this will bump us up around another 10 perimeter feet, but hopefully the added expense will make the pool a little more comfortable when we have friends and neighbors over.


They did confirm that they can do a drainless system, but suggested that we put suction lines on the wall instead. Will these be necessary with the two skimmers? They didn't sound like they were going to position the returns in any special way to ensure there is proper circulation and, after seeing how inefficient underwater suction works to circulate, I don't see why the placement of the returns wouldn't be more important. I need to do a little more research to see if others have used in-wall suction lines and the pros/cons of going that route.

Either way, progress is underway as I woke up this morning to find the excavation equipment guy in my backyard trying to find out where to drop the bobcat off. He says if they aren't back this afternoon then they will start after the holiday:
 
They just used the regular lawn marker paint. I’ve stopped maintaining my grass in that part of the yard so it got pretty tall. I took the lawn mower to it afterwards to help see the lines since they used green paint on green-ish grass.

They came back and picked up the bobcat so not sure what that means, but we have rain forecasted for the almost the next 7 days so that could have something to do with it...then again this is Texas where weather is unpredictable :D
 
kimkats said:
Okay I can see how you did it....good job! The mowed part really makes it stand out!

They took the big toy away??????? But we didn't get to play with it yet........... LOL

Kim:kim:
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Yeah I'm hoping it was because of the weather and not because I submitted another change request. I'm sure my designer's patience is running thin at this point since this is like revision 11 :p When they came out to mark the pool I thought it looked a little close to my orchard. I grabbed a couple outdoor chairs and little fire table we had sitting on our front porch to test the placement and maneuverability:

I want to have points of entry from either side of the fire pit area and the chairs would be too close to the pool edge to have people walking around. So I sent another drawing to the designer making sure he knew how I wanted the pool moved a couple feet away from the orchard:

This won't get me quite to the point where I can have it like my full concept drawing posted earlier, but since we enlarged the pool also I don't want to get it too close to the house and not have a comfortable walkway where the majority of traffic is going to be.
 
In other news, I finally made a decision on the pool equipment. Since I love using my phone for everything the big problem I saw with Hayward was the frequency that they kept their apps updated. If I'm going to spend this much on an automated system then I would like to have something pointing to it being supported and enhanced for the foreseeable future. So, I informed the PB that I would purchase the Pentair equipment myself so I will get the $3300 refund for the Hayward equipment. After pricing it out I'm looking at a little over $4000 for the Pentair equipment they listed so only a $700 upgrade vs the $2500 the PB wanted to charge. Understandably, this may or may not have an extended warranty as I'm not sure yet if Sunplay's B&M locations still count towards the eligibility if I purchase the equipment online. I will probably want to call them to see for sure, but for the $1800 difference in price I'm not sure if it will be worth it over 3 years. I also decided to go with the Quad DE 60 vs the FNS Plus 60 due to the flexibility in cleaning. One thing I did find out with the list my PB gave, was the lighting. The part number pulled up the GloBrite 2 LED combo w/300w transformer. These are lower output than the IntelliBrite so I'm thinking two of these in the locations they have shown are not going to light up the pool very much. So I figured they would be perfect for the tanning ledge and then came up with different options for the main pool...

Option 1:
Put the 2 GloBrites in the tanning ledge and add 2 IntelliBrites where the PB intended the lights to go. Additional $1k to add IntelliBrites:


Option 2:
Put 1 GloBrite in the tanning ledge and add 2 more GloBrites for a total of 3 spaced out in the main pool area. A little over $450 cheaper than Option 1 but may not provide sufficient lighting across length of pool:


Option 3:
Go for broke and put the 2 Globrites in the tanning ledge and add 4 more GloBrites (~equivalent to 2 IntelliBrites) for the main pool area. A little over $100 more than option 1 but should provide the most even coverage across entire length of pool:



I think I like the GloBrites as they are a smaller form factor and are less conspicuous than the large IntelliBrites with the chrome ring and they allow for extra capacity on the transformer if I wanted to add a few landscape lights. Looks like you can run a combination of 15 GloBrites and Landscape lights on one 300W transformer so that should be sufficient for my needs.
 
It's been a month since we signed the contract so the wife and I are a little sad that we still haven't broken ground. To the PB defense we had to wait almost 2 weeks for HOA approval and we were on vacation for another week, but it seems like the changes we requested are taking longer to finalize than I had hoped. Getting conflicting information, but sounds like they will need to come out and paint the lawn again before the excavator does their pre-dig paint layout. I appreciate their wanting to "measure twice and cut once", but if this process happened rapidly and not eating into our swim season I would be ok with it. Fingers crossed that we can get started early next week!

Reading other build threads I see that it's all part of the game so this is just me venting and frustrated that I'm so indecisive :p
 
Working backwards:

Option 3 for sure looks the best and at only $100 more cant go wrong there. Tie in some low voltage lighting along the back and other key areas for pop!

The triangle corner with the trees/bushes will be awesome. Again low voltage lighting! How big will they get back there and how wide?? Maybe its my perception but the one second from the left up front looks taller than the rest. If thats the case I would put the tallest at the back point and work my way out on each side and end up with the shortest up front. They will go in the ground correct? This will make for good eye appeal looking from the house and across the pool. Just one crooked eye persons opinion :)

The lattice type covers over what I assume are sitting areas will be nice and add a different dimension to the overall look of the project. However, it looks as though your pool area will get lots of direct sunlight which is good, thus you may not get any real shade from them.

Good call on the Pentair and the better automation over Hayward. I have Hayward and its very basic in my opinion but does work well. My buddy has Pentair and it looks to have more features and snazzy look compared to mine. The fact you cut the PB out of a little profit may have cut his incentive just a bit. Not judging your PB just my observation on the slow down.

The FNS DE 60 is the same filter I have and looks fairly straight forward on cleaning. I have yet to do it myself and my PB made it look way too easy...

What salt system??? Hayward T-15 is a good one! Two skimmers will be good but the returns as needed Im not so sure about. I wold ask for 4 minimum plus 1 on the sun shelf for a total of 5. Again this would be my minimum !!! My personal feeling is that pool circulation is a big deal and the more control you have the better. Please don't make me try to explain as its more of a gut feeling than one I can back up. I have 5 and if I did it over I would have at least one more if not 2. Did you request a light over the equipment pad?

Sorry Im fashionably late to this party and welcome to TFP....Oh yea don't forget to add a signature line to your profile with all the important info :)

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