Our contractor designed a pool with a grotto and when he came out to lay it out he ignored the plotted out design and laid it out differently, practically just holding out his hands and saying, “I need about this much room for the grotto”. It seemed nice until we came home one day and the workers had pulled out our expensive trees without even telling anyone because they didn’t have room for the grotto with the slide. My contractor is insisting that there are no measurements or designs for a grotto and he’s trying to blame us. The back wall of the pool is one big curve with about an 8 foot bench. There is NO “nook, inlet, or recess” He’s politely saying he will fix it by removing the rebar and adjusting the curve. Is this possible now? It’s only at rebar stage, but will the lack of firm compacted soil behind the wall or sides where the grotto is placed cause a wall failure? Can a pool’s shape be adjusted after it is dug? How is a grotto with a slide supposed to be designed? Is there any source for properly designed grottos with slides and steps that give measurements? Do steps to a grotto need to be 36” wide? Seems like if you knew the height of the grotto, you’d know the number of steps to get up to it which would give you length of stairway and if you knew how the slide was curving and length to get to water you’d have a dimension for the grotto? Also, if I fire him, would anyone else pick up from where we are and continue? Can I go after his bond? We spent months with this guy and asked a ton of questions and even went to his house to go over the design and we asked specifically if there was room
for this grotto! We contracted for a 7 ft grotto and now there isn’t enough room due to his terrible planning. He also owes us some expensive trees which he’s trying to replace after the pool is built and I said there’d be no room to bring in 36” boxed trees afterwards. In hindsight I think he underestimated his experience with this scope of work despite having built many pools (mostly square). The communication between his workers and him and their ability to understand where pipes needed to be laid out was also poor and we had to intervene. (The pool is going in at the beginning of a remodel so the gas line is moving and they tried to run to the existing portion of the house rather than the new location). We have the worst luck with contractors (One stole from us and 3 other families in 2014), please help with info and advice. Thank you, the whole thing is making me sick feeling like we won’t be paying or getting for what we wanted and it wasn’t cheap by far here in CA!
for this grotto! We contracted for a 7 ft grotto and now there isn’t enough room due to his terrible planning. He also owes us some expensive trees which he’s trying to replace after the pool is built and I said there’d be no room to bring in 36” boxed trees afterwards. In hindsight I think he underestimated his experience with this scope of work despite having built many pools (mostly square). The communication between his workers and him and their ability to understand where pipes needed to be laid out was also poor and we had to intervene. (The pool is going in at the beginning of a remodel so the gas line is moving and they tried to run to the existing portion of the house rather than the new location). We have the worst luck with contractors (One stole from us and 3 other families in 2014), please help with info and advice. Thank you, the whole thing is making me sick feeling like we won’t be paying or getting for what we wanted and it wasn’t cheap by far here in CA!
