Las Vegas Owner Build Starting Help Questions

[Peterock]

Hello TFP community (with an emphasis on the Las Vegas locals),

My wife and I are looking to start a owner build pool here in Las Vegas next year and figured we should start planning now.

We know we want a free form gunite pool with a spa overflow, a concrete slide with some faux concrete rocks around the edge.

I have done research in the process of an owner build and understand how that part works.

The assistance I need is in the fields of:

1. what type and brands of equipment are needed and recommended for a chlorine pool with a gas heater? (I understand sizes will vary by pool gallon size)

2. Help with tried and true subcontractors to choose from (I understand this might be a PM answer due to the forum rules for advertising)?

If there are any people in Las Vegas that have a similar pool and could assist me in the right direction, we would really appreciate that! Also, would love to see some pictures of your pools if available!

Thank you!

 

[Nikilyn]

There’s a few Vegas o/b builds going on right now. Search the boards for them. You might want to think about getting a SWG for ease of pool maintenance.

 

[mknauss]

Do you have a whole house water softener? With Colorado River water, your CH is high to begin with and in less than 2 years, your CH will be approaching 800+ppm. If you have a softener, try to plumb your autofill for the pool into the softener. That way your make up water for evaporation will be stripped of calcium.

As I am sure you will have automation, plan to only run the spa spillover as necessary to keep the spa chlorinated. Our high TA fill water pushes the pH up quickly, which is exasperated by aeration from a continuous spa spillover.

As far as equipment brand, the big three are relatively similar. I am biased to Pentair. Intelliflo VS pump, Intellicenter automation, and a big cartridge filter.

 

[Peterock]

Thank you for the replies!

Good tip to watch out for other Vegas recent postings, the only ones I have found are several years old and responses have gone stale.

Thank you for the salt water recommendation. Yes I have a whole house water softener but plumbing it to the exterior would be difficult because of where my copper lines are. I will look into the salt water chlorinator! Also, thank you for the brand reviews!

 

[mknauss]

A Salt Water Chlorine Generator is a great method of chlorinating your pool. The hard water we have means you must be diligent about TA and pH levels to keep the SWCG operating properly. Not difficult, just takes monitoring using your own proper test kit.

 

[Dirk]

As usual, Marty beat me to it. I did what I had to do to plumb my auto-filler to my water softener. It was well worth it. I no longer have to worry about my city's hard water making its way to my pool. When I took over the pool from the previous owner, the surface was covered in calcium deposit. Ruined. You really want to follow Marty's advice in this regard. You can tee into an existing copper line and then convert that to Pex, and then run Pex to your pool's equipment pad, where you can tie it into your auto-filler's supply line. Here's how I did it (it's a very long thread, so this should direct you to the part about the hookup):

Water softener connected to auto fill, and new plaster start up.

Re: Water softener connected to auto fill, and new plaster start up. Happy heart here! :hug: Kim:kim:

www.troublefreepool.com

And you should really consider an auto-filler and overflow system. I swear by mine and would not have a pool without one:

PoolMiser | The Original Pool & Spa Water Leveler

poolmiser.com

It seems they're having some website problems today, but check them out. The PoolMiser is both a filler and overflow system combined, so you'd never have to think about your water level: never to low, never too high.

By the way, welcome to TFP! So smart of you to come here first and vet out all your pre-build issues. TFP will stick with you before, during and after your build!

 

[Nikilyn]

How do you connect to the water softener when it’s inside the garage?

 

[Peterock]

Y'all got me very interested in the SWCG! Definitely going to check some of those out! I reached out to some Vegas Owner build people, but no response! The date on their posts are years old so I hope they are still around!

 

[Big Will]

Hello and welcome! I’m back and ready to help lol, for some reason with a update I stop getting notifications then life got in the way. I’ll be happy to answer any questions, feel free to PM me and I’ll help out every way I can