cramar said:
Man, kudo's to you and your wife for standing firm despite the pressure from installer and manufacturer (not mention kids who desperately want to swim).
The past few days have been very rough. Our neighbors across the street had a big pool party (we could watch through one of our upstairs windows), and the weather has been perfect. I had bought my wife some patio furniture for her birthday in April, anticipating the completion of the pool, and it's all stuffed into the shed now. Plus the kids' last day of school is today... in addition to spending family time together swimming, our daughters were so looking forward to inviting their friends over during the summer. That's all out the window too. They're being very good about it (my wife and I are whining and ranting about it much more than they are), but I know they are extremely disappointed.
Heck, our entire backyard looks like a bomb practice range (we can't grade/sod until this is all worked out), so we don't even have any place for the kids to play.
All our summer plans have been ruined thanks to this guy. I know I said before that I don't "hate" him and don't wish him to lose money, but after stewing on all this for a while, I'm not so sure. He's stolen precious time that we can never get back, and continues to do so every day that goes by with inaction. He's simply playing a money game right now... he knows how anxious we are to have the pool finished, and is counting on this working in his favor. So, I expect his response to the demand letter will be a modestly higher compensation offer, hoping this will be enough to entice us into keeping this pool, but given everything we've learned and observed over the past few weeks, we're well beyond that point.
Still, despite feeling absolutely despondent over all this, I do realize that things could always be worse. We're going to make the best of our summer, and just decided to go on a last-minute mini vacation in a few weeks to get away from here for a while (and go swimming!). Meanwhile, we'll try to forget about this sparkling (but cracked) pool sitting right there in our yard.
I hope this works out for the best, it's too bad that one bad decision to push thru with the night install led to all this mess. Hopefully the installer comes to realize his mistake and decides that adding lawyer fees on top of a re-do is not the way to go.
Hopefully so. And keep in mind, the stakes go up dramatically if he refuses to fix this... if it goes to court, we'll be suing for the money for someone ELSE to fix the pool, not to force him to do it. Pretty much the same amount of work needs to happen regardless of who replaces the shell, but if the current builder does it, there are things he can do to reduce his costs. Perhaps the manufacturer will give him a discount on the replacement shell, and maybe he can refurbish and sell the damaged shell. He might be able to re-use the tile and brick materials, plus the current tanning ledge is ok and can stay (if another company comes in and installs a different brand of shell, the tanning ledge will have to be replaced with a matching one from them). And there's profit of course... a different builder is not going to do the job at his cost with no markup.
So, what might cost our builder a net of $10,000 - $15,000 if he does it himself will cost $25,000 - $30,000 for someone else to do. And then there's the "loss of enjoyment of pool/yard" damages, which will add up as this drags on.
But again, being forced to have another builder come in and do the work would actually be a blessing.
--Michael
