Re: New Pool Build in Central Texas because of Big Green Egg
bobby1017 said:
I spent a lot of time sitting in the empty pool in a chair.
That is funny.....I have a chair on our Sundeck...The problem is everytime I sit there I get upset. Wife tells me to quit sitting out there. I can't help myself.
Here is the latest on our build....I have some time because i have a few hours before I pick up loads of family members at the airport. My son is graduating High School this Friday and I have boatloads of relatives coming in because he is the first grandson, cousin, etc that is graduating High School. All other relative's kids are younger. When we signed the contract in February we explained that we were having a ton of people over on May 31st and we didn't want the build rushed in any way, but could it be done by then? They said not a problem, as long as there wasn't an abundence of bad weather, that was over three months away and it usually takes around two.
We did have some delays with the permitting and dig so I knew it was going to be close. However, during the Gunite Shoot, the PB came over to me and said the long part was behind us, and they had created a schedule where everything would be completed in 5 weeks. They said they weren't going to touch the pool itself for a week, but they could do all the gas and electric work during that time, then the following week start the stone work. With the graduation 6 weeks away, I was impressed...it seemed like they were bending over backwards to get this done.
They were non existent for a week, then we had fun with the masons. Did great work but only seemed to show up to work when they wanted to. One beautiful day we knew the mason's were there but we couldn't tell what they did if anything. We knew they were there based on their lunch wrappers that were blowing all over the yard. My wife and I spent about twenty minutes trying to figure out if they did any work. I have taken pictures every day so we ended up looking at the pictures from the day before and compared them with the pool.....They had placed three stones on the fire pit that day, that is all!
At that point I made my first questioning call to the PB. I just asked if everything was all right. He said of course, everything was great, the stonework takes the longest and it is all downhill from here. I thought, "Hmm, I thought the dig was the long part" but they were the experts. At that point I said, look I know the pool won't be done by the end of May, but I desparately need the deck done. We had to remove the wood deck and I literally have a 4 foot dropoff from my backdoor now while this is being built. My dad has alzheimers and I could just envision him wandering out the back door, falling into the abyss, and we would never see him again! He said no problem, we will have the deck done the following week. That was three weeks ago.
Three Monday's ago he called me and said, I know you were worried about the deck. We need to push everything back one day but we will still be good. He stated, "we need to finish up a bit more stone work today (Mon), run the gas lines tomorrow (Tue), have it inspected Wednesday, do the electrical Thursday, and we will start laying out the deck on Friday. Hooray, an actual schedule!
Monday they finished the stonework!
Tuesday, nothing,
Wednesday they dug a trench for the gas about 1/3 the size they actually needed to complete the trench.
Thursday, nothing,
Friday the plumber came with his helper. I was home that day and he rang the doorbell. He asked me if he could put a conduit on one area of the exisitng deck for the gas. I asked him why he would need to do that, the outdoor kitchen is going in an area with all new decking.......He sheepishly informed me he didn't have any plans and he just assumed the gas was going where I have my little 99 dollar gas grill......He also told me that his helper would finish the trench and he would come back Sauturday to finish everything because we had an inspection on Monday. He also wanted to make sure we were around on Saturday because he was going to have to shut the gas off for a bit and wanted to make sure all our Pilot lights were relit inside the house.
We made sure we stayed around on Saturday then. I was out in the backyard power washing my fence since HarleySilo called me out on it :lol: getting madder and madder as the day went on. Of course he didn't show. I sent my second message actually pretty politely to the Pool Builder while sitting in my little chair on my eventual sun deck in the pool. He texted back saying how unreasonable I was since they had completed the gas trench, run all the gas lines, had to skip a day for the inspection, and they had started framing the deck all in the past week, what else did I expect?!
I explained to him that would have been truly wonderful, but since I was in my backyard and the only thing that was done was a partially completed gas line trench, that it proved my point that no one had any idea where my project was.
Last week they completed the gas lines, but could not get it inspected because they filed the gas permit application wrong. Yesterday the inspection was finally completed and it passed.
So after 5 weeks I have coping, some stonework and gas lines! (And a house full of people that can't go in the backyard!) Off to the airport!
I demand pictures of said fence work!
