Final project pics!
This project ended up a HUGE mistake for many reasons, but the pool area is finally usable (and visually, beautiful). It looks beautiful but now there is this level of 'regret' and anger attached to it that I am hoping diminishes over time.
We had a
nightmare of a time with our contractor - it got far worse than the April update. I am currently talking to a lawyer so I won't go deep into specifics, but I ended up bringing 3 different types of contractors on to finish every aspect of the project.
Our main drains are still closed with plungers as we have a leak that I am sure is broken PVC. I am unsure I have any solve here until I decide to pay someone to come pull up the pavers, and dig out the pipes.
- This truly annoys me mostly because there is 2 big 'bolt's sticking out into the pool that people constantly hit when they're in the deep end of the pool.
- I do plan to, at some point in the future, get the water descent/firepit I wanted originally at the end of the pool, so I'll likely couple this maintenance work with that work when it's time.
They installed our jets incorrectly, but we did finally get them to at least work decently.
- As an aside, it'd be very hard for me to tell people to go laminars - I was expecting a lot more 'laminar effect' and a lot less... slightly less forceful deck jet.
We had 9 different leaks, 7 of which were at the pump and easier to fix. Realized they didn't prime or glue several of the pipes at the pump itself.
Found out their 'foreman' had only ever worked on 3 projects, total, and never set up pool equipment before. Didn't even know what a variable speed pump was, but was the person who setup all of our pool equipment sans electricity.
Contractors "approved electrician" outright refused to come back a 2nd time because he "didn't know how far the location was". Had to bring in a 2nd contractor to finish, and fix some of his issues with code.
Luckily due to some people I met here, local contractors, and paying
sooooo much money we finally do have a working area.
Sadly, we do still have the bee issue the old pool does, because of our neighbors hives but they're more centralized now!
Since the pool re-opened, I have hosted 4 parties and people have loved it. We ended up spluring and getting gas lines ran directly from our on-property propane tank, so it is nice not dealing with 5-gallon-ers anymore.
I WISH I could figure out how to repel bugs more routinely - Due to being near woods, we get a crazy amount of wasps, hornets, spiders, etc. I leave spiders for the most part if they're not in the immediate area because of their benefits, the rest I kill with fire.
I am glad we decided to replace the entire yard with sod since they destroyed every inch of the backyard during construction, not just "their primary path" like originally agreed.
We have had about 3 weeks of non-stop thunderstorms so it hasn't gotten much use.
We have two primary issues with the pool right now:
One is more mental - Every day I look out there, expecting something to be wrong. Every time I see water level drop I question "Is this evaporation or do we have another leak underground." (We found and patched 3 separate leaks around the skimmer, and returns so far. We were losing ~1K gallon a day under the pool)
Two is more literal - When we get A TON of rain, I have no easy way to drain the pool. There is no overflow mechanism in place, and my pump doesn't have a 'drain'/backwash like my old one did. What I do to get around this is drop a sub-pump into it for 20 minutes, haha.
Overall, I am very glad with the MUCH bigger pool (with working salt-cell yay), more enjoyable area, and beautiful appeal. I foresee myself spending a lot of time out there when I can get over my frustration with the project (And this will take time as every time I make the payment on the loan I get frustrated again).
I think in the fall/winter we'll use this area very heavily - We have a cheap lil' TV on a rolling mount that sometimes we watch movies out at night, I'm sure when it isn't 90 and humid we do it a lot more.
I will say my Dolphin Robot is terrible at cleaning the pool vs the old one. It misses certain 'areas' constantly. (And I don't mean steps/tanning ledge, like one entire section of the main floor).
For anyone who finds this thread, this ended up costing us about $250K - This was quoted at 190, and continuously grew. Note, though, we spent a lot of money on pavers, re-doing our entire walk-way, sodding backyard, etc. I do not feel I got a good value for 250K, but that's subjective.
The pool shell was ~90K, and I had misc quotes ranging from 150-200K all-in.
