**Update-Construction Photos Added** Soon-to-be New Build in SE Pennsylvania (Pics Included)

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Day 2: Set the walls in place, rough plumbing & electrical into the wall systems and stubbed out on the equipment pad side, gravel fill, rebar, and poured the concrete footers for the wall system. I was out at meetings for work all day so I missed the excitement and didn't get photos until I got home late afternoon but they made a ton of progress in 1 day:

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Day 5: No one showed up for Days 3 & 4. I'm assuming they were letting the footings cure. They came back on Friday and backfilled around the pool, filled the areas of the sunshelf and bench with gravel, then proceeded to dig up the entire rest of our yard for the trench to the equipment pad. They ran the plumbing lines and conduit to the pad and the electrician pulled the feeders from the basement electrical panel out to the pool panel at the pad. By the end of the day they covered up the trench and we are left with a yard full of dirt and CMU blocks :oops:

I decided to ask the contractor doing the stamped concrete deck to price some boulders along the sloped hill side of the pool. We wanted to do them eventually, and if I can get them in along with the deck being poured, it's probably better than relying on a landscaper to come in after the fact and place them. We don't have ANY landscaping included in our PB's contract. Not even grass. So we have a lot of work ahead of ourselves this fall to restore the yard.

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Day 7 & 8: Not a ton happened these 2 days.
Day 7 the concrete truck came and they spent about 1 hr filling in the sunshelf, stairs and benches. They tarped it over, and it proceeded to rain (minimally) on and off for the rest of the afternoon.
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The umbrella sleeve is in the middle holding the tarp up:
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Day 8 (today) the sent the plumber back to "pressure test" the water lines, which I assume means making sure they are tightly sealed and no drops in pressure that would indicate a leak. Kinda sloppy...there's blue sealant all over. They also measured for the liner today.
Next step will be to form and pour the concrete deck which (I'm told) will happen next week. But probably not early in the week since we have rain in the forecast EVERY DAY this week.

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LOADS of progress! NICE! Don't you just love when someone knows how to do their job and run the big toys like that?? It is like a dance when the right person is at the controls!

Gurrrrrrrr on the $500 rock but at least is was only that one big rock AND they had the jack hammer to bust it up!

That is really looking awesome! I hope you have your test kit already as you are going to have water in that pool fast!!!

Kim:kim:
 
Days 9-15 nothing happened. We waited for the stamped concrete contractor to come out to no avail. As I mentioned above, we asked them to price some decorative boulders and river rock for along the top edge along the hillside. They stalled for a week and I got no response, then they replied on a Friday afternoon that we needed to have them install a full retaining wall (at a $14,000 cost) and we had to sign off on it by Saturday afternoon so they could come out to do that work on the following Tuesday (day 12). They also said they wouldn't come out an pour our concrete deck until we had them do the work. I was fuming. Felt like extortion. Luckily, the pool builder(who they are contracted with) squashed that, told them we didn't need the retaining wall, and told them to put us on the schedule for pouring our deck. But we were already behind because they scheduled other jobs for the remainder of the week ahead of us. Did I mention I was fuming??!

They finally came out on Frida (day 15) to start setting formwork, but it rained, so they left after 2 hours. They promised to be back Monday (day 16) to finish the formwork, prep the pad, pour the deck, stamp and color the concrete. Which they did. Pictures below:
Day 16 - Stamped Concrete Deck
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All was going well and it was looking great until just before they were getting ready to leave a worker picked up a can of marking paint and it exploded from laying in the hot sun all day. They had covered pretty well with plastic, but it managed to get on our paver patio, the new pool deck, and our umbrella.

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Day 17-Detailing of Stamped Concrete Deck (and cleaning off orange spray paint)
Today I was almost in tears. I took my youngest to daycare ( I was gone 45 minutes at most) and in that time, they came back and started saw cutting our control joints (which by the way, is our pattern - we elected not to do a pattern other than the rock-face texture since I wanted to disguise the control joints as much as possible). The problem is, I walked in to see they cut about 25% of the joints already and it was the WRONG PATTERN!! We asked for a diamond-shaped pattern (essentially, squares turned 45 degrees) and the didn't do that. They cut them on 90 degree angles so it looks like squares from the house. I was beside myself and wanted to vomit. I went out right away and stopped them. The foreman said he'd call the shop. He came back to me and said he doesn't have anything in his "job folder" showing that the lines were supposed to be on a 45 degree angle, and he just placed them where he thought they'd work best. I'm still in disbelief that this happened and someone needs to explain how this slipped through the cracks. I let them continue cutting since the damage was done...there's no way we could have stopped and started up a new pattern part of the way through. It would have to be entirely ripped out and re-poured to fix it. I have the emails with pictures, including the plan below that they acknowledged receipt of prior to starting. They also told me they would lay it out for my approval prior to cutting. That never happened.

Here's what it was supposed to look like (with some adjustments in line spacing in order to get the joints where they need to be to actually control the cracking).
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And here's what they did:
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Silver_2000 said:
if thats all the goes wrong you will be winning
Click to expand...
Mdz110 said:
That's a good way of thinking of it.
Click to expand...
It looks GREAT! It could be a LOT worse! The lines are straight as can be and equally placed! Would it look better cut like in the drawing? Hard to say really. I will tell you NO one else will even know it is "wrong". All they will see is the wonderful pool you are sharing with them!!! Now breath and come to peace with it. If you want you could pressure the PB to give you some money back as they did not follow directions.

Kim:kim:
 
Tough break on that one.. I'm HUGE on attention to detail (thank you, employer), and personally I can appreciate the preference for a diamond pattern vs, well, a grid.. While I'll agree it doesn't look bad, it certainly doesn't look as well as I think the diamond pattern would have. I'd find some sort of agreement, reimbursement, or upgrade comp'd, etc.

Your house, Your money, Your pool. When they're done, they walk away, and you have years of enjoyment. Ensure they help provide the space you're after, to the best of their abilities and agreements.
 
^^ This. All of this. If you want purple polka dots, then that is what you should get. Ugh, so sorry. I can imagine how frustrated you must have been when you saw it!
 
Be happy with it internally but make them think you're upset.
 
I realize I never really finished this thread. In case anyone in the future takes the time to read through it, here’s the completed, filled pool. Liner is GLI mosaic dark gray, full floor. We love it! It’s cold here now so it’s all covered up....but I can’t wait to open it back up in the spring! I’m so glad we did the bubblers in the sunshelf. The noise sounds like a creek. We sit by the firepit with the bubblers running and it’s so relaxing. The kids, of course, enjoy sitting on the bubblers :)

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