Oh and a lot of the pictures on the website are from another pool builder!!! I thought they were pools he built.

Quote: "There was never any inspections done to the pool"

Sorry, I find that hard to believe... the county always has inspections, and you should have an inspection sheet on site listing the inspector's signature, and the pass/fail status.

-Gorilla

I don't pools get built all the time without permits.

We only do when the client requests that we do.

Racket,

All I am going to say is guys like you are the reason that this great industry gets a "BAD" name. I will not respond to a flame war and I will carry on as a professional.

Apparently you have no idea about what exactly our inspectors here do. When it comes to swimming pools the only thing they may care about here is fencing, and in some municipalities, that covers be installed, that's it.

Our projects or certainly not lacking in quality, and there are many reasons that I will not get into here that our clients refuse to permit a project. We want them to, but we could do total hack jobs like many of our competitors and still pass inspections.

I am somewhat insulted by your comments because we are a quality builder, and always exceed what we are required to do.

A permitted and inspected project != quality.

my 2c - we just got done shopping around, comparing bids, breaking down each line item - wife really scoured the bids and asked each for more detail - we narrowed down to 3 builders, finalized design. Compared apples to apples as best we could. three bids were about 12k apart - so we go with the cheapest...hey it's a recession after all. Guy calls the city and says "you have 40' setbacks so no pool for you" - crushing the dream. I told the local builder what he said, and he tells us "no way" sure enough he plays cards with the inspector or whatever, been doing business in the area for 30 years.

So we go with the local builder at a slightly higher cost, they came and dug yesterday and there was fireworks all over the place. Neighbor cried about too much dirt on the street, called city - but they send my builder's lifelong friend, the two shared a beer, placated the neighbor, and we did not have to get involved. They know the lay of the land, and alleviated huge headaches on the first day of the dig.

So while price matters, the most important thing for us is knowing the local landscape - can't stress it enough!!

man there are some real whoppers being told on this thread. Keep em coming.....

Hi Michelle 09
I feel your pain re nightmare pools/pool builders. We, too, have a nightmare pool. Our PB INSISTED he knew EVERYTHING there was to know about our build which included a telescoping pool enclosure. He was in charge of the pool and decking while we had someone else do the enclosure installation. Long story short, the PB insisted on pouring our deck toward the pool instead of away and yelled at me when I questioned this decision. The result? Copious amounts of water running onto the deck and then pouring into the pool from underneath the enclosure's rail system. The rain water drags all sorts of crud into the pool providing us w/ many forms of plant and animal life...yuck. I'm so glad we installed a building so that we could swim on icky weather days but instead nearly hurl when it does rain because of the crud running into the pool. At this point, the PB admits he should have poured the deck away from the pool but "oh, well" is his comment. I feel like contacting Judge Judy to beat the snot out of him... At least on sunny days the pool is lovely but when it rains it's really ugly. The PB says it's up to us to pay for a drainage system in the deck because he feels we should be able to live w/ "a little water". One of these days I'll post pics of the water...
I hope you are able to resolve your issues because as I said, on nice weather days, our pool is awesome and it's so nice to spend time w/ the family in such a nice environment. I wish the same for you!!!!!!
Joanne

Good luck. Sometimes even checking the PB out ahead of time doesn't pan out. We started this process 4 years ago. After dealing with designs, 3 years for permits (building a house at the same time), etc., they started building. It seems that although the PB we contracted with is still rated the best in the county, (and has been, according to the homeowners, contractors and architects we have checked with), they let go of all of their highest paid employees last year due to the recession. The ones working our job are really messing up!

Michelle
If you are still needing some Slate Blue PS pics, here are some. We are still in the renovation stage for the pool deck, so ignore the blue tape and paint...

Here is a link that might be useful: Slate Blue Pebble Sheen pics