Hi pool people!

I'm not sure where to begin. I'll start off by introducing myself. My name is Lori and I live in the San Fernando Valley 40 or so miles from Los Angeles.

We built our pool last year. It was a year old in May. We absolutely LOVE our pool, in fact living in hot Southern Cali, I don't know how we lived without it except maybe the beach saved us, lol.

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Our pool builder was pretty fast compared to others. It was about 3 1/2 months and we were filling. Took forever for them to come back and finish up minor details which was pretty frustrating but, finally was able to say good bye to our builder for the summer and enjoy our new pool.

We have a Tahoe blue pebble sheen with sandy beach entry. It really looks like a sandy beach.

I interviewed about 5 pool builders and decided to go with (am I supposed to mention the name?).....

Despite the fact that they built me a pretty nice pool, they were very vague on start up and explaining the pool equipment to me. I basically had to learn the equipment by myself. Including tweaking things just to get my spa to run. I now have it DOWN!!

When I interview these builders I had asked them if they had built beach entry pools and they said of course they had. I looked on their site and pictures and never really saw the type of beach entry I wanted but, there were more of a baja step type of entries on their site.

Problems and problems later....

Apparently my pool builder didn't realize or know that the pebble sheen has to be under water at all times. The beginning of my beach is the pebble and if we filled it to the edge it would over flow, not to mention my tile wouldn't be visible. I started noticing cracks in the beach. Then more cracks and more. I called my pool company about the cracks and they said they would take care of it but, 8 months later the cracks have now turned into gaps and the pebble is coming out in chunks. Too bad I didn't know the problems I would have with a non submerged part of the beach entry. Never attended pebble sheen school.

A PVC pipe that wasn't glued properly if at all had come apart and since it was during the rainy season, I didn't realize we had a leak under our deck. I thought the excess water was from me washing down the deck and watering my plants. One day I sat down in one of my chairs and saw that the deck had sunk over an inch. It was separating from the spa steps where a lizard family now lives. My husband noticed that the heater sitting on a slab was sinking and tilting. The gas line attached was starting to bend. They came out after a few weeks of complaints on that. Luckily they didn't have to break the cement to get to the leak but, they DID try to blame it on us. Because it was near a shower head that we put in...even though they cemented in the pipe for it. All we did was attach the rest. They said it was the stress of us screwing in the pipe, lol. I tried moving it and it wouldn't budge....it's cemented!! Well...now we have a 10 foot crack across that part of the deck.

I know that cement cracks and I accept that and even kind of closed my eyes to it but, now that they taking so long to get back here to fix the problems, I'm going to add the crack to my list of issues.

I started typing this 6 days ago which was last Wed. I decided to not post it on the forum because they finally called me and also emailed me saying that they would be here "this week" to take a look at the issues I'm having. Well..."this week" has come and gone and now we're into another week. I'm sure that sounds very familiar to many people on here. What IS IT WITH pool builders??

So within the past few days, my spa steps have now collapsed onto the deck. The poor lizard family is a squashed family (lol).

When the pool company was here about 4 mo. ago (for the leak) they saw the steps & said they will be OK and said all they had to do was add stucco and paint it to make it match (yeah right...sure they'll match the color). Well...I guess all this waiting was a blessing in disguise because with their "rigged" repairs it would have fallen eventually.

I asked 2 mo. ago if we could get the repairs done before July 4th since we were having a party. They said absolutely!

I even told them in an email that I was embarrassed about the beach and that it also didn't look good on my pool company as well.

Had these people not been such flakes I wouldn't have hesitated to be a reference to them. They've already lost 2 possible clients, one being my neighbor down the street.

I called the Contractors State License Board yesterday to see what my next step should be. They were very informative and said that these people have had plenty of time to respond and address the issues.

Sorry for the long read. I had to get it off of my chest where I know others might understand.

If anyone is in So.Calif and in the Los Angeles, Orange County and Ventura areas, email me at StuntRSC@aol.com and I'll give you the name of my pool builder so you can put them on your list of cautions.

Have a great summer!

All the pictures I've seen of the pools here are beautiful!

I'll post pictures soon.