I am glad you enjoyed the reading. It sure was a wonderful trip. I am now trying to get all the pics offf my cell phone...sigh ...no memory card...and then I will get the whole thing put together. Will keep me busy for weeks ! c

Including photos using photobucket this time ...

Versus writing all over again, I just pasted a post I did before. If you search this forum for "San Diego Pool Builders", you will see that there are many good comments about local PB. Terri Posted by socal_fun (My Page) on Tue, Dec 4, 07 at 17:33 Give John at Mission Pools a try. We were very happy with Mission Pools. John Delay came up with a beautiful design, was honest, very thorough, and did not put the heavy sales moves on us. His site foreman Jonny was always available for us, and worked well with our landscaper. We only wanted to go with one of the more experienced PBs in the San Diego area, not with the smaller outsourcing companies. I'm sure some are good, but after the experiences that two of our neighbors had, we only wanted the more experienced companies out. One neighbor had their PB charge $3,200 more for excavation, even with no rocks (how is that possible). Neither PB filled in the dirt over their pipes, etc., which cost another $1,500 for the landscape contracto to fill for the PB. One PB charged more for the back wall on the pool to be higher (how can they do that if the PB took the measurements?). Anyhow, we had San Diego Pools, California Pools, Mission Valley Pools, and Mission Pools out to our house. All had good ideas, crazy pictures, and different reasons for this brand and that product. In the beginning, the pricing was close, with Mission Valley being the cheapest and California Pools being the highest. After reviewing the estimates in private, we really noticed just how differently each company "spells out" (or not) their cost for their product. We made a list of items that we for sure wanted included in each PBs second proposals...to compare. Johns (Mission Pools) original proposal was the most transparent, and revealed some items that I assumed were included with the other PBs, but as we found were not. Items like filling up the pipe trenches, installing the surface skimmer where the wind blows, proper plumbing of our freeform spa, included cost for the "standard tile", etc. We then saw each one again (to review the new cost with the items we wanted for sure),and then we saw that Missions Pools pricing was looking better. We were disappointed with the representative from Mission Valley Pools (He was even a family member)who refused to include the filling of their trenches and kept saying "don't worry about that" and "we are the same, but cheaper". My husband liked their portfolio (very much), but feared that they would play more games and just get their profit from somewhere else during the construction. We then went to the remaining three PBs place of business (we felt we should since we were going to spend a little over $75k) and that was the deciding factor. Our designer (John) showed us all the materials, surfaces, concrete colors, tiles, etc., and how the business operates. At that point, there was not a doubt in our minds that Mission Pools was the company that would offer us the most control of their product, was well organized, experienced, and financially stable.

Well, the control panel on the top of my pump went out after 6 months. The pump could only be controlled by remote control via the "easytouch" remote control. When setting the service panel to "service" the pump gets no power and the buttons do not work. The Pentair representative came out and said they were having problems with this pump controller and replaced the top control unit on the pump. He wondered why I would bother controlling the pump from the pump itself, since I could use the remote control. He must have thought that the pool service comes into my house when I am away to get the remote control! OF COURSE I WANT TO CONTROL IT AT THE PUMP, that is what pump SERVICE means! Now it has gone out a second time. Don't get one of these lousy pumps. Get something tried and reliable with a decent track record.