Renovxpt - Thank you for your response and attention to my concerns. There have been many aspects of this process that I have had to wonder about and have tried to figure if they were just a day in the life of pool construction or if I have somehow gotten the short end of the pool building stick. Given that I am still bound by my contract as there is no out for sheer sloppiness, I would prefer not to reveal the pool company until my pool is completed. The people I have spoken with who used this company were all very happy, hence my decision to go with them; however, every job is different. I am by no means trying to protect the pool company, but myself. Pool builders are human, and as I mentioned before I don't want to tick off my pool builder and have even more unnecessary delays and mistakes. I just want to know what should be done and what's right or wrong about the process. I don't want remedies or a breach of contract claim or a fight with my pool builder, I just want a beautiful pool that my family can enjoy for years to come. Which is why I have come to the experts on this forum to guide me through the process, so I can somewhat supervise what my pool builder isn't. For all wannabe pool owners, I am sure my experience is not the norm (or at least I hope), but do your homework, not just on the pool builder but on pool basics. Know what you want and where you want it and be sure to discuss it with your pool builder. Some details may seem minor, but if they are important to you, make sure your builder knows this (and has communicated this to the crew actually doing the work) in advance. Advance communication goes a long way in making sure you get the final product you're looking for. I look forward to posting more pictures of the progress, but other than the blocks under the re-bar that was added on Thursday, there is nothing new to show. I am waiting for the plumber to come to pre-plumb the pool and the inspector to inspect the electrical bonding. Is there anything else I should confirm is done prior to gunite?

I'm not sure I understand your question. With a pool cover, you actually lose less water because it's not evaporating. When you say "cover housing", I think you are referring to what I call the "trough" -- the hole that the cover retracts into. There should really not be any pool water in that trough. When it rains, you will use a pump (like a sump pump) that will sit on top of the cover, it will have a water house attached and you can direct the water it pumps off to go wherever you want. We alternate between pumping it into our yard, or pumping it to the deck drains which is tied into the underground gutters and directed to the street. When you retract the cover with any water on it, it may slosh into the trough -- BUT if there is much water, the water gets heavy and the cover will not operate. It's trial and error but once you do it a few times, you will figure it out. You can back up the cover and then start it again and let it dump into the trough. Our trough is covered with Trex (plastic wood-look). Our builder thought it would be better than using concrete coping because the coping would be so heavy to remove when you need to access that trough. But our builder has not built many pool covers, so I'm not sure that was the best advice. I sort of wish we had a different design there. I haven't looked under there in a long time to see if there is much standing water (could be mosquito problem??) but I don't notice mosquitos coming from there, and when we have looked in there, nothing has concerned us. My husband removes the Trex in the spring after the oak trees are finished with all their mess and cleans / vacuums the trough out. We have the crepe myrtle that sheds and so there is debris that will get dumped into that trough throughout the year. Obviously if there are lots of debris, after a storm, we clean that before retracting the cover, but we don't clean it every time by any means. Overall -- I still love having the cover. BIG piece of mind on the safety front with 2 kids now! We can still enjoy our yard in the winter without safety concerns. The pool stays much cleaner. We use less chlorine and water.

I've got a Jandy flowlink sitting in a box so I think I'll install it and do a little testing. The new Jandy "P" software displays a pretty accurate wattage number for the pump at a given RPM, so that's handy. I've got my normal pool circulation set to 1700 RPM and that's reporting 238 watts. Of course, with no flow meter, I don't have an accurate GPM for that. With the flowlink is in, I'll post what I find. In my mind, even if the Pentair is slightly more efficient, when I shopped around on-line, they were consistently $130 (VS+SVRS) to $275 (VF) higher than the ePump. Assuming the cost calculators are correct, the Jandy might cost me an extra $3-5 per _year_ to run, which means 40+ years to recover the higher initial cost on the Pentair. As for noise, at the lower RPMs the ePump is so silent that I sometimes need to look at the filter basket (and operation light) just to tell that it's running. I suspect that's the same for the Pentair, so no matter what's quieter, it's already to the level that it's no longer an issue. It's funny, these pumps are such a huge improvement over what we had before that the debate points are now about a couple dollar savings per year, and if the pump is running at the sound level of a whisper or leaves rustling. :)

OK Mike, the thermostat was off by 2 degrees, so it was 72... since it was off, the humidity reading could be off a bit as well (right now, my digital thermometer says 72.5, 53% humidity and unit just stopped), the quality something guy is coming next week for a full inspection of everything. It is very nice in here, oh, how I missed my cool air. Even at 100 degrees outside, setting 72 deg. it is not running non-stop. I will watch, do you have input what to watch for? TD: The outside unit (3.5 ton like last one) is larger and very quiet. Return air, we have the white cloth type filters on the returns (3), not the thick pleated, or the cheap ones. The installer cut out the mesh filter on the air handler, he said he doesn't like them, they come apart and get into the fan. I don't either, in an apartment we lived in, I found that mesh thing, it was filled with mold. Also, I'm not going into that attic to change anything. There are "boxes" feeding into the handler, they built new ones. There was another he showed me he didn't like, he built another one (unless that is included in the other two). TD: Can you post back about humidity control (it might be 50s, that is what my digital thermometer says). They said to keep it at 60% because I cool so low, and that would keep the fan only from running. There is way more air moving around, WAY more, as in a few whistling/clanging vents and returns, and a few vents which have quite a lot of air coming out of them. There are dampers installed, a few were cut back today, we will evaluate more on our own, and when they come back next week to check everything.