banana, stonesmama, cdavmd, smbnobles - LOL!! :) It IS nerve-wracking, isn't it? You're right, it's like one big long suspense movie, like a really bad "B" movie or something. It's 112 degrees right now, good GRIEF. I laughed about you needing pot holders to open the car, but it's so true! The BBQ area is so hot right now we can only work for about an hour at a time. I think I'll put the sprinkler on this weekend, just so I can endure it a little better. Wish we had a pool.......................OK, wish we had a pool with WATER. Tired of looking at my big, empty, three-tiered flower pot in the backyard. Give me petunias, or give me water. Either way, this big empty shotcrete shell has gotta go. They start the thoro-seal process tomorrow, so at least we'll have a different color to look at for a few days. If pebblesheen doesn't happen on Monday, I'm filling this dang thing up with water anyway. It will be fairly watertight with all this sealant. It might even be a new hit color - "thoro-seal brown". I'm not trying to wish anybody's weekend away, but I'm hoping that Monday morning comes around very quickly! This thread is going to max out, so on Monday morning I'm going to start a new one (the FINAL chapter)! You can think of me on Sunday night, with my face glued against the window, looking for the Pebblesheen truck. When you hear the joyful screaming from the southwest, you'll know the truck is here :). Until then, I am offically on strike from posting on this thread. Thank you, smb, for the beautiful water picture!! Anyone else want to throw theirs in for a finale for this thread? See you all at pebblesheen!

I just wanted to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for posting your pictures. I am not sure if you come back to this site anymore but your pool inspired our design and we are going to put that cool little pool into our design too. I spoke to our PB on Friday and he said it could be done!! YIPPPPEEEEE. I hope your pool makes it into one of those wonderful pool idea books! Katherine Here is our old pool design and below is my sketch of the new design. I put the elevated Baja shelf with spillover on the right and moved the fountain to the left by our existing patio! I can't wait to get started and post pix too! New design courtesy of your wonderful pool:

Pump sizing all starts with how much water you need to turn over. Start with your gallons per minute first. How much do I need to make the water go over the edge? Depending on the type of finish on the weir wall will determine how much flow you need over the edge. Tile is the least resistant and stone will cause the most due to its uneveness. If you have tile done with a tight tolerance of 1/16" of an inch then you would only need 18.56 gallons per minute over the edge for 33 feet. Let's say the tile guy is not perfect and you have an 1/8" to overcome then you need 52.46 gallons per minute. Now you know what pump you need to push the water over the edge. Even a smaller variable speed pump will do this. It doesn't need to be 3 hp. Next figure out your pipe diameter. I do not plumb my pools to meet the minimum feet per second requirement by code. I go below that. I try for 4.5 feet per second for the suction side and 6.0 feet per second for the return side. This is how fast the water is moving through the pipe. For 53 gallons per minute my pipe diameter must be 2.5" for the suction and 2" for the return to meet that standard. Keep in mind that even with a smaller variable speed pump like the Pentair I1 that the max gallons per minute is 120. Since code requires that I have to have the proper pipe size that can handle the max gallons per minute of my pump than I have to have at least a 3" on the suction side and 2.5" on the return. You can lock out the pump so it does not exceed a certain rpm so you could go with a smaller pipe but people find a way around the lock out so it's better to just go with the bigger pipe. A 5 hp pump is way overkill for what you have. Huge waste of energy and a lot of noise. It's does look like he put on a 6" suction on the pump for the basin but what does he have on the rerun side? Sounds like the pump is restricted on the return. If you follow the rule of 4.5 feet per second on the suction and 6.0 feet per second on the return side then it doesn't matter what your head pressure is. It will fall in line. Hope this helps.

I didn't see this thread until now but I don't know if it would have changed my mind or not. I am in the midst of a high end kitchen renovation and was agonizing about this decision for a while; I did decide on the counter depth Bosch as it is 1/4 of the price of the SZ. It DOES have 2 compressors which was a selling point for me (vs the SZ which has the 2 compressors). I like that Bosch has the split shelves, the door shelves that accomodate gallon containers, the programable produce drawers, the larger freezer, and the French doors vs the single door in the SZ. I got rid of my 25 year old SZ that hasn't been in good shape for over 5 years (with produce spoiling quickly, etc). Ironically my extra 25 year old Kitchen Aid fridge that I keep in the garage still operates well and better than the 25 year old SZ did, but you can't get Kitchen Aids like that any more. Additionally, all the contractors do not think highly of SZ at this point. I don't have my Bosch long enough to comment about the alarm or reliability at this point.