We have signed with a PB, and are putting on an Automatic pool cover. Originally, they said they wanted to use Cover Pools. But after more research, they are saying Coverstar seems like a better product. I found another board with bad reviews of Coverstar, especially mentioning the ropes multiple times. Can anyone here offer more updated information on Coverstar? These reviews were from 2009, so maybe the issue has been corrected. Muddy-water -- how old is your Coverstar pool cover? I'm glad to hear that you have had no problems. Here is a link that might be useful: Coverstar reviews

We put the socks on the ends of our three hoses with duct tape and are looking forward to filling the pool when the Pebble Tec company leaves tomorrow. Thanks everyone for your help. Janetlong, we chose Prism Blue Pebble Sheen. We really liked Tropical Breeze Pebble Tec but wanted the Pebble Sheen so this is supposed to be the same color. We were told there was not a Prism Blue in the North Atlanta area for us to see but there was a Tropical Breeze pebble tec so that is the one we fell in love with! Let me know what color you decide on.

Davidahn, please don't think I'm just an angry man. Know that I've tried to adapt and deal with the situation as it is but I can't. I refuse to compromise quality and service for price and that is what it seems I must do to survive. I try to run my business in such a manner as to be fair to everyone. I pay my employees well, provide them with company vehicles, benefits etc. It's what I need to do to keep offering my customers quality service and an excellent finished product. Every time, without exception lately, As soon as I provide a quote on a specific piece of hardware my client calls to ask why I charge so much. The fact is that I mark-up my materials by what I consider to be a fair percentage but the internet shows them pricing at least equal to if not lower than my cost. My customers tend to be wealthy people, and I don't imagine that they got that way by selling products at cost or pricing their services low, but it seems that they expect me to do so. I simply cannot afford to work for bare wages. I have insurance, compensation, office staff, vehicle costs - all the things required to offer them the service they expect of me, yet they think I should install a product at their home for the price they see on the web. It baffles me to be honest. Last year I built a pool and spa for a nice fellow. I sent him to my distributor to choose his tiles. He spent some time there dealing with the staff and left with some samples he liked. I got pricing for him, again with a fair mark-up, and he price checked t on the internet. Of course, the online pricing was some 10% below my cost so he chose to order it there. When the time came, of course he expected me to measure his pool and give him quantities. Seems reasonable of course but in my estimating I used to work this into the price of the tile so now I'm essentially working for free. I give him the quantities, the tiles arrive, and we begin to install. Sure enough we're short of tile. I freak out a little, measure the pool again and check my notes...hmmm...should be enough. Talk to the owner and it turns out that he decided that I had over estimated and he knew better, cut the amounts by some 15%. So now my tile guy needs to go away and come back 10 days later, holding up the project and costing me money. Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident. In this case I had a long discussion with the client about how I priced things and why he should allow me to order the tiles but of course he knew better, at my expense. I'm not trying to get rich on every job here, just offer a good product at a fair price. Last year I made a whopping profit of about 4% after the dust settled. I've pretty much had it, it honestly isn't worth the risk anymore.

I have the same setup and that's the schedule I'm on as well. You (we) could probably get by with less filtering time. The chlorinator is programmed in the percentage of time it's operating while your filter pump is on. With our 8 hours/day of filtering, I'm operating the generator at 25% capacity which is very low. And the chlorine level still reads high. So the same amount of chlorine could be generated by running the filter pump for only 2 hours/day with the chlorinator set at 100%. I'm still trying to sort out the pump run time myself, so I'll be interested in the answers you get. One metric I've heard is that you want to turn around the pool water once per day. I haven't done the calculation on our pool yet to determine where we're sitting (frankly, there's some guess work in determining that number.) At any rate, my pool is usually sparking clean, so I don't have a big incentive to change anything.