Building a pool

[BMCSean]

Will you share your supplier? Or is there a min buy?

I don’t know if you can buy from them without an account. It’s jamieson fence supply. They have one in frisco too, I just know a guy at the one off regal row. If you do it yourself and need something just let me know, I can probably help you out.

[Broncojohnny]

I just recently got a house with a pool. It is a hair over ten thousand gallons.

If you decide to plant trees to shade the pool, plant ones that don't shed a lot of leaves, it is a lot of extra work if they do.

The extra shade cuts down on chlorine use, UV light is not good for chlorine levels.

Definitely get a heater, I don't see how you will ever need a cooler if you have a decent amount of shade

Get a good automatic pool vacuum, it saves a lot of work. Run it off of a second pump so you can run it on a different schedule from the circulating pump.

[slow99]

Get a good automatic pool vacuum, it saves a lot of work. Run it off of a second pump so you can run it on a different schedule from the circulating pump.

I was gonna say get an electric robot cleaner. My old Polaris that ran off the booster pump turned into a huge PITA after the first pool season. Always wrapping itself in knots and shit - I hated that thing.

[Chopped54]

My pool is around 32k gallons, no heater or chiller and my kids are in it April to October. By mid afternoon the pool is in complete shade so during hot months it never feels like a bathtub.
Didn't go with automation. Wasn't sure it was worth $3000, and even though it would be convenient I am still not convinced it would have been.
No cover, but also do not have a lot of trees around me. I do push mow around the pool and bag it to keep the grass out.
Looked at pics for build time.
First dig Aug 29th
Filling with water October 13th

[fordracing19]

I was gonna say get an electric robot cleaner. My old Polaris that ran off the booster pump turned into a huge PITA after the first pool season. Always wrapping itself in knots and shit - I hated that thing.

My Polaris is horrible about that. Robots dont tangle?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

[Chopped54]

My Polaris is horrible about that. Robots dont tangle?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

I have a Polaris 3900 and have never had tangling issues.

[Ruffdaddy]

My pool is around 32k gallons, no heater or chiller and my kids are in it April to October. By mid afternoon the pool is in complete shade so during hot months it never feels like a bathtub.
Didn't go with automation. Wasn't sure it was worth $3000, and even though it would be convenient I am still not convinced it would have been.
No cover, but also do not have a lot of trees around me. I do push mow around the pool and bag it to keep the grass out.
Looked at pics for build time.
First dig Aug 29th
Filling with water October 13th

Man only 6 weeks build for 32K gallons?! That's awesome. Im not going to hold my breath but it would be nice to not have to hand water for 6 months

[svauto-erotic855]

Shade is your friend and it can save you some money. Adding shade is easy.

Pick landscaping that doesn't dump tons of debris into your pool.

Heat pumps that can also cool off the water are nice but the initial cost is quite high. Swimming in 80 degree water when it is 70 outside is very pleasant. Swimming in 75 degree water when it's 20 degrees outside is also quite pleasant. Heat pumps do not do a good job of heating once the outside air temperatures have dropped below about 48 degrees.

Automation is only useful if you have a hot tub, elaborate water features, or elaborate lighting. If you just have a big hole in the ground full of clean water then a mechanical time clock is your best bet. They are as simple and as durable as a hammer where as electric controllers fail from lightning strikes anywhere in the neighborhood. If you do go with an automated system make sure that it is a Jandy iaqualink.

Even if the pool is the size of a bathtub it should have two skimmers that are plumbed directly to the inlet of the pump, do not let them tie the suction from both skimmers together. Also make sure that the bottom suction which is frequently called the main drain is also plumbed directly to the inlet of the pump.

Have a real engineering report done on your soil conditions and find a builder that knows how to build in those conditions. Insist that the builder use shotcrete instead of regular gunite and make sure they use half inch rebar. It wouldn't hurt to double up on the rebar in the shell of the pool. Make sure they are also doing the walls and the floor of the pool 12 inchs thick.

Use a premium plaster, quartz scape last a long time and it doesn't kill your wallet.

Make sure you have good drainage around the pool, there is nothing worse than having a nice pool where the entire yard gets dumped into it every time it rains.

Get a pool cleaner. My personal favorite is the Polaris 280 but the upgraded model from Polaris called the 3900 Sport will last twice as long but it cost several hundred dollars more upfront. Another poster in this thread mentioned that their Polaris constantly tied itself in knots but that was his fault. You have to adjust a cleaner to fit the pool. When done correctly they don't tangle themselves up.

The weather is so bad this year that most construction is at least three months behind schedule and every time we get a hard rain it pushes everything back about another 10 days. When I really put my mind to it I can have a pool completed in under a month but only if the weather cooperates. It is extraordinary unlikely that you will have a pool you can use this year.

Child safety fences don't really work, I base this on watching a toddler climb straight over one after crawling out of the dog door. Your best bet is to put locks on the windows and a high lock on the door that the kids cannot reach. Also there are floating alarms that you can put into the pool that will go off if somebody jumps in it. There are also classes you can take kids to at a very young age where they teach them how to survive falling in the pool fully clothed.

[Chopped54]

Have a real engineering report done on your soil conditions and find a builder that knows how to build in those conditions. Insist that the builder use shotcrete instead of regular gunite and make sure they use half inch rebar. It wouldn't hurt to double up on the rebar in the shell of the pool. Make sure they are also doing the walls and the floor of the pool 12 inchs thick.

How does this look?

[svauto-erotic855]

^^^^ It looks normal, there's not a way for me to tell if that is appropriate for the soil conditions without seeing an engineering report. Some parts of town you don't have to worry about putting down piers, and other parts of town piers are critical. Typically if I don't hit rock when I'm digging the hole I will put in a few piers. I also like to put a good 8 to 10 in of gravel under the pool and all of the plumbing that I run under the pool is in stabilized sand.

[DamonH]

We built a pool in 2017. Build time from dig to fill was a little over 5 weeks. I put together a time-lapse of my build here:

https://youtu.be/V-8DDldDVBw - edit - can't seem to embed it.


I'm a gadget geek, so automation was a must. I ended up with Jandy equipment but I think the app for Pentair is nicer. I don't have a chiller, but use the heater quite a bit. I've been pleasantly surprised how little it's added to my gas bill when I've used it. I originally wanted a diving board, but after going back and forth on all the sizing requirements and the fact that diving boards are now just a stiff fiberglass plank, I ended up doing a grotto the kids can jump off of. I think the only thing I would change is the amount of shallow end I have. Mine gets deep pretty fast. I wanted it 7 foot deep to give some depth for jumping off the grotto, but the penalty for that was the shallow end just doesn't extend that far out. It's not a problem for adults, but kids have to sink or swim! My kids are old enough to not need a gate luckily. When we have little ones over to visit we just lock the door / turn on the door chime.

For some reason all of the builders wanted to put little flower beds cut outs right up next to the pool. We removed that as it just seemed like a quick way to get dirt/etc in the pool. They also wanted to only deck the front side, and have flower beds / vegetation across the back and such. We wanted to be able to walk all the way around the pool, so we added extra decking all the way around w/ a place to sit on the back side. I think they were all just trying to save on decking costs since it's a large expense.

[lincolnboy]

full time shade means you will be heating the pool more.

We had two of these on the sides, and you could move them to make shade where you want.

I did that same thing. The sun would go down the in opposite direction of us being able to shade the pool once the sun was going down. That was a waste. We did invest in a cheap mister that you attach to the jets. Pools and no shade suck big time.

[Mysticcobrakilla]

We built a pool in 2017. Build time from dig to fill was a little over 5 weeks. I put together a time-lapse of my build here:

https://youtu.be/V-8DDldDVBw - edit - can't seem to embed it.


I'm a gadget geek, so automation was a must. I ended up with Jandy equipment but I think the app for Pentair is nicer. I don't have a chiller, but use the heater quite a bit. I've been pleasantly surprised how little it's added to my gas bill when I've used it. I originally wanted a diving board, but after going back and forth on all the sizing requirements and the fact that diving boards are now just a stiff fiberglass plank, I ended up doing a grotto the kids can jump off of. I think the only thing I would change is the amount of shallow end I have. Mine gets deep pretty fast. I wanted it 7 foot deep to give some depth for jumping off the grotto, but the penalty for that was the shallow end just doesn't extend that far out. It's not a problem for adults, but kids have to sink or swim! My kids are old enough to not need a gate luckily. When we have little ones over to visit we just lock the door / turn on the door chime.

For some reason all of the builders wanted to put little flower beds cut outs right up next to the pool. We removed that as it just seemed like a quick way to get dirt/etc in the pool. They also wanted to only deck the front side, and have flower beds / vegetation across the back and such. We wanted to be able to walk all the way around the pool, so we added extra decking all the way around w/ a place to sit on the back side. I think they were all just trying to save on decking costs since it's a large expense.

Cool video!

[Big A]

They also wanted to only deck the front side, and have flower beds / vegetation across the back and such.

This is how ours is, it looks nice, but it also brings the yard that much closer to the pool, and we get a ton of grass in the water when the yard is mowed.

[TX_92_Notch]

We built a pool in 2017. Build time from dig to fill was a little over 5 weeks. I put together a time-lapse of my build here:

https://youtu.be/V-8DDldDVBw - edit - can't seem to embed it.

Having gone from a manufactured hot tub to an in-ground hot tub, what's your comparison of the two?

I've never sat in one of the round circles of concrete and actually thought, "yeah, this is nice". To me, they're very uncomfortable and most have a stone coping hanging over the edge to poke you in the back if you try to lean back at all. The preman units have multiple seating arrangements and a vast array of jets. Seems like a no-brainer to me, though I've never owned either one. And the built in versions are sure popular. Seems to me like the ONLY thought to those are aesthetics. Comfort be damned.