The Turning Point
The Turning Point
Its a funny thing, right about this time, I happened to be chatting with a neighbor
Todd about my pool odyssey. He informed me that the pool he recently completed
was done as an owner/builder. And actually, he said that his wife Jody did
most of the work. They worked with a company called Tropicana Pools
in which they gave them the option from letting them do everything, all the way
to having the company do everything. The more the company had to be involved, the more
they had to pay. They ended up taking the option where they provided a sub list
to them and Tropicana would come out for three inspections (in addition to the two
mandatory City Inspections). Jody did everything else. She made the
calls, got the bids, scheduled the subs, was home when they came, etc. For this I believe
they paid about $4000.
That still seemed a little steep to me. But the key thing was that she did
most of the work. And I knew Jody. She was not the type that enjoys
construction. She was a full-time mom. She not one to tinker in the
garage or build things. I spoke with her later and she said she knew
nothing about building pools. She said all the subs knew exactly what to
do. And it turned out great! They loved their pool and would most
definitely do it again if they ever moved. Then she also told me about
another neighbor who GC'ed their own pool and they loved it and saved thousands
of dollars in the process.
CONTINUED BELOW
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Later
that week, I happened to be talking to another neighbor and told him about the
information that was given to me earlier by Todd and Jody. He said,
"Oh, yeah, I know a lot of people who are doing that also and their pools
have turned out great! And they saved a bundle of money along the
way." Hmmm... another data point. I was in no hurry at this
point to do anything about making a decision to build a pool. All this
information suddenly gave me enough empowerment and motivation to do some research into
building my own pool. I decided that I was going to take my time
though. I didn't want to mess up something this costly.
A
few months later, I had started working for a new company in Chandler AZ.
Some of the guys in my new group had the habit of playing basketballs in the
mornings before work. As fate would have it, the first time I stepped onto
the court, one of the developers in my group, Ken, elbowed me coming down with a
rebound. I came down profusely bleeding above my eye. What a way to
start in a new group. I got to know Ken pretty well after that. He
mentioned to me that he had also done his own pool - sort of. He didn't go
with a pool builder, but he didn't GC. He hired a GC to do most of the
legwork for him. There were some problems, but overall he was pretty
pleased
After
some time had passed, I happened to be standing near a FAX machine one day in
the office and out popped a FAX that looked like a schedule of pool subs and
when they were supposed to arrive at a job. I quickly looked at the name
and found out that there was a gal that sat close to where I sat who was taking
on a major pool project with her husband. I went over to her office,
introduced myself, then inquired about their experience. I found out that they were the full GCs
on the job - exactly what I wanted to do. They did all the research themselves and took care of
everything. She was gracious enough to sit down with me later on and told me all
about their experience. At the time I spoke with her, they were about a
week from completing the pool. It was an amazing pool! She showed me
tons of pictures and I swear it could have won awards for their pool
design. They took that baby to town. It had a HUGE grotto area,
fogging systems, the works. WOW! They were really happy they did it
themselves. In fact, they said they were thinking about putting all the
information that they collected and putting together a video or something.
Anyways,
at this point, I was fairly convinced that this was the way to go. With
all the information I had collected to that point, I finally felt like I was
ready to embark on this project. What follows after this is my experience
going about building my own pool. I don't pretend that I am knowledgeable
about the process or that I even did it right, but after talking to countless
people, I started to get to the point where no one was really telling me
anything new. At this point I figured I was ready to go.
Note: In this next section, I will cover the step-by-step process
of building your own swimming pool acting as the GC being the
owner/builder. I cover everything that I went through being my own GC and
included things that I learned from other homeowners as they GC'ed their
pools. I cover all the necessary upfront things you need to understand
before you start: having the correct mindset, understanding the pool building
industry and the construction industry in general, and understanding your role
as a GC. I also delve into all the necessary prep work (e.g design
of the pool, sub research and selection, the bidding process, what to ask, how
to ask) that needs to be done prior to actual construction starting. I go
over each trade and what happens in each trade. This is by far the most
crucial page on this website.
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