swimming pool company (install) (house, purchase, contractors)

[NC211]

Hi, we are thinking about a fiberglass swimming pool (in ground) for our house. We're in NoVa, and curious if anyone has any recommendations for pool contractors?

thanks!

[Bamaman1]

We're in the process of finishing our fiberglass pool installation. And we love it.

We were thrilled that the pool installation went in in 1 1/2 days. And a mountain of dirt had to be moved out of the back yard. But then things got slow--dealing with subcontractors.

We had to get a health department permit before getting a building permit. Then the electrician cmae out to run the electricity 20' from the pool and install a bonded ground system for the pump, pool water, ladders and the salt water generator.

After the electrical inspector signed off on the installation, we went a little crazy laying concrete--and spent our COROVID $ there. The concrete work was quite expensive with 16' x 41' on the house side of the pool, 8' on both ends and 4' across the back. Make sure the concrete guy is pool proficient.

Things just have a way of not getting done as fast as you think they should go. The pool installers are incredibly busy right now, as our guy has 8 pools to put in the next 2 weeks.

I'm looking at two 50' x 50' areas on each end of the pool that needs a final grading and sodding. I also have 20 aborvitae's to plant and sodding can be quite physical. I'm too cheap to hire it out.

I screwed up the other day when I was adding a couple of inches of water--and took my wife to the doctor 65 miles away. I overflowed the pool, and water ran into my next door neighbor's yard. I hope the salt doesn't kill his grass. I've got to figure out how to keep water away from his yard and possibly 200' to the street when backflushing the sand filter. The contractors didn't address that issue.

You should only deal with top line subcontractors. My concrete guy laid concrete right up to the pool coping. I've now got to get a diamond wheel and cut a groove as freezing water could pop off the brick bullnose coping in winter. The groove needs a silicone product to fill it. I have the tools.

You should purchase a fiberglass pool that comes from someone like Venture Pools. Not all fiberglass pools are created equal in quality and only a couple of manufacturers stick out with quality far above the rest. Hope it all goes smoothly for you.

[NC211]

Thanks Bama - we ultimately decided against the idea. If we were further south towards you, then i could stomach the cost as it would be used a lot more of the year. We used to live in B'ham and had a pool installed and loved it. Up here, I'm looking at around $75k to $100k to make it work in our yard. Ultimately decided it wasn't worth it for 4 months of usage a year for us.

[Bamaman1]

Everything about housing in D.C. is extremely expensive.

We're only putting in the pool because our grandkids need something to take up their time, and this is our forever house. We also have a lake house an hour away on the Tennessee River.