Who do you have bids from?

Jeremia, Premier, Wells are all good.

Aqua, Swan, Premier (very secretive with pricing) and McCauley. Quotes range from 50-69K.
McCauley is the front runner right now... any input?

We got quotes from all the major players in town. My neighbor and I both went with Premier and both of us are happy. He had some issues with his salesman but nothing that he could not work out. I had nothing but praise for my guy, Rudy. Straight shooter on every issue. He knows the business and answered every question. We clicked with him from the moment he stepped into our home. Turns out my realtor used him two years prior and had same outcome.

My biggest recommendation, if you life a company but the saleperson did not impress you, ask to see someone else. All our builders came up with same price within a few hundred dollars. All offered about the same stuff. Premier offered what we wanted along with a salesperson who made it happen.

Not sure why Premier was "secretive"? At all my interviews the salemen gave exact on everything. Well, all but Aquarius. That dude did not want to see my yard, he wanted to get down to money right off the bat. We had already had two interviews so we knew we were within our budget for what we wanted. He flat out told us he "did not think we could afford him". That is when we politely asked him to leave.

Never heard of McCauley. There has been a lot of negative about Swan in past few years I have been on here. My bro used them in Santa Rosa and had problems with them. He would not recommend them more for their practices than the actual pool, the pool came out fine. My friend here in Antelope had Swan do things to pool that were not in contract and they were not happy at all.

The biggest recommendation is to be there for everything you can. Watch everything, question everything, know your build. Be nice and do not expect ANYONE to arrive on time on any scheduled day.

Good Luck.

Thank you

I have a friend that maintains pools for a living. He's been doing it for over 25 years. Anyway, when I was in the market for a new pool last year, I asked him for his recommendation. He told me he couldn't/wouldn't recommend a builder for me, because he has seen good and bad pools from EVERY builder in the Sacramento area. It's basically a crap shoot. So he convinced me to do an owner builder pool.

I bet if you were to post a thread on here asking what does everyone think about "X" Pool company. you would get both positive and negative responses.

So, trust your instincts and get everything in writing and I mean EVERYTHING.

Good luck with your project.

We live in Elk Grove and had our pool built by Swan and we were more that happy with them. During our project, the company owner and the manager came to our home to check on the progress, which really surprised us. We have since referred them to a couple friends and they were completely satisfied too.

I think you will hear good and bad about everyone. We even heard a few bad things about Swan, but we just figured when a company builds over a 1000 pool per year, it is very likely that you are going to have a few people who are not happy. We chose Swan because they had been around forever, they had the best equipment warranties and mainly because our sales person was not trying to push us into signing a contract everytime we talked. The Premier guy and Aqua guy were like car salesmen. It got very annoying.

Good luck!

Aquaman - Owner/Builder sounds like alot of work. Are you a contractor in something else or do you have special knowledge. How much do you save doing it this way?

I've heard from owner/builders that they've saved about 20% doing it themselves, but it is a lot of work.

We are in the process of getting pool quotes from a number of companies in the Sacramento/Roseville area. Has anyone worked with Bob Nelson of Nelson Pools or Jim Gootee of American Pools? I am concerned about going with a small owner/operator which subs everything out right now because of the slowdown in the economy. They seem to be discounting now to win the business. I also have a higher quote from Geremia but I know they will still be around. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

I am a PB in the San Diego area, and have heard nothing but great things about the Geremia family. They are members of the "Master Pool Guild", and therefore only build pools with the proven materials and methods...not the cheap ones.

Can't comment on any others up there.

Wrkinman,

Thanks for that input about Geremia. I am leaning towards them too. And, thanks also, for the additional input about the spillways and stainless steel. :)

I just had a local guy Chris Silva Pool & Landscape do my pool. 25 days start to finish.They were awesome. Chris Silva is the owner.He used to be partnered with Antonio's pools.He's been around 30 years.All of his crew were professional and courteous.I had four other bids.He was they one I was most comfortable with and I was correct in my judgement.I highly recomend him.(916)635-7665

We used Courage Pools in Roseville, and had a pretty good experience, a few problems, but nothing major. They came recomended highly by several people, including the local pool supply store.

Our yard had sloping issues, which seemed to scare away some of the other builders (8 came out, only 3 submitted bids). The salesmen Shane was very responsive to design concerns I had, and I am still very happy with the design.

All three bids were in the same neighborhood, but I felt I got a little higher quality with Courage. The other two we got bids from were Aqua and Aquarius.

Have a great day,
Deron

Swan pools in Santa Rosa is an absolute joke. The owner came out to my home for an evaluation, and after a few weeks I heard nothing. Totally ghosted. I sent an email asking what happened and he sent me a proposal that had nothing to do with what we discussed, and totally ignored my 100k + budget. When a middle aged man wearing braces on his teeth shows up to give you an estimate, obviously something is wrong. Don’t waste time with this joker.