Are you in the City of Sac or County? Because plans are more difficult for the city than the county or the outlining cities. I will try to post some from our list in the next few days. We are at tile stage and hope to finish in the next few weeks.

Hi Camore,

We are in the county of Sac in the city of Folsom. Thank you in advance for any help/advice/subs you can give!

I don't know how picky Folsom will be but I have had friends in Citrus Heights walk in with a hand drawn drawing on a piece of regular paper and get a permit. In the City of Sac, I had to use large paper and they were very exact on what they wanted. Go to the Planning Dept and ask for their pool package requirements.

As for Engineering-- bascially you or your designer draws out the plan and then you fax it to
Neil Anderson phone number 929 9267. He charges 250 I believe and will give you the wet seal (engineering stamp) and you take his engineering plan and your plan to the city.

We used AD Strand for Excavation-- 782-6997
Warren Lewis for steel 723-4902
Steve Craddock Plumbing for the plumbing 722 6298

For Gunite we used Folsom Gunite- I don't have their number handy.

All of the subs we used gave us a discount for cash. All also lowered their price (except Plumber) with a little haggling.

We are still working on getting the rest of our subs lined up.

I also had friends that dealt with Antonio's pools and had them do excavation, steel, plumb and electric for a very good price- probably a little more than if you broke it up among venders but at least you only have to deal with one person. I had a difficult time getting the same good respone my friends did partly because it was the busy season, but you may want to call Chris the owner of Antonio's and see if you can get a good owner builder price...His number is 496-6012.

Also Pioneer Pools does a similar package of steel, plumb and electric -- all in one day. They unfortunatly did not want to run larger size pipe so we ended up not using them. They are associated with NorCal pools so if you call NorCal they will have Pioneer's number.

Good Luck and if there is more we can do let us know.

Hi Camore,

Wow, thank you for all your help and recommendations! We are thinking about trying to facilitate this all ourselves and not pay a consultant. We were wondering if you had any recommendations for a designer? Also anyone you have heard of for rock work, or waterfalls?

What kind of pool are you putting in? Has it been going fairly smoothly?

Thank you!

We had had pool contractors our originally thinking wrongly that a pool could be built affordably through a pool contractor. We told them what were looking for and they provided some rough drawings. We then developed our own drawings and just transfered it to our plot map for out lot and took that to the city. So literally if you know what you are looking for you can just draw it out shape wise and take that in. We just put the same things that all the pool builders told us we would need- 1 skimmer 3 return lines etc. The plumber who has done lots of pools for owner builders and for pool companies plumbed it according to what was needed. He also gave recommendations regarding pumps etc.

We are doing a traditional looking pool so we aren't doing rock work. My friends have used Erik Johnson tile out of Roseville. He is very good but pretty expensive also. Three out of three friends have been pleased with his rock work.

The process so far has been going smoothly. We are about 1 month into it and we have been taking it very liesurly.. if I had been pushing it would probably be done by now.

Are you doing a spa also?

We didn't go O/B but I definitely agree on Eric Johnson for tile, coping and rock work, they do quality work and their customer service is the best. Sapphire did our excavation and they were also outstanding. I wouldn't recommend our concrete guys because of the quality control of their work.

Camore,

good recommendations thank you. Thank you for the recommendation of Erik, that seems to be reiterated throughout! We don't think we are going to do a spa because of the cost vs. functionality. We had a gunite spa at our last house and while we used it a lot it wasn't all that comfortable, so we thought this time around we might put 5-6K into a comfortable above ground jacuzzi and try to build it into the landscaping with the pool. How much did your spa end up costing you going the o/b route?

Yoshida: thank you for your recommendation on Erik and Sapphire. I'm sorry to hear about the quality work of your concrete work, that is unfortunate, hopefully you were able to get whatever happened fixed?

We have guys we could recommend for waterfalls and rock work that do high quality work and are reasonable. They are just very busy all the time. Email me at mitchcarnie@gmail.com for the name and #. I could probably dig out the concrete guy too, did great work. We used Delta Gunite(excellent) who worked with the rock guy on the waterfalls and rock slide. The rock guy came in before he was contracted to help set up the slide, grotto and waterfalls. Used Adams for the Pebbletec- excellent.

We also used a designer that took care of everything else from drawings to every option we added- we added a lot to the pool including swim jet for an endless swimming pool option. We had to pay the designer, but he got us all of the equipment wholesale.

Solar- go with heliocoil. Tony at Aztec is awesome 213-0591

Aquaholics,

We went back and forth on the gunite vs. portable spa and went with the gunite because it would allow us to have only 1 circulation system vs 2 and also because we could have the gas heater-- which should save on heating costs.

The drawback of the gunite spa is you get 6-10 jets vs a portable you get 60-100 jets.

The added cost to the pool because of heaters and pumps etc is probably about 8-10k.

Chris

Mitchcarrie,

What swim jet did you use and do you like it? We have installed the badujet and are waiting to finish to see how it will work.

Also can you post the concrete guy? Was he reasonable? and did you do cantilever coping?

I'm resurrecting this topic as I'm in Elk Grove (south of Sacramento) and we are in the beginning stages of doing an owner/builder pool. We are having some plans drawn to incorporate a nicely finished yards with the pool. We are going to do the pool first and then the landscaping. Our yard is very small, so we wanted a professional to design it all to make the best use of space.

Anyway, all the info in this forum has kept me busy reading/researching most of the day! I'd LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear from those of you who are in the Sacramento area that have a good list of subs with approximate costs and things you did that you liked. Also, would anyone be willing to let me come over and check out your finished pool?

I'll probably try to contact a few of you privately to get some additional info, but if you can post it here, that would be very helpful.

Looking forward to this new project!!

-Anne in Elk Grove

I am just north of Calvine and we did o/b last spring. Great experience thanks to this forum. I have a whole list of people, but I am at work....maybe you could do a forum search on my forum name and pull up a list? Or, email me awoodwaring@yahoo.com

Nicole

You might want to try to find Ralph (willweeverbedone) or look up some of his old posts from when he built his pool (O/B). It think he was in that area, if I'm not mistaken. I haven't seen him around here much, but he would probably answer an email or a directly-aimed post.

We used a PB in Sacramento, but I can recommend some of the subs. We were very happy with the excavation crew through Matsubu. Same with gunite from Prestige Gunite. Our tile work came out beautifully through Creative Tile, but I know they aren't cheap. All of these companies work throughout the Sacramento area and have websites with contact info - just Google. Most have multiple crews, so a lot could depend on what crew you get. But all were on time and respectful to the property.
I'm not sure I would recommend our plaster company at this point - the work was fine and at a reasonable price for River Rok (pebble finish)- but there was a mix up on two of the fittings and 3 weeks later they still haven't been out to fix it (we can't run our pool sweep). Of course, that's with the PB making the phone calls - I don't know if it would be different if I was bothering them about it directly.

Ralph (WillWeEverBeDone) is closer to the Bay Area than to Elk Grove.

All of this information is so helpful!!! Thank you so much for your recommendations and encouragement. I'm getting really excited. We are still having the plans revised, then as soon as they are done I'm going to start calling around for bids while we wait for permits. I'm HOPING that this time of year I can get some "special" pricing or at least some discounts. I can try at least, huh?? :)

Any suggestions for removable fencing for around the pool? I like Guardian but I've heard of others. Would love referrals.

Anne

Has anyone used Sage Pool's owner builder process? Mitch, who did you use to design your pool? Was their a big savings with your designer being able to buy it wholesale?
MM

Hello Here it is the first of June and I'm just getting started. Looking for some good sub to build a pool. Can anyone help me out here. Thank's

Mine are above in the thread. If you need specific phone #'s just email me at mitchcarnie@gmail.com. I was please with my rock guy who came back almost two years later to fix a couple issues with my rock waterslide. All covered under waranty.