partypond,
Didn't see an auto-fill on your list. It's a nice, inexpensive convenience. Good luck.

No salt cell?

Electrical?

Where are you located?

Scott

We are north of Dallas.

We are going straight chlorine and still talking about the auto-fill.

thanks for the feedback and any more is appreciated.

By "Straight Chlorine", do you mean using 3" tabs and an erosion feeder?

Salt cell equipped pools are chlorine pools.

Scott

partypond - which builder did you choose? We are in N. Dallas as well and will start shopping around after the New Year.

Scott, I mean using chlorine tabs to start and then will probably go to BBB. I am not interested in using a chlorine creator like salt.

Jenn we are using Clear Tech Pools out of Frisco we are still in the beginning process but so far we have been happy. They have a wonderful reputation and have been willing to really work with us on some issues we have had.

Have you talked with anyone yet? What area of DFW are you in?

BBB, for those that didn't know, is Bleach, Borax, and Baking Soda.

Guess how bleach is made, Salt Cells but on a much larger scale.

It's all good. Without a liquid feeder though, using bleach or liquid from the pool store requires daily additions. This can become tiresome.

Scott

partypond - we're in Murphy. Haven't talked to anyone yet, but hope to start getting bids (probably 4-6) in January or February. I'm mainly interested at this point to see what I can get for the money, so your list above was helpful. Would you mind sharing if other builders bids were comparable?

jenn - I went to school at Plano East so familiar with that area. We talked to 4 builders and then got bids from 3 (Gold Medal took over 2 weeks and by then we had choosen). All of them were about the same size, features and price. We taked with one larger company and just felt like we were just a bid and that once we were passed on to the builder he would not really think of us again and wondered if that would be how it was once the pool was complete. One had only been in business a couple years. He would have built a great pool and would have been good to work with but Clear Tech just connected with us. We will sign the contract on Thursday and then the kids are being told on Christmas morning. right now they do not know this is happening!! Have you thought about who you want to talk too or what type of pool you would like?

Here is the pic of the final design. The patio will be in the next phase for this summer.

I hope this works...

opps - that should be the patio cover is a project for this summer.

partypond - My list so far includes Platinum, Southernwind, Hobert, Gold Medal and Riverbend Sandler. I'll definitely check out Clear Tech now.

Jenn - just so you know Platinum has shut down their Frisco/Plano office.

Jenn,

If you can and when the time comes to build the patio cover, detach it from the house. Attaching it to the house will add considerably to the cost and there are a whole litany of additional building codes you will need to meet.

Scott

Jenn,

We had turnover issues with Hobert in Frisco. Their sales guy quit/was fired, so they sent us to a guy out of Rockwall and we had to start over the process... so we said "no."

If you wanted a smaller builder, we used Medallion Pools out of McKinney and it's been nice to have the guy that sold us the pool be the one to be out here every day. He's responsive to emails (like in an hour or two) and his base package seems to have more in it than others (like stamped concrete vs. brushed concrete and the Jandy remote & salt system vs. charging a $2-4k upgrade for it). He also waters the gunite for you and does the first 30 days of service (so he brushes 2-3 times a day and you don't have to -- and our water is cold!). You can see my build thread on here a couple pages down. We're in Frisco if you wanted to stop by and see it.