POOLS AND MORE

As soon as we signed the contract and gave him a deposit in April 2014, he came out and took the cover off and started tearing out the steps. He and 2 helpers worked approximately one hour. When he didn't show up for one month I called him and he said he was planning on coming out. They did and worked another approximately 2 hours. The pool had become a nasty, awful, smelly mess for over 2 months. By June I started calling Doug Alvarez the owner as I had told him we were having a 4th of july pool party and he was running out of time. His communication throughout the process was an F. His concrete guys did not put anything down on our Evergrain deck and put permanent scratches and gouges in it. He did not take care in doing a good job with anything. We met with him after he installed the steps and they vibrated when you walked on them. (Which is what our old steps did and why we were spending the money to replace them.) There was nothing under them and for us that was a problem that every pool company that looked at our steps said we needed to fix and we wanted him to address that before he went any further on the project. He said once the water was on them they would be fine and he dismissed our concern. When the liner came in the last week of June it didn't fit so they had to reorder it. I once again reminded him that our party was July 4th. He didn't bother to overnight the liner as he didn't want to spend the money to do it. We were still filling the pool with water on July 4th. It is 33,000 gallons and he didn't bother to rent a meter so we could get it filled from the fire hydrant. We had a house full of people and no water pressure to shower, do laundry, dishes, water flowers. For me it was TOTALLY aggravating and preventable. I had no time to shock the pool or get the chemicals balanced. When the second liner came in on July 3( He said he would keep us updated on where it was in the delivery process and he did not) he didn't bother to clean the bottom of the pool so there were debris under the liner that we walked on in the shallow end. When we were filling the pool you could see them in the deep end too. Totally unacceptable. All they would have had to do is take the time to sweep/vacuum it out. I had to stand over him to tell him that I wanted the divets and cracks filled and repaired, but I surely thought they would at least clean the bottom of the pool. I spent one entire day a few days before the party tearing up my landscaping as he said he couldn't put the liner in without access to the junction box. Late in the day another company that was installing a new pool deck told him how to do it without finding the box. I wasted a whole day making a huge mess in my landscaping days before the party. Needless to say when he gave us the bill we told him we would pay it when he fixed the steps correctly. He DID find a foundation company to pump a foam under the steps...which we had requested when he put them in. That solved the problem of nothing being under them but we had to drain the shallow end of our pool for them to do it. They crawled under the liner to get the biggest rocks out. In the end we had to pay the water bill of approx $500 to fill the pool back up and also $500 in chemicals to get the water balanced so we could close the pool. I truly do not understand how he runs his business like this. Every problem or issue could have easily been prevented if he took the time to do his job properly. His attitude throughout the project was very poor and extremely frustrating for us.

Price wise he is high. One time when I had him scheduled to open the pool he didn’t show up. I ended up opening it myself. They called a week later. I haven’t used them since that experience. He is a nice guy, but you need to do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it.

We were advised that the estimate to repair was very open ended, as the solid foam system was difficult to work with. He very carefully removed the siding so it could be replaced. He was able to quickly locate and fix the leak, making the repair very inexpensive compared to the original estimates.