Consumer Education - The start of a new beginning.

It's time to educate consumers about the real issue regarding the major purchase of a custom gunite swimming pool in the Charlotte, NC and surrounding areas of Cabarrus, Iredell, Union, York and Lancaster counties.  I have witnessed numerous project exceeding $100,000.00 only to have major renovations or in some cases, customer's selling their homes to get out of a failed swimming pool project.  This can be solved by my education blog and the discussions on the reality of our unique industry.  I do not believe that anyone deliberately wants to build a faulty project, but I do know that the temptation to sell an "over the top" project does get some companies into some trouble. 

I started Falling Water Custom Pools, Inc. 10 years ago in 2001.  I was young and thought I knew everything about swimming pool due to my previous nine years of experience in the business.  Yes, I understood the concept of building custom swimming pools and built many wonderful projects.  To date, I have built over 200 swimming pool in the Charlotte area for many celebrities, athletes, and upscale clients. 

When you deal with swimming pools, a minor construction issue that you would find on home construction becomes a major swimming pool issue.  For example, let’s say your new kitchen countertops settle slightly and a hair line crack that you really can’t see appears between the backsplash and the countertop.  What happens? Nothing!  Do you call your builder? No!  Is their a problem cooking your meals?  No!  So now the same issue arises with your new glass tile installation on your spa.  What happens with the hairline crack?  1) We have a leak; 2) white scale called efflorescence begins to leach out starts to stain the tile.  Is this an installation issue with the pool contractor?  No, it is a natural occurrence that no one has control over.  Pools are exposed to extreme temperatures and weather conditions, unlike the interior of your house. 

Here is the good news!  With proper education and the builder wanting to provide the best they can for the client, there are many flexible waterproofing products that can prevent this issue and provide a long lasting profession installation.  But, the builder needs to address this and sell the proper products and charge the correct labor rates to build the pool correctly.  We are going to address all of these issues, step by step in this blog.  As an educated consumer who is willing to spend the money to have your own paradise in your backyard, you should be willing to spend the appropriate amount to build a project correctly the first time.  With that said, apples to apples comparisons are extremely rare in our business.  You are going to talk to only a few types of builders: 1) Salesmen who don’t care (give me my commission). 2) The builder who doesn’t know. 3) The builder who gets it and wants to do the best he can.  It’s pretty simple when you think about it.

I’m looking forward to many discussions about different aspects of construction including: plumbing, rebar, tile installation, grades of stone, etc.  There will be no competition names used in my charlotte swimming pool blog, but we will study cases where projects went wrong and what was needed to correct and it some cases, can’t correct.  I also want to be very clear on this statement, “I don’t know everything!”  This business is a daily learning curve and I try to improve on every new project, the pool I built last month is better than my personal pool, and the project that I will build in six weeks, I plan on trying another new product to help improve all projects in the future.  That’s the best part of construction; you always have the opportunity to do better.