Haven't Posted In Awhile

We have thoroughly been enjoying our pool. We havent' finished our landscaping, but the back has filled in nicely. We added new fans, lights, and hurricane shutters. We also had the house painted in taupe with white trim and a black door, all in "pool themed colors". We're now working on the inside of the house.

Here's some pictures that I've taken of the pool and our lake this past year. Enjoy!

Still Not Punched Out, But Feeling Like Punching Something

Well, we're on week 31 of our pool build. We're enjoying the water, and love having a place to swim. The spa has been a wonderful place to relax. They have fixed the spa to spill most of the way around, replace a bum thermostat on the heater, and we got our manuals. They still haven't been able to get our tile clean. They said that they're working on it, but I haven't heard anything definitive about what they're going to do.


Artesian's president (through our punch list guy) still refuses to consider fixing the grade work in the back. The other day I took a walk on the lake, and saw that the grade guys dumped some construction junk on the county property next door that borders the lake. They basically spread it out from the edge of our yard to the other side of the next lot. The area that they raised, is raised because they tried to cover up rock and cement from the dig, and covered up formally perfectly good undisturbed grass in the process. I don't think the guys from the county are going to like this. I paid for final grade, I expect it to be done to a higher "industry standard".

Punch List

Well, I haven't blogged in awhile because I was literally tired of this whole "begging for what I deserve" thing. Our supervisor, Jay, took forever doing everything for us, and didn't do much on his own unless he got a call from us. We'd wait to be polite, we'd finally call, he'd tell us that we'd be swimming soon, and then we'd wait again. We'd call and he'd say something about things being crazy and then we'd wait again. Finally someone would come. When things finally started to happen, he actually had the pebble installers here and the screen guys in the same day. The man had too much on his plate, and we were the leftovers. We were definitely never the priority.

The punch list guy called us and asked for our list of things to be fixed. We had quite a few things. He seemed very nice and told me that he would try to take care of it all.

They took care of a couple of the things. They fixed a dented corner piece on the screen, plugged holes by the gutters, and cleaned the brick.

But we had some other issues. The president of the company, Joe, refused to move the pad from against the house despite the vibration noise and a promise from his father, the vice president, Sam, that they built the pad away from the house at signing. He said that it wasn't in the contract. Well, I told them that they should do as they said they would, and guess what? They actually pulled the slab away from the house! The sound is much better. I'm so glad they stood by their word.

The second thing they said that they refused to do was completely level the land to were it was, because they had been back twice and "it was to industry standard." Well they came back twice because they came at 5:00 in the afternoon the first day with no truck to hall away the dirt that had been sitting in my backyard for months. They also told us that day that the dirt pile is usually moved in the beginning. Another cost saving feature on our pool! Jay said they only wanted to come once. I'm sure he blamed us for the two time thing.

The first guys did a good job, and cleaned out around the pad nicely. The second guys came back with the big truck while we were at work and left our yard about 8 inches higher than it was before. Since that part of "our" yard is not ours (water management district owns it) and was built to run water one way, I'm concerned that the water will move towards our house and pad. I want them to level it the way it was. Nothing fancy, just so that area of the yard is level. Kevin raised the sprinklers so he could find them, so I think that they think that they did it correctly. I told them that with their machinery, it would be easy, but for us, it would be very difficult to do by hand. Hopefully they'll come and take care of us.

I also asked for them to clean the tile that they said that they would take care of from the beginnning. They told us not to touch the pool and that they would take care of it in the first month. Sounded great! When the pool guy came for pool school, he said that it was not his job it was theirs. There is a great deal of calcium buildup on the tile that they need to remove. I think it's there because they left the pool with no chemicals for such a long time. They did do a great job on the brick, hopefully they'll do the same on the pool. They also need to clean the skimmer entrance area of grout.

We also have a spa that spill over nicely when the water feature is off. When it's on, it doesn't do it all the way around. They're going to try to balance that.

We did not receive all of our manuals.

Our heater worked great on Saturday, but then it died. They're going to come and take a look at it tomorrow. Truthfully, I hope that it is a simple fix or that the manufacturer gives us a new one. We did have a similiar issue one night where it heated the pool, but the spa would not work. Nothing works now.

My last concern is my light. When we got the manual on it, we realized that they did not provide the recommended light for our pool. It is a 100 watt that is just not bright enough. I asked about this at signing, and was reassured that it would be fine. It isn't . I hope that they can work on this for us.

Our punch list guy said that they really want to please us, hopefully this is finally a guy that I can trust! Since we're on week 25 when they said 6-10, it would be nice.

Turborita Celebration

As we built this pool, we posted on a swimming pool and spa website whose people helped us through every up and down. One thread that came through was "Everyone's Favorite Poolside Drink". Well, one member posted about a drink called a turborita and raved about it. Others made them and said the same. It started out as a joke, and as thinks took longer and longer with our pool it became a goal to celebrate our first "swim" with turboritas.

Well today the weather was so beautiful, we fired up the heater, made some turboritas (Coke for the kids) and jumped in. We had a wonderful time. So, everyone out there, join us by raising a glass to toast our family and our new pool.

Our New Family Member

Well, everyone, meet the Black Mamba! Yes, we finally go our new pool cleaner, a black Hayward Navigator. It looks great, for a pool cleaner. It seems to be doing a really great job.

As you can see, Kara is not afraid of the dangerous Black Mamba lurking in the pool's depths. She thinks the pool is her own water bowl where she can get cool water for a change! We're trying to teach her how to drink from the sheer arc. I don't know if we'll be able to, because everytime she bends in to do it, her ears hit it first and go flying! She gets scared and backs off.

Tried Out The Spa

Since they fixed our heater, and we were going to have "pool school" today, I told Konnor to do an "experiment" with the spa. I told him to start up the heater, and to write down the progress as it heated. Last time we used it, it took 7 hours to heat it to 94 degrees. Last night it took 2 1/2 hours to go to 100. We have a heat pump, and it was a chilly night, so we were happy with that. Whatever they did must have worked. I think the pool temperature was in the low 60's.
Well, with the hot tub hot, we ALL decided to get in!

The steam was rising up everywhere. I was worried that I would get in and be disappointed, but I loved it! It was cold for Florida last night. We had had frost that morning, so the diffence between the spa and the air temperature was really noticable.

Kyle had jumped into the pool another time (when it wasn't as cold), so he dared Kevin and I to go in like him. I said OK. He was so shocked when I walked out to the sunshelf, walked down the steps, and swam across the pool. I started back and literally had to sort of thread water and walk the rest of the way. The shock had set in. I casually walked up the steps and back into the spa and said, "How was that?" Everyone was shocked. Kevin said he had nothing to prove and besides, I didn't have to worry about shrinkage. LOL. I don't know, I think something must have shrunk...but I didn't let on. We had a lot of fun.

Later, we tried out the colored lenses for the lights in the spa. The spa looks lower because everyone else got out and I was the last one to the shower!

Pool school was very, very basic. The man was very nice, in fact he was a couple of my students' dad, but he basically dropped off some stuff and quickly went over the basics. We needed the more advanced course. Luckily, we have some backgroud knowledge and are trainable!

Clear View

They came and moved the electrical box and spa vent that was behind our spa. It looks sooooo much better! I'm so glad that they saw that this was not a good asthetic choice and made it right. They also tried to stop the vibration from the pump with some rubber pieces. It helped, but was not enough to stop the vibration. I called them and they said that they would do something to separate the pad from the house. They were very nice about it.

That small thing in the distance is the Good Year blimp!