teresaandjason.com

Almost full!!!

Pool filling nicely

Here are some photos from tonight of the pool filling up.

Shasta here to deal with BBB complaint

Today at 2pm we had Shasta management here to deal with Teresa's Better Business Bureau complaint. Our supervisor Roger, the General Manager Kent, the flagstone manager John Batista, and the Sales Manager (we think his name was Bob) were all here to talk to me and Teresa.

As it ends up Kent pretty much drove the conversation and admitted that even with the estimated 40 days, and giving a leeway on those days for unforseen circumstances, they were still 28 business days past when it should have been completed. After asking if I had a cleaning machine (Hayword Navigator or Barracuda), and I informed him that I actually had a Barracuda G3, he explained that when Shasta does sign a contract guaranteeing a delivery date, their policy is $25/day penalty for every business day past the completion date that they run, however we did not have that type of contract. Usually only businesses have contracts that enforce penalties for overdue projects. As he put it, Shasta was under no obligation to offer us anything, but he felt it was the right thing to do. So he offered us $700 (a.k.a. Hush money).

Truthfully, we wanted an apology and an admittance that the whole project was screwed up. The admittance of the screwed up project was easy and Kent came forward with that almost immediately. It was rather nice to hear that part. Someone finally admitting that this job took too much time and could have been done much sooner. Eventually Kent did offer the apology also.

The sales manager mentioned that normally they give only $500 store credit so you can purchase supplies from them, but Kent nixed that and said he was just going to cut us a check.

Now, the part that did kind of suck was listening to John. When he came out early last week, it took quite a bit of hem-hawing around before he said that he would have them redo the flagstone to be the right color. And actually they weren't redoing it because of the color, they were redoing it because it was done wrong, they would just change to color since they were redoing it anyway. Either way, I didn't care the reason, as long as it was redone.

I don't want to sound completely negative. Overall it was a positive experience. We got a lot off of our chests and their managment listened to what we had to say. Teresa: (Jason is just too nice. I will be negative. I did not like the decking guy, John. He was a jerk. He kept saying to Jason - "Wasn't this any easy redo?" Whatever!! He was trying to make it sound like we were just being picky and that his guys didn't do anything wrong. It's okay -- cuz he and I both know that his guys messed it up and it looked terrible due to the crummy color and the quality of work.)

I made sure they knew that Roger has been the single bright spot in this whole endeavor. He's kept us up on what's happening, and been pretty much the sole point of communication throughout, which isn't even his job. Teresa: (I did tell Kent that his communications people really did a poor job of keeping us informed. They need to get much better so that someone's pets don't get lost or hurt.)

Even though we had originally expected real flagstone, I was happy with the stained flagstone. I think it looks good. Both Teresa and I are OK with the color of the flagstone. Is it what we wanted? No. Is it A LOT better than the original colors? Yes. Can we live with the colors? Yes.

We did go ahead and accept the 'hush money'. I was torn on whether to do it or not, but it comes down to the fact that we have a lot of dead bushes and grass in the backyard, and we have to re-run half of our sprinkler lines. The money should cover those costs, and still have a little left over to cover the purchase of a solar blanket to heat up the pool and give us an extra month or so of swimming time. Teresa: (Since we lost two months already!!)

Pebble-Teching finished!

This morning at 05:45 in my sleep induced coma, thought I heard a doorbell ring. After going to the front door I discovered that there were in fact Shasta people outside. Ok, I know I made that sound like I wasn't expecting them, when in fact I was. :) Anyway, here are some photos from the pebble-teching process.

Overall I found the process VERY interesting. They started out by putting a submersible pump in the bottom of the pool and washing the pool out. Then they put a different pump and started spraying this oatmeal looking substance along the side of the pool. I was looking at this totally dumbfounded on how they get pebble-tech coating out of this. Was this a base coat that they stuck the pebble coating to? No idea...until...

Until I saw them smoothing out the sides. Actually this confused me even more since this looked like it was just being platered. But I decided to be patient and see what happened.

After about an hour I looked back out, and they were still smoothing the sides. Then I noticed that they were taking their water mister and spraying that against the sides. It would take off the top layer of 'plaster' looking material, and leave what looked like pebble-tech. Then they would do the whole process of smoothing and watering over again. By the end it was a smooth looking pebble-tech interior.

Here's the finished pebble-tech interior. Tomorrow they should be back to acid wash it (with Muratic Acid) and start filling the pool. By this weekend, we'll be swimming!!!!