Permits have been submitted!

When we first bought this house we didn't realize how much it would cost to put a pool in. I was thinking about 10-20k? When we first got bids later, we realized it was a much bigger investment and started to save up. 5 years later and we're there :)

We went through a looooooooong selection process. We had bids from about 6 different companies, then down selected to 4 different bids. Two were smaller local companies, (Aquapure and Splash Pools N Spas), a larger company (California Pools), and a guy out of the paper who claimed he could build a pool for 29k (Mr Carlos Pools).

The Mr Carlos pools guy we just didn't trust. He gave us several bids in pencil that seemed to change dramatically in price depending on the options that we wanted. When someone tells you they paid 30k for a pool, that didn't include the plumbing, or the drainage or the decking or a jacuzzi... Maybe it was just the salesman, but he didn't do a great job of representing the company.

The Aquapure guy didn't have a really competitive bid, and I think he was busy with other projects, although he was really nice and even invited us over to his house to check out his pool!

Splash Pools N Spas had a bid that was really competitive. Mike Delmont there, was a great person to work with. He was attentive, he knew a LOT, was always available, included price breakdowns of each individual item that he was proposing to install and deliver. He did a 3D model of the proposed pool, and was very willing to work with us on price and options. We did feel that he was the front runner until:

We had Gary Minor from California Pools come in. We expected the biggest company to have the most expensive bid. We were wrong. They weren't the cheapest, but they were surprisingly competitive with the other bids. They offered a few things the others did not:

1) Lifetime warranty for the pool shell. No one else offered this
2) The money you give to them does into a bond and the contractor is not paid until we sign off on the pool being built. The payments are also given to them in 9 different milestones (contract signed, digging day, gunite day, etc...)
3) Miscellaneous kid friendly add-ons like super-swim, volcano feature, deck holes for basketball hoops and volleyball nets etc....

Gary was always responsive, had a ton of knowledge and could answer any reasonable question we had on the spot. Not the pushy sales type you might expect from a large company, he really had some great design ideas and helped us work within our budget . Some of his great design ideas were wasted because we had to go with a rectangular pool (because of the automatic cover) but they were really nice. He also helped when we had questions like "If we wanted to go with a salt system, but didn't want the auto pool cover, but did want the bluestone tile, but didn't want the pebble tec, instead of the pebble coat blah blah blah, how much would that change the price?" And Gary would have an answer :) Thanks Gary!

We did feel that going with a bigger pool company with a guarantee, and a bond helped us with some of our fears with people running off with our money and leaving us with a half dug hole in the ground.

Today Gary sent me an e-mail which said that the permits have been submitted and we're on our way!! Links to the vendors we saw:

Who we were happiest with and finally selected:
http://www.californiapools.com/

Who we really liked but didn't have the big company backing the we were looking for:
http://www.splashpoolsnspas.com/index.htm

Others:
http://www.aquapurepools.com/
http://www.mrcarlos.com/