Pools are not much fun
Aug 28th, 2009 by Vinny
I have been battling with a pool at one of our re-hab houses for weeks now. It all started by purchasing an auction house with a large diving pool in the backyard. It was empty and had the usual green muck at the bottom. The diving board was also broken so that eventually got removed. We tried to sell this thing without fixing the pool, but its a huge turn-off to potential buyers even if the house is 50k under market value. So the search began for a good pool contractor.
Got a couple contacts and had them come out to take a look. The pool motor was not working, it had 120 volts but needs 240 so there is something amiss. One guy said he could acid wash and seal the pool, put a new motor in, and add a timer (we couldn’t find a timer anywhere) for about $600. He was the only one who would touch the pool, come to find out its a fiberglass spray-on pool, which they don’t ever do in Arizona because fiberglass doesn’t do well in the sun. So we had him come out and clean the pool, replace the motor and add a timer. He then mentions the voltage issue is because one of the electrical circuits is bad coming to the pool and we need to call out an electrician to run a new circuit. He also mentions that the pool coating is a disaster and it has to get fixed by a different company.
This is where the mess begins. Having had three people look at the pool, no one can fix the couple cracks and bubble in the fiberglass, it has to be removed and re-coated with plaster. Fun! Now we have to get more quotes for that, so far its look to be about $3500.
The electrician checks out why the circuit is bad, and comes to find out that the house has such sever electrical issues from one of the previous owners. The pool circuits are somehow fed off of the AC circuit (which is probably why the AC motor was fried). There are about 15 bad splices in the attic where no junction box was used, just good old electrical tape. Not even wire nuts, gotta love the handymen!
So three weeks later we have an empty pool, a large electrical bill, a clean broken pool and getting quotes to remove all the fiberglass and plaster the pool over.
Ahh the life of fix and flipping!
