Trusting Your Builder To Do The Right Thing

My Spa Is Cracked!

The above forum link on GardenWeb is one of those horror stories you hear about pool builders. In this instance, a brand new spa has cracked and will have to be ripped apart to fix. There are a number of reasons that this can occur.

After looking through the construction pictures from this, it is my opinion that the builder did not install the spa correctly. Whenever a spa is raised this far out of the ground, there should be a footer under it. There are also questions as to the stability of the soil under it, how the steel was run, and so on. Attention to detail would have prevented this from happening.

To credit the builder, they seem dedicated to fixing the problem. Although, the proposed solution seems to me to be a temporary fix and I believe that the spa should be completely ripped out and built correctly. Yes, a nightmare. Either way, a brand new spa has to be torn apart and repaired.

I have seen situations like this many times. They can result from a whole host of things. Even though you are trusting your builder to do their job and to know what they are doing, being involved back there will benefit you greatly.

Since I haven't seen this project firsthand, I can only speculate as to what all of the factors were that caused the spa to crack. In all fairness, this can happen for reasons out of the builder's hands as well.

This may or may not be what happened here, but these are some examples of how things like this occur:

The salesman never designed a spa like this before, didn't talk to a construction authority about the proper design.

The company didn't look over the design carefully and question it.

Someone raised a red flag but the salesman didn't want to go back to the customer for more money. The salesman decided not to ask for more money (maybe he got the job because he was a couple of bucks less than the other guy, etc.). Maybe he hoped no one would catch it, or that they would catch it and just do what they needed to do. Salesman are good for "missing" things and hoping that construction will do what's right and at their expense. Sometimes the salesman does this with the intention of just being back charged for the mistake or taking the chance that they won't be back charged.

The subcontractors saw this, but there wasn't extra money in the job for their extra work. Therefore, they just did what was on plan. Maybe they were ticked off that day because they didn't get paid for a similar thing last week.

The supervisor was non existent or inexperienced. In the thread, the homeowner mentioned that the supervisor just came by to pick up the checks. This sounds like the pool was left up to the subcontractors to build. If the homeowner paid considerably less for the product than he would have from others and had no expectation of supervision, okay. If not, this is unacceptable. I would suspect, do to the size of the company, that he was sold on supervision and experience. Both of which, seemed to be lacking on this project.

The job was sold on a number, not on what was the right thing to do. Salesmen are in a bind with fierce competition right now. Many buyers are fixed on a bottom line and this can put the salesman into a box if he lets it. If you are fixed on a bottom line instead of what actually needs to be done, things like this can happen. Maybe other companies didn't calculate extra engineering or work into their bids and the salesman was afraid to with his for fear of losing the job by being significantly more expensive.

Construction didn't catch the design flaw. Mistakes happen but this should have been caught before any of the work was scheduled.

Whatever the case, it starts with the salesman. With most construction projects and particularly pools, once something goes wrong it can be a snowball effect from there.

As you can see, there can be a number of factors that can attribute to a disaster in your yard. It is a place where you don't want to be. If you have a question about something that is going on, stop the project and get answers. Buyers get scared of doing this because they see the finish line and often just hope things will work themselves out. Ultimately, it is you that will have that mess in your yard. You will be the one dealing with it and the one staring at it. It's your money, so take the time to supervise the supervision.