Questions to ask a pool builder

Before the first meeting, not at it

The first meeting with a pool builder usually happens at your kitchen table, with a brochure and a tape measure, and within the hour you're looking at their pool: the shape they build most weeks, in their usual size, with the package that includes a waterfall. It isn't a trick. A builder quotes what their crews can build quickly, and if you arrive without a plan, that's the plan you get.

So do the homework while you're still dreaming. Settle the rough size and depths, where the pool sits, the edge, the interior finish and the one or two things you won't give up. Draw it to scale in the free designer, print it, and put the same sheet on every table. The meeting becomes about pricing your pool, and the way a builder reacts to a drawing tells you a lot.

Then bring the questions below, written out. Nobody remembers to ask about hauling the dirt away while someone is describing LED color shows. Email them ahead if you can. How a company answers in writing is a fair preview of how it'll answer in week six, when something has gone wrong.

The company: license, insurance, and how much they build

Start with the dull ones. Ask for the license number and look it up yourself on your state's contractor licensing site. Rules vary a lot by state: some license pool work specifically, some only general contractors, a few very little at all. Where there's a lookup, it shows whether the license is active and whose name it's in. A good answer is a number printed on the business card. A worrying one is “we work under a friend's license.”

Insurance next: general liability and workers' compensation, with a certificate sent to you by their insurance agent rather than a photocopy from a folder. An excavator in your yard can crack a sewer line or a neighbor's retaining wall, and people get hurt on building sites. If the builder isn't covered, the question of who pays drifts toward your homeowner's policy.

Then ask how many pools they build a year and how many are under way right now. There's no right number, but it should match the company in front of you. A small outfit with its own crew and a dozen pools a year can be excellent. A firm that sold far more pools this spring than it has crews for will leave your hole open while the crew is across town. Ask what they build most (vinyl liner, fiberglass or gunite) and be wary of a builder who turns out to specialize in whichever one you mention.

Who actually shows up, and whose pools you can see

The person who sells you the pool is rarely the person who builds it. Ask who runs your job day to day and whether you'll have their phone number. Ask which trades are subcontracted. Excavation, steel, shotcrete, plumbing, electrical, tile and plaster are all commonly subbed out, and that's normal. What you want to hear is that the builder can name them, has used them for years, and takes responsibility for the whole pool rather than leaving each trade answerable for its own slice.

References only count if you can stand beside the pool. Ask for two or three built in the last couple of years and at least one that's five years old or more, since that's when shortcuts show. Look at the coping joints, the tile line, the finish around the steps. Then ask the owner one thing: what happened when something went wrong? Every build has a problem somewhere. The reference tells you how this builder handled theirs.

A builder who can only show photographs, or whose references all turn out to be relatives, may still be fine. You've just learned less than you came to learn.

A builder who prices your drawing is working for you. A builder who prices their own drawing is selling you something.

What the price includes, and what's under the lawn

Ask for a written list of what's included and, just as important, what isn't. The usual gaps: hauling the spoil away, the electrical run from the house panel to the equipment pad, a gas line if you heat with gas, any deck beyond a narrow band of coping, the safety barrier, repairing the lawn the trucks crossed, the first fill of water and the startup chemicals. None of it is sinister. Every line on the exclusions page is still money you'll pay somebody.

Excavation gets its own questions. A family-size pool moves somewhere around 21,134–26,417 gal (80–100 m³) of soil once working room is added, and loose soil takes up more space than it did in the ground. Ask whether the price hauls it off or spreads it on site, how the machine gets into the yard, and what happens if they hit rock. A good builder has already walked the side gate with a tape and says something like “if we hit rock it's this much an hour, and I'll call you before we start breaking it.”

Ground conditions are the honest unknown, so ask how they deal with them. Will they want a soil report? What do they do about groundwater: pumping during the dig, a hydrostatic relief valve in the floor? Will the utilities be marked through 811 before anyone digs? A builder who waves away the water table on a lot next to a creek hasn't started thinking about your job yet.

Permits, the calendar, and what stops the clock

Ask who pulls the permit. The answer you want is “we do.” The name on the permit is the party responsible for the work passing inspection, and a builder who asks you to pull it as an owner-builder is quietly handing that responsibility to you. Ask which inspections to expect (steel, electrical bonding and the barrier before the fill are typical, but your building department decides) and whether the price covers permit fees and any engineering the town wants. If you have an HOA, its approval is usually a separate step, and usually yours to start.

Then ask for the schedule in weeks rather than a single finish date. The permit and the builder's backlog can easily take longer than the build itself, and a straightforward pool still spends a couple of months or more between the dig and the first swim. Ask what delays their jobs most. An honest answer sounds like “rain, inspections and the plaster crew.” “Nothing, we're always on time” isn't an answer.

Ask how long the hole sits open between trades, and how the site is fenced while it waits. A shell that stands for three weeks waiting for the next crew is where schedules slip, and an open excavation in a yard with children nearby needs a real barrier, not a strip of tape.

Money: stages, change orders and lien waivers

A payment schedule should follow the work. A modest deposit, then payments tied to stages you can see with your own eyes: excavation done, steel and shell complete, plumbing and electrical in, finish applied, pool running. Some states cap the deposit a contractor may take, so check yours. A builder who wants half up front before a shovel moves is asking you to finance the job before yours.

Change orders are where budgets drift. Ask how they're priced and approved; the answer you want is “in writing, with the price, signed by you before we do it.” Then ask what changes they usually see on jobs like yours. A builder who says “rock, and a longer electrical run than anyone expected” is telling you where your contingency is likely to go.

Ask about lien releases. In many states a subcontractor or supplier the builder doesn't pay can file a lien against your property, even when you've paid the builder in full. The usual protection is a lien waiver from the builder, and from the main subs and suppliers, with each payment. A builder who's used to that request is a builder who pays their people.

Warranties in writing, and life after the handover

“Lifetime warranty” is a phrase, not a document. Ask for the warranty in writing and read it as three separate promises. The structure (the gunite shell or the fiberglass body) usually carries the longest term. The equipment carries the manufacturer's warranty, and the builder's labor to swap a failed pump may or may not be included. The finish, whether plaster, liner or tile, often has a much shorter term and exclusions for water chemistry. Ask who you call for each, and whether the structural warranty transfers if you sell the house.

Then ask about the handover. A good builder does the startup: fills the pool, balances the water, looks after a fresh plaster finish through its first days or tells you exactly how, and walks you around the equipment with the manuals in hand. Ask for a drawing of where the pipes and conduits actually went. It's the sheet you'll want in ten years, when someone has to find a leak.

Last, service. Ask whether they service what they build, what the first-season visits cost and how quickly someone comes out for a leak. A builder who disappears after the final payment turns every small problem into a hunt for somebody new, who will start by blaming the original work.

Comparing three quotes on one brief

Get three quotes, and make sure they're quotes for the same pool. Give each builder the same brief: length and width, shallow and deep depths, the edge, the interior finish, the coping and deck area, the equipment (pump type, filter, heater, cover, lighting) and where the equipment pad goes. Hand every builder the same to-scale drawing from PoolPlanner, with its volume and water area on it, so nobody has to guess at the numbers.

Lay the quotes side by side and read them line by line before you look at the totals. Mark every exclusion and put a rough price on it. Check that the equipment really matches: a single-speed pump and a variable-speed one aren't the same line just because both say “pump.” The gap between the cheapest and the most expensive quote usually narrows a good deal once the missing lines are filled in.

If a builder wants to change your design, listen. Sometimes they're right: the deep end needs a heavier wall, the steps sit where a skimmer should go. Ask them to price your brief as drawn and their suggestion as a separate option. You keep the comparison fair and still get the benefit of their experience.

Red flags worth walking away from

1. A firm price on the first visit

   Nobody has measured the access, asked about groundwater or seen your drawing, yet there's a number. That number is for their standard pool, and the difference turns up later as change orders.

2. Pressure to sign this week

   “The price goes up on Friday,” a discount for cash, a large deposit before any work starts. A pool takes months to plan properly. A builder worth hiring will still be there after you've read the contract twice.

3. Being asked to pull the permit yourself

   It's usually presented as a way to save time. It also makes you the party responsible for the work passing inspection. Unless you really are running the job, the builder pulls the permit.

4. No paperwork on request

   A license number that doesn't come up in the lookup, an insurance certificate that never arrives, no pool you can go and see. Any one of these might have an explanation. Two of them together usually doesn't.

5. A contract that says “pool as discussed”

   No dimensions, no depths, no equipment models, no exclusions, a warranty that's a single sentence. Whatever isn't written down will be argued about, and you'll be arguing without the paper.