Beautiful setting for your pool! Like the shape also. I wanted to share from my own experience that It appears to me that much of your pool will be above ground. The same thing happened to us but only because of the error of the guy who dug! I would suggest that you ask for sketches as to how it will look finished. Are you going to have to have retaining walls on all sides/ fill dirt sloped? The shallow end looks just a foot deep which means 3 above ground. I don't say this to alarm you at all. I just don't want anyone else to experience the same thing that I did. Our pool on the shallow end was a foot more out of the ground that it was supposed to be! Which meant that the other end is out of the ground about 4 feet. Sloping the soil would have been a problem to deal with in our yard.Hopefully yours will be better than ours!
Look forward to following your progress!

We have pictures of previous pools that he has done and they look great. Our deck will be flush with our patio. Looking at the pool from our house, you won't be able to tell at all. We will have three steps on each side of the pool going down to that lower level. We are going to have decking on the back side of the pool and put in a fire pit on down the road.

They are out there now forming the pool and doing the steel work. I'll try to post pics later today when they finish.

That is great! Look forward to the pictures!

Today they spent the day forming the pool. After you see today's pics, yes, it looks like an above ground pool. The plan was to have our pool flush with our patio. So, the back and part of the side will have retainage. There will be three 6" risers going down on each side of the pool.

With all that said, we have some concerns. Today we went out and measured the top-most form and it shows that the water line is what is currently flush with our patio, not the coping. My husband is calling our pool builder first thing in the morning and is going to have him come over to take a look. If anyone here can contribute with your thoughts, it would be appreciated.

Here is our design:

Here you can see how our yard slopes down

View from patio

View from side

Our builder did come by this morning and clarified a lot of things that concerned us. It is very hard at this point for me to visualize everything. The pool will be sloped up to keep rainwater out and sloped a little down from the patio. He will be putting in channel drains as well. Also, the back wall, which measures 3.5 feet right now, will only be 2 feet after they fill in with dirt and decking. Whew! I'm so relieved!! He said they plan to use about 15 loads of dirt for the whole project...wow.

They are doing rebar right now and I'll try to post pics this evening.

Rebar is finished! They have spent the last two days doing rebar and the pre-plumbing in the pool and spa. They are moving along really fast. The electrician is coming to inspect the light niches tomorrow. Tuesday is gunite. I don't know what they're doing Monday...maybe finish the plumbing??

Sunshelf and bubblers

Inspection for the light niches was today. Spa passed, pool failed because it wasn't 18 inches below the water line. The guys came out and fixed it and the inspector came shortly after and approved it. We realized today that they only put 6 jets in the spa instead of 8 as it was stated in the contract. The PB owner said they would be back tomorrow. Gunite is Tuesday!

I have a question for the experts out there. We will be having a 29 ft. weeping wall. They have done the rough plumbing in the pool. Should we be seeing any plumbing in that location? All we see are the water return jets.

They laid our plumbing for the weeping wall after gunite..

That picture is worth a thousand words! Thank you so much!

just curious to ask who is the PB?

Our PB owner came by this morning to give our pool a look before gunite goes in Monday. They got so much done this first week and we couldn't be happier with them so far.

Our builder is Wieland Pools.

Hello jsldh

We are in the process of getting quotes from different pool builders in the Memphis area. We live in Olive Branch, MS.

Do you mind sharing the cost for your pool and have you been happy with your PB. Our wants are very similiar to yours minus the spa. And our yard slopes alttle also. It is great to visualize what our pool would look like in our back yard with similiar situations.

Do you like the french grey hydrazzo? I can't decide which color to use. I thought about the maui midnight or hatteras grey.

What are your measurements on your beach shelf. Are you going to post more pics of your pool? I would love to see the end results.

Hi lott4043. I haven't been on the forum in a little while. I just started back to work last week and I just quit posting since I didn't see any interest.

Our pool is pricey. Adding a spa is about 8,000 more dollars. So far, we've been very happy. We've had a few hiccups but the PB has handled everything immediately.

We got a quote from Ogden Pools and Memphis Pool as well. Ogden was very nice but when it came time for a quote, he didn't include a detailed quote, so we knew in the end we would go WAY over budget. He kept saying, "We can add that later".... the hydrazzo itself is costing 8500 dollars and he didn't even add that on to the quote...or electrical or plumbing and countless other things.

I heard Memphis Pool was too commercial and had too many crews out there to ensure you were getting a quality built pool. The salesman was just a salesman...not a true builder.

I'm not sure about the size of our sunshelf, but it can easily fit two lounge chairs.

I'll post some pics this weekend of our progress. Right now we are in the process of the stonework getting done. It's gotten really slow since the gunite was put in.

No hydrazzo yet...I've seen pics of the french gray but not in person. We want the water dark but not too dark.

Our PB said the maui midnight would be too dark for our tastes.

I look forward to seeing the pictures! I like your pool thus far and it sounds great!

A lot of progress since my last post. We now have gunite, plumbing is done, and stone work is underway. They had to tear down the weeping wall and start over on it, because I wasn't happy with it. They merely just made a stacked wall, with no stones jutting out for the water to fall over. They started redoing it today and it's looking much better.

The hot weather has slowed down the build. We've had a heat index each day of 110-115.

Thanks for looking!!

Laura

Nice! Love your coping and stone work. I'm especially interested in your design because ours is very similar in that we have a set back like yours and are on a slope which will require us to have a retaining wall. Like you, we really need to optimize our space because of the set back. However, now that I'm looking at your design, I'm going to have our designer take a look at it because I think your solution - the rock wall on the set back side - would work and end up being more cost effective than backfilling and a paver retaining wall.

Can you tell me how tall the back retaining wall will be from deck to top of coping? Looks about 3 or 4 feet? Is there a safety concern about swimmers standing on that back wall and falling off onto the patio/deck below?? Our initial plan has the coping, then about a foot of river rock with a fence sitting on top of that expensive (8K) retaining wall. I like your idea better, just wondering if the drop to the patio/deck is up to code.

Looking forward to following your build. It looks awesome so far.

Beautiful! The rockwork is awesome!

It is looking sooo good! I look forward to seeing more.

They got finished with the stone work last week. Our PB told us that we should be swimming by Labor Day. I sure hope so!!!

They did some final dirt work Saturday to get ready for the decking to be poured on Thursday. After that will be hydrazzo and then the big fill! We are thrilled with how well it's all coming together.

Banana_fanna, the weeping wall on the back is 32 inches high. This is taking into account the decking once it is poured.

Back of weeping wall

Three 6" risers will go here due to change in slope

Close up of tile...Noble Rust...the pic doesn't do it justice since the coping is still so dusty.

Wow! Your job is moving right along. The OK fieldstone was a brilliant choice. It looks like it's going to complement the brick on your house perfectly. And your coping? The heft and color? To die for. Can't wait to see it finished.

The picture of your little girl in the pool is not only cute but it's helpful. The angle of that photo lets me visualize how my back wall and risers could look. I think doing it your way is going to save us a lot of money by not doing a ribbon of cement and then a retaining wall on that far side of our pool. If it DOES work out to be a savings, I'm splurging on something cool for my coping. Fieldstone?? :-)
Thanks. Keep the updates coming

One PB we talked with had the design calling for retainer walls all across the back of our house. For one it was expensive and two, I am NOT going to deal with that much landscaping! :-)