I recently purchased a home with a pool. Before purchasing it, I had it inspected by Underwater Pools. I appreciated the peace of mind having had a thorough inspection. It also gave me a chance to receive something of an education on owning a pool and how to take good care of it. The inspector was very well educated on pools and gave me lots of good information. He also took his time, which was important to me. My only during-inspection complaints:
1. He told me upfront that he would repair any leaks he saw in the pool liner while diving. But he gave me no indication of who he would be charging for this in a house I didn't own. I wasn't free to give him permission to do this, particularly if he was going to charge the owners.
2. The owners did end up joining us during the inspection. He knew the owners as they had come regularly to the store. At times, I was unclear if he was looking at everything as closely as he might otherwise, and I also felt sometimes he glossed over issues so as not to offend the owners.
That said, I still appreciated the inspection. HOWEVER, the inspection costed us between $700-800 (a level III inspection, which they insisted I needed)!!! While I realize he gave us several hours of time, this was about double the cost of the inspection of my entire home...and I chose the most expensive home inspectors recommended to me. And for all that, I was given a very, very brief one or maybe two page report that included no real narrative and no pictures whatsoever. In fact, he left off information he promised to include on the report. To compare, for my less expensive whole-home inspection, I received something like 30 pages of information and narrative and photographs. Anything I didn't document during the pool inspection now is essentially information lost.
After my home purchase, I went to the Underwater pool store with the hope of getting some basic chemical supplies, a water testing kit, and to sign up for a pool maintenance plan.
On a positive note, the store staff seemed very well informed about all the products they had on hand, and generally well informed about pools. That said, there were a number of difficulties in my shopping experience:
1. They carry only the test strips, not dropper test kits. I purchased some test strips, as they are good for daily testing, but if you research pool care, you quickly learn that the test strips have questionable accuracy. You really need a dropper based kit (see, for example, www.poolforum.com or www.poolsolutions.com for more info on why this is important). They do not carry these and were much more interested in selling me the test strips than actually helping me get my hands on the dropper kits.
2. The store is extremely tight and not set up to be particularly shopper friendly. I found it difficult to navigate options so new to me, so early on in my pool care experience, and while there was adequate staffing, no one really seemed to be interested in helping understand exactly what chemicals I needed and for what. "Shocking" my pool was the only real thing they talked to me about, and I later learned that I can do this *much* more cheaply using 5.25% household bleach than using the same chemical sold at the store as a "shocking agent" for an outrageous price.
3. Perhaps because of the size of the store, I found they didn't have much out to sell. When I asked about pool alarms for example (I'd already received during inspection their standard lecture that a good fence and properly supervising young children is all that is needed...but decided to get an alarm anyway), they did not have any. They told me I would have to order it, then pulled out a book that listed product names and prices. The book gave me no information about any of the alarms, nor was the salesperson able to give me any information.
Then, when I asked to sign up for maintenance, the staff member helping me had difficulty walking me through the process. It took them two weeks to come out just for an initial cleaning!! In that time, they didn't even call to schedule my appointment. At one point, I got very worried about the green stuff growing in my pool, and called to check on when my appointment might happen, and was treated without respect for my business. The staff member on the phone at that time just said in a short tone that "this is a very busy time of year for us, you know."
When the pool kids finally did come to clean my pool, I found them to be knowledgeable and helpful. I appreciated that they admitted that one of the chemicals they were using was just baking soda. They also walked me through all the steps of pool cleaning, with complete graciousness and patience. However, they sold me a calcium additive I later learned is unecessary, and the chemicals (as with the cost of maintance) are unecessarily expensive at Underwate read more