Swimming Pools Reviews

My husband Tony digs a beautiful hole and then disappears into it for four months, and I mean that as his wife and his office. A pool takes forever and most of that forever is waiting. Permit office. Inspector. Rain. The gunite crew that is on somebody else's hole. The customer does not see any of that. They see their yard tore up and nobody there, and they call me, daily, sure we have forgotten them. The updates Launchbarr sends out for us have honestly saved my voice. Dig, steel, gunite, tile, plaster, each step the customer hears it, with a picture Tony takes before he leaves the site. A lady from a couple of towns over put in her review that she never once had to wonder what was happening in her own backyard, and she named the tile day like it was a holiday. Tony came home from a dig last month and said, nobody called me today, Kathy. He said it the way a man reports good weather. Then he went out back and sat by our own pool, which he never does. That is the whole review, really.

The first meeting used to be an hour of me undoing whatever a cheap builder or the internet had put in a couple's head. They would have a price in mind from a pool that does not exist, on a yard that is not theirs, and I would watch their faces fall line by line. I hated being the most expensive man in a story I did not write. Couples who come through the website Launchbarr built now have seen our finished pools and they have seen the timeline spelled out, the permits, the wait, all of it, before I sit down. The last couple brought a list, good questions, real numbers. We talked about their grandkids and where the shallow end should go for another hour, which is the part of this job I actually like. Signed in March, digging in May, and nobody felt ambushed by a calendar.

It is my wife Nina's company. I run a dig crew for her and stay out of the office end. Asking for payment used to be the worst part of her week. The work at that stage is underground, the check is big, and she stood in kitchens feeling like a bill collector at a birthday party, her words. Stage payments go through the site Launchbarr set up now. A man paid his plaster deposit from a hotel room out of town and messaged her one line: that was easy. Nina has read that message to me five times. I counted.

I am old school enough that I thought posting pictures of finished pools was bragging, and my son Noah, who runs my jobs now, has been on me about it for three years. He won. Launchbarr puts our finished work up as we complete it, and I grumbled through the first month of it like a man paying a tax. Then a build we finished in a neighborhood across town got seen by, near as we can tell, the whole neighborhood. Two families on that same street signed for winter designs, which means their permits cook while it is cold and we dig early, instead of the spring stampede. The second man told Noah he had watched our plaster video maybe ten times. Ten. I counted that as a compliment and a diagnosis. Last week I caught myself telling Noah to get a picture before the furniture went in, from the deep end, so the tile line shows. He just looked at me. I said, do not make a thing of it. The tile line is straight as a string and people ought to see it.

I am not a numbers man. Asked how many designs sat unanswered in my office, I would have guessed four. My office manager guessed nine. We were both wrong and she was closer. I can ask the system now, out loud. How many designs are out. Which ones have not heard from us in two weeks. It answers plain, in a list I can read. Last month it told me eleven. We called every one. Three signed. My office manager says the asking is the part I was missing, not the math. She is right and I have stopped arguing with a woman who counts better than me.

I build pools and I used to spend my evenings being a narrator. Every customer, every night, the same phone call. Yes, the hole is still a hole. No, the inspector has not come. Yes, that is normal. My husband said I came home and narrated dinner too, out of habit. Our customers have their own page now through Launchbarr, where the build lives. Phase, date, and my foreman's photos from that day. Dig done Tuesday. Steel in Thursday. A man whose pool we finished in the spring told his neighbor at a cookout that he checked his page every night with a beer, like a show. He said he only called me twice in four months and both times it was about upgrades he wanted to buy. Those are the calls I want. The permit office can keep the other kind.

My husband Gus has run a backhoe for twenty years and he talks to customers the way he talks to the machine, short and only when necessary. The other thirty called me at the house. The voice that answers now takes the address, asks about the yard, books the visit. Our reviews started mentioning her by description. The sweet girl on the phone. Gus read one over my shoulder and said, that girl has a future. I said, Gus, that girl is the phone system. He said, then the phone system has a future. He still will not answer his own phone at a dig. Hard to argue.

I never asked for reviews because asking felt like begging and my daddy raised me better than that. A lady wrote that we taught her how to run her own pump before we left. We did. She remembered it because the ask came while she was still happy. Timing is the whole thing and I was always going to do it later, which meant never.

My partner Dale sells the pools and I build them, and for years that meant Dale promised backyards out of magazines while I stood in mud explaining physics. Couples would come to the first meeting carrying a picture of a resort in another country and a number they got from a cousin, and Dale would nod, and I would be the bad news with a shovel. The website Launchbarr built us changed who walks in the door. It is our pools, our yards, our dirt, and the timeline is written out plain on it, permits and waiting and all, because Dale finally agreed that lying by leaving things out was still lying. A couple last month brought the page printed out. Printed. With notes in the margins. Good notes. Where does the sun hit at four. Can the shallow end face the kitchen window so she can watch the kids. We spent the meeting talking about their grandkids and where the steps should go. Nobody's face fell. Dale says the website does the disappointing early, while it is still cheap. I say it lets me be the good news for once, and I have waited twenty years to be the good news.

I lost a design last year to a cheaper builder and watched him dig the hole, and it sat there open through two rains because the family had shopped my drawing around and he underbid it blind. I told myself good riddance. Our old designs get followed up on now without me writing a word. A man from two springs ago answered the third note. He asked if my number was still my number. It was. We signed in a week. That drawing sat on his refrigerator under a magnet for two years. I do not chase people, but I will let a note do it for me now.

The builds pay for the trucks but the cleaning route pays every week, rain or shine, and it used to be a shoebox of checks and a list my wife kept on the refrigerator. Guys would skip a house and I would find out from the customer, which is backwards. The route customers are on a plan now and the card runs itself. Same day every month. Nobody writes checks, nobody's wife keeps a list, and a man who owed us for three cleanings is suddenly current because the system asked him more politely and more often than I ever would.

I am the son, which in a pool company means I run the service route and the start ups and every job going. My dad builds a fine pool and then vanishes at the exact moment the customer wants to know where the truck is. He says a man on his way should not have to announce it. The customers disagreed, loudly, to me. The reminders and the on my way texts go out on their own now. A lady's review called me a pizza tracker for the texts. Dad read that and said, we are a pizza now. I said, Dad, we are a pizza that built her a pool, and the review is five paragraphs long. He still thinks announcing yourself is soft. He also asked me to show him how the text knows where I am. Progress looks like that around here.

Somebody told me my Google listing had a picture of a waterfall from a hotel on it. Launchbarr fixed the profile, our pools, our name, every service spelled out. A man called and said he picked us because our photos looked like his neighborhood. They are his neighborhood, two streets over. He figured it out at the meeting and laughed.

I run the office, which means I am the memory of this company, and the owner has never once posted a picture of anything. The finished pools go out now on our pages as we complete them, photos the foreman takes before the furniture comes in. I schedule none of it. A lady across town saw her street in a plaster photo, called before her husband got home, and said if we did that coping we could do hers. The owner asked me last week to get a picture before the cover went on, from the deep end. I wrote it down. That is history being made in this office.

I will be honest with you, I bought in expecting a website and some ads, the usual. They texted my personal phone at nine at night. A family found us on a Sunday evening last spring, the hot evening where everybody decides this is the summer. They never called. They wrote to the website, and the system wrote back like a person who works for me, because near as the customer can tell, it does. It asked about the lot, the setback, whether the HOA had rules, what they were dreaming about. It booked them into my Tuesday. I read the whole conversation Wednesday with my coffee, every question I would have asked, asked better, because it was not tired and it was not me. They signed a design that week. The wife told me at the dig that she chose us because we answered on a Sunday night like a company that wanted the work. I did not correct her. We do want the work. Now we can want it in our sleep. My plumber asked me who my new office girl is. I told him she does not sleep, does not quit, and does not ask for Fridays. He said that is not a girl, that is a miracle with a phone voice. He is not far off.

My husband builds pools the slow way, the right way, and he prices them the slow way too, which is to say a family would wait a week for a number while he paced the yard in his head. By the time my husband got to the office in the morning there was a visit booked, notes taken, and a message saying they felt looked after. His words when he read it were, well, she is efficient. That family signed with us over a builder who never called back at all. She said she picked whoever treated a Tuesday night like it mattered. It was worth a pool.

I have a partner, Eddie, who can sell a pool to a man standing in his own empty yard in February, and I am the one who has to make February promises survive July. My job in this company is the schedule, the subs, and telling people the truth about the permit office, and for years the truth was whatever I remembered to say on the phone. We sent something new this winter. Eddie wrote the words, the system sent them, and I watched my January fill with design meetings in warm kitchens while our competitors' phones sat quiet. One man's permit cleared in March. We dug in April while the outfit down the road was still returning spring calls. Eddie says winter is just spring for people who plan. I hate when he is right in a quotable way.

Every build used to live somewhere different. Permits in my head, tile choices in a text thread, the plaster color in my wife's memory. Now it is all on one board, four pools at four stages, no phone calls needed. A customer saw her pool on it at the tile stage and said, you people run this like an airline. Compliment taken.

It is my wife Carla's company. I run the service side and stay out of the design meetings, where the numbers are big and the questions are many. The numbers go out the same day now, from the yard, while the yard is still in front of her. A man told her he signed because hers was the only estimate he could read without calling somebody's office. He said the other two looked like ransom notes. Carla gets home for dinner now. I am not saying a fast estimate is a marriage counselor. I am saying she is home for dinner.

We finished a pool in April for a family, and the thank you went out on its own, and then a check in when the weather turned hot, asking if the water was treating them right. I did neither. I was digging two towns over and thinking about gunite, like always. The man answered the check in with a photo of his brother in law standing in his empty backyard holding a tape measure, and wrote, this one needs you too. The brother in law signed a bigger pool than the first one. At the dig he told me he had gotten three quotes and picked us because his brother in law's builder wrote to ask how the swimming was. A thank you did that. I have spent thirty years believing the work talks. The work does talk. It just needed somebody to start the conversation after I left.

I am the daughter my father swears he is not training to replace him, which is why I answer the phones he misses. He misses them in holes. The missed ones get a text back the second they hang up now, polite, with our name on it, asking what they need. A lady who called three builders at lunch booked from a parking lot. We were the only ones who answered in time. Dad says a text is not an answer. I say a text is an answer the customer can prove happened. We are both right, but only one of us is booking the visits.

I keep the calendar for two designers and one very confident owner, and the calendar used to be me, a wall, and a pencil with no eraser left. People would call to book a design visit and I would call them back Thursday. By Thursday they had met two other builders in their kitchen. Families book the visit themselves now, off the website, and pick a time that suits them like civilized people. I still have the wall calendar. I write birthdays on it now. It is semi retired and so, some days, am I.

My brother runs the crews and I run the money, and January used to be when I would run the numbers instead and feel sick. This January the system wrote to all our past customers and old designs. My brother called it junk mail until the replies started landing. I call it the January list, and I protect it like it is a crew.

Two years ago I drew a pool for a couple, walked their yard four times, and lost them to a kitchen remodel that ate the budget. It happens. I filed the drawing and forgot their names, which is the part I am not proud of. Launchbarr went through our old estimates this spring and wrote to the ones that never signed, short and decent, no begging. That couple answered in an hour. Kitchen done, she wrote. Yard is ready when you are. We dug in June. Twenty years of drawings sitting in drawers in this business. Nobody ever told me the drawers were inventory.