Recommendations for Sydney concrete pool builders

Lucky you! Why they don't treat all customers the same I don't know. Its not like they have quoted us a different price to everyone else. We have spent a large chunk of money with Resort Pools, so you would expect they would deliver what we have paid for. Communication with this company is terrible.

Its a shame, but after 7 months we have run out of patience and they are now ignoring our emails. We just want them to come and finish off the pool, its around 5-6 weeks now since it was filled with water and we have had no final handover or completion of outstanding jobs. No functioning filter or pool cleaner, so we are trying to clean it with a hose, but almost impossible to get clean. It is so dirty now we can't use it.

Reluctantly referring matter to the Dept of Fair Trading, who have been very helpful so far and they have made a note of the issues we are experiencing with Resort Pools.


Our concrete pool is around 9 x 4 - price approx. $60K +, similar to Retrobyte. This included us hitting rock and the extra cost of disposing of that. Add to that the cost labour to complete landscaping & paving, cost of pavers/tiles around pool, pool fence etc.......overall it is a pretty costly exercise.

Given the cost of a pool, you can understand why we are very annoyed that Resort Pools have still not finished our pool in 7 months, even though the concrete shell was completed last year.

Friends of ours got a fibreglass pool with Narellan pools, they were pretty happy with them. They had to lift the pool over the roof of their 2 storey house.

Our neighbour built with Resort pools this year and the pool has cracked across the centre and losing water dramatically. The pebble interior is also patchy so he's not even happy about that. Either way he has been chasing them to come back and fix it, but they have realised its a 80k fix up job, so they are avoiding him. He's now building a case to take them to court...hmm
We built a year ago with Domain Pools. They were a recommendation from 2 friends and both of them rave about Domain. They completed our 8x4m pool in 7 weeks! Fully tiled it cost us just under 60k, and I must admit they were a pleasure to deal with. The builder/company owner comes out sells the pool and works hand in hand with the trades on site during construction, so hes always on site, and the workmanship is excellent. I think they only build a limited number of pools per year however, they arent a big company.
We actually replaced a 5 year old fibreglass pool with the new concrete one after the rectangular fibreglass pool bowed in the centre (ended up loking like a banana). Even though the warranty was 25 years, we found out that was only based on the manufacture of the fibreglass shell. Narellan pools said that ground movement was at fault, and thats why it bowed, so its not their problem, So much for the 25 year warranty!
So I'm all for concrete....it wont bow, budge and when its looking old and tired, you can always renovate it.

Update on our Resort Pools build. We lost 2 weeks due to weather before Christmas, which put the job behind. We were then told that our pool interior would be done during the first 2 weeks of January, but nothing has happened yet. The reason ... when our pool fence was installed by Resort's fencing sub-contractor, they forgot to fit the gate latch (on the frameless glass). So, until the fence is able to be certified as compliant, the interior of the pool can't be done. At this stage Resort are working on getting the fencing guy back to fit the gate latch. Such a minor issue has put everything else on hold.

That said, other than the pool interior (and the gate latch), everything is done except for the solar heating. Paving, waterline tiles, retaining wall, electrical, equipment installation and all plumbing is done.

The construction supervisor from Resort has been very good, easy to deal with, friendly etc. The office staff on the other hand seem to have no idea what's going on.

Re cracking - I always laugh at the urban myth (see my thread on urban myths) that fibre glass pools pop out of the ground - when they are full - its impossible - under the laws of physics. They also don't crack.

Cement pools can crack and can pop too - if empty - or if water outside is greater than inside. Then they will crack.

I'd always recommend FB - if you can get it in and your layout supports it - ie cement is better for those spots that need specific contours etc.

Seems that I spoke too soon. Resort Pool's construction supervisor has resigned, as did one of the office staff, so I'm dealing with a new office person at the moment who is totally out of the loop on what's happened so far. The fence has now been completed, so we're presently waiting for an inspection by our certifier before the pool interior can be done.

We have spoken to our contact in admin at Resort Pools today, apparently our SS told admin that our pool had handover in Nov. This is not the case, as we have counted 7 things that are still to be completed (minor things) which we have now advised Admin. Now we know why we have not heard back from them, plus we have been told the generic admin email at Resort had a problem and quite a few emails have been lost. Anyway our admin contact will follow up on our outstanding items ASAP. Our SS has not left the Coy, so perhaps we have a different SS from you.

Well we finally heard back from Resort last weekend, a email from the owner apologising for the way our file has been handled and with a personal promise that action would be taken this week. We've had promises quite a few times before and nothing happended so we weren't really expecting something to be done this time around either. But believe it or not our SS did turn up yesterday to do some of the jobs (no phone call to let us know, so luckily someone was home). A least some of the outstanding jobs have been completed and said he would come back next week to finish off. Hopefully the end is in sight.

Yeah, they are good at promising but so many times with us nothing was done. So we were plesently surprised our SS did actually come out yesterday.

Did they end up doing your lining last week? That part of the pool is a big job so at least if that gets done, you are a lot closer to finishing.

Who knows what is actually going on at Resort Pools. But people are still working there and one turned up to us yesterday, so I guess they are still operating.

Resort Pools definitely have a cash flow issue - they just asked us to purchase the replacement copers up front, and offered to deduct this amount from our next invoice. Naturally I've said no - it's their responsibility to purchase any materials needed to rectify their sub-par workmanship. Will be interesting to see where this goes next.