Designer Pools & Outdoor Living

We had our pool completed by Designer Pools and Outdoor Living in July of 2013. Though it took a little longer than we would have liked, about 45 days longer than the initial estimate because of permitting issues in the City of Austin, the finished product beat all of of our expectations. We picked Designer Pools over other builders we looked at because of their artistic design and better quality of other builders pools we looked at from other builders.
We used them to build our pool, spa, outdoor living area including a kitchen and all of our landscaping in our back yard.
Where I was blown away and why I have written my first Unilocal review ever was what has transpired this week. My pump went out and you have to go through the company that made the pump to get warranty work done. The manufacture assigned one of their warranty guys 2 weeks ago. The warranty guy ignored us for 2 weeks which is a disaster here in Texas keeping algae at bay.
In desperation I called Designer Pools even though it really wasn’t their problem. Jeff and Brandon separately called the company that was supposed to do the warranty work. Neither of them liked the answers the warranty company was giving them and within a few hours Designer Pools had sent over a crew to look at my problem, bringing a spare pump to use if they couldn’t resolve the problem with mine. Talk about going above and beyond what is required to help an old customer!
So I have a beautiful backyard and a company that built the pool still providing great service a couple of years later.

We had several companies come out to help us design a pool for our backyard. Long story short, after contacting a few companies and getting high pressure sales and no call backs, we actually had two companies show up. While both seemed okay, we went with Designer Pools since they were local, and couldnt be more pleased. Highly recommend John, our pool designer, who came out and actually listened to our ideas, and was very patient and understanding. As we had never owned a pool before, he talked us through the entire process, and answered all of our questions. Most impressively, we appreciated all of the follow up. Jeff managed the construction of our project, and was always checking in with us. These folks were very accessible and knowledgeable. As a pool was a significant investment for our family, we felt at ease that the entire team was so accessible throughout the entire process. While there were many different work crews at our home, everyone was uniformed and very professional. While we did experience a construction delay due to the very rainy month of May, our pool is being filled today and we couldn’t be more excited. Finally, one of their tech crew is coming out this week to take us through «Pool School», and will show us how everything works and will make sure we know how to take care of our pool.

Brandon and his team designed and built our pool while our home was under construction in 2009. The entire process was seamless. We now even use their company to service our pool.

It has been 16 months. No true written plan in place for completion. Absolute nightmare. Has affected our family adversely. Words can not explain.
Thankfully, lawyers are better with words than we are.
We were so hoping to avoid litigation. We are good, trusting people. We have been misled throughout the process. We feel like we’ve been taken advantage of. Robbed Peter to pay Paul. Suit will likely be filed very shortly, which will essentially force them to complete project within 60 days.
Again, we did everything to try to avoid this.
16 months. 225k dollars.
My next update will hopefully be more positive. Believe me, I really want it to be.
UPDATE (2÷1÷15):
Letter from DP has us finishing on 2÷28÷15 barring weather delays. Our lawyers are involved, but things ARE moving. More to come…
UPDATE (3÷20÷15):
We have parted ways with Designer Pools.

Designer Pools has been an absolute nightmare to work with. We contracted with them in August 2013 for a pool and it is now October 2014 and our project is still not complete. The pool was just filled with water a few weeks ago (over a year after project signing) and there are still a number of elements of our pool/​spa/​outdoor space which are still unfinished. We spent an insane amount of money on our pool and expected top-​notch customer service and project management, but we received none of that. Aside from the design which Bryan did a great job on, the rest of the project has been awful.
Most of the tradesmen they use are not in-​house. This means Designer Pools is more or less the general contractor of the pool. As a General Contractor, their primary responsibility is to line up the trades and manage the project. This is where their lack of experience and knowledge comes head on. I had to call, text, email and still have to call, text and email multiple times a week just for something to get done. They don’t provide a formal project plan. I had to beg them for one and once they did, their weren’t any dependencies so when one trade got backed up, the entire project plan became worthless. Additionally, they just wouldn’t plan the tradesmen in advance so nothing would ever get done in time.
Honestly, as a business owner myself, I would hate for one bad project to ruin the reputation of my company, but I have given Brandon and the rest of the team at Designer Pools several opportunities to change my opinion of them, but they have failed every step of the way. My only hope in writing this review is to save the next person from having a disastrous experience. The one thing my wife wanted with moving down to Texas was a pool and now we have been through an entire year and still don’t have a completed one. I just worry what is going to happen when we have a problem during the warranty period.

Very good decision to use Mike Pucci (designer) and Brandon and everyone else at Designer Pools. Michael (office manager) kept us up on the schedule as work went along, and we always had someone to call and respond to any of our questions or concerns.
They installed a fairly simple rectangular pool on a slight slope on our side yard. From signing the papers to floating in the water, it was around 2 months — about 3 or so weeks longer than originally scheduled (because of some very poorly timed rain), but still pretty fast for how busy the construction, particularly pool construction, business is in Austin.
Bidding process was very smooth — they listened to our design ideas, offered their own suggestions, came back with cost changes based on our design changes very quickly, and just generally came across as professional and responsible the whole process. And… they were the low bid, which didn’t hurt things at all.
Very high quality work — the stonework that we asked for is beautiful, and the pool and equipment are all working well. They offered to do more landscaping and incidentals, but understood that we didn’t know exactly what we wanted, and were honest about the cost of some of it when recommending we just wait and explore ourselves later. There was a small issue with some of the equipment and the remote control, and Jeff (engineer) made many trips out to the house while working with the equipment manufacturer to get it resolved.
One advantage that they seem to have is they own a lot of their own crews — most days (except for specialty work like spraying gunite) the work crews were in Designer Pools shirts. That made communications about changes very very easy.
As other reviews have said, there are always complications and delays on any construction project. There are small changes you want, and small changes that are necessary because of ambiguity in plans. Weather and other delays are a fact of life. Mike (and Michael) were always responsive, and always made sure that what was built was what we needed and wanted. Most people only put one pool in, and Designer Pools is very much worth considering to do that pool for you. I’ll just say: we turned a empty rocky cactus filled yard to a wonderful pool site in 2 months, and I know people that spend 6 months or longer just getting new cabinets put in.

I was very encouraged when I saw the Unilocal reviews that this would be a good experience. We built a pool in our previous house with Anthony and sylvan and although our pool cmas out great, the communication was awful! It also took a lot longer than they told and were treated like just a number. I was excited to find a smaller company that also had a home building/​landscaping division as well because we want a pool house and landscaping done with our new pool. We spoke with Mike P and he went out to check out yard and measure grade and then spoke to us over the phone about the vision. He sounded like he really got it! Then he put together some drawings/​computer animated images and said to speak freely if we liked his direction and he would put together a proposal. I emailed back and asked a few questions and made a couple comments and basically stated I liked the direction. We haven’t heard from him since. I have emailed several times and called. No response. It has been weeks! Unless something happened to the company or him (I hope not) I find this to be so unprofessional! We were ready to spend a considerable amount of money and this has really delayed our process. So disappointing!

We had a fantastic experience with Brandon and the gang at Designer Pools. They delivered exactly what we wanted and then some at every stage. The fact that we are still good friends with our pool builder after a project of that magnitude speaks volumes. I have recommended Designer Pools to all my friends and will contine to do so!

Our pool is very beautiful, and in the end the price was better than the competitors. However, it took 6 months to complete and some things almost 1 year later have still not been completed. They workers completely obliterated our lawn– including parts not in the pool area– and damaged some of our property which has still not been dealt with by the company.