Lightning Pools & Pavers

You know that feeling when you are going to be taken care of. That things will be handled because you paid for a service and will receive said service from professionals. Nope, you will not get that with this company! Of all of unprofessionally handled things with this pool, July 28, 2022 takes a cake! Owner, Chip finally after months and months shows up to fix a bad StoneScape mini pebble finish. He drained my pool without pulling a plug, fixed some small percentage of the issue at best, then proceeded to tell me that draining the pool for 24 hours is fine without pulling the ground water plug, the day before he said 1-2 hours is fine. I guess the overnight does not count and having 1.5 feet of water on deep end counts as “half a pool”! (Sarcasm. 1.5 feet in deep end had to be less then 20% of overall pool water.) The assistant and him worked for an hour sharing a single little handheld 3/ 3.5 inch disk polisher and called me to inspect and then got upset when I said that they hardly anything is fixed, proceeded to tell me how I am unreasonable, how they will not do anything else and pool is beautiful and I quote “not that bad” in rough parts. My kids have cuts from the finish bc the shells and stones stick out so much and if you hit a sharp corner with wet, water saturated skin CUTS & SCRAPES HAPPEN. ALL THE TIME. Not once or twice. EVERY TIME THEY ARE IN THE POOL at least one kid is bleeding. Not a lot, they are small cuts and scrapes but there is BLOOD!! THIS is after we tried to fix it underwater and sanded each area they tell me cuts have happened. Mostly on their feet, but fingers as well and my niece got a cut on her wrist. She did a upside down stand, then turn in shallow end and coming up her wrist grazed the bottom and she was bleeding. He tried to tell me that THIS IS NORMAL! ITS what you expect of mini pebble finish & kids he said, it’s a rough finish he said. They basically drained my pool without real plan to fix it nor intent. And the skimmer finish with ½ inch gaping hole of course could not be fixed by him either. His answer was simple he cant fix it, he does not have the material for it. End of story. The owner operates the same way the crews do, which from our experience was what others have already posted. You never know who is coming or going and when. There were broken promises on top of broken promises for months. Unless you stay on top of crews, things don’t get installed properly and I really can only hope we don’t have any long term structural issues given what finishing crews did that I know is a problem & identified the problem right away. Pavers were not installed in the recommended fashion of layer/gravel/sand/lay pavers/ then sand on top/ then level out with the tool. Sand under layer and tool leveling was skipped which resulted the crews coming back 2 times to level things out to the point of acceptable. Many crews left trash for us to clean, we ended up installing the fence back at least 2x & it was damaged in the beginning bc first crew had no correct screw head bit so they decided to pry it open with shear force and a crow bar. Grass was destroyed by pallets of pavers delivered/deposited on glass instead inside the fence on the much. This is to just list a few issues. I could write pages of what happened while the pool was getting build. In any case, all of that is water under the bridge, the problem is, our pool finish was not done right, it was identified as a problem right away and company refuses to fix it. The pool took double the promised time to build which OK I was understand that, COVID supply chain issues and all of that but the problem is that the end result is poor workmanship on so many levels. This is a small company that had to many issues during building, John left, then Morgan left as he was finishing up our pool startup and things we not handled properly. We had to pester for final inspection and I, the owner was identifying things like missing screws on filter can and pump that would fail the inspection.

I contracted to gave my pool resurfaced and the pool deck outfitted with pavers. As I was new to the area I went to home advisors who vet their contractors for you. I git estimates, and not knowing anything about pools, I chose a contractor with, I thought, a fair price, not the cheapest estimate but moderately in the middle. After the job was completed, it came to make a final payment. The company was looking for much more money than the estimate because he made a mistake on his estimate total. No one saw this during the process of the job. It was only noticed at the final payment. It was a lot of money and I argued that the estimate was what I based my affordability of the job. We disagreed on the final amount, I was not paying thousands more than estimated because his total was his error. We finally compromised on a fair amount snd I proceeded to pay much more than the estimate but enough that we were both satisfied. Well 6 years later, my pool is cracked and coming apart on the bottom because, all experts seeing the problem, have all agreed it was the bond coat that wasn’t applied correctly in the first place. Every single expert agreed, it is the bond coat that failed. There is a 10 year warranty on this job, but the owner refuses to honor the warranty because of past dealings we had together. The pool light which they replaced is also floating in the pool. He asserted that it wasn’t the bond coat, contrary to all subsequent experts opinions, who have physically seen the pool and each stated it’s the bond coat and should still be under warranty, and suggested charging me more money to dive the pool and see what was under the cracks, that he insisted wasn’t his poorly done job. I felt that I should not be paying him anything to come out and look at the cracks, he’s basing all on some photos only, and has not really look at the problem with his own eyes. This jib will now cost me thousands more, on top of what he was paid, to right his worthless job!

Because of that disagreement he does not want to do any work with and does not honor the warranty since with the disagreement. Anyone that is looking to restore a pool should not hire them because they did not do the base coat properly causing it to crack based from the estimates I got and now he won't come to do it because of the warranty that he does not honor.

Excellent service

I just had my pool Built by Lightning Pools and couldn’t be more happy! I live in Kenwood and knew it would be a challenge due to my small backyard (some even said it couldn’t be done!). From the start, Morgan, the salesman, knew his stuff and guided me in the right direction for design, product, waterfall and color choice; John, the project manager, had his crews moved like machines and was always accessible to my phone calls; and the crews were always courteous and cleaned up my backyard when they left. The ending project was more than I could have dreamed and my backyard seems to have even more space with the pool! The price wasn’t the least expensive or the most expensive, but I feel my money was well spent, due to the efficiency and work product on the job, and have been enjoying my pool and backyard area since the day it was finished and for years to come. So looking forward to the summer!!!

The pool resufacing with StoneScapes and Shellock pavers look great. John, the Lightning Pool and Pavers project manager, was very responsive and ensured that everything was completed to our satisfaction.

BUYER BEWARE! We could NEVER in good conscience ever recommend Lightning Pools to touch anything pool related, EVER! Our experience with Lightning was riddled with unmet promises from Jason the sales rep, Kimbo the "(lack of) production manager", and Chip the owner. The 15 month process continued through 4 project managers & ended in a new pool/weird egg-shaped hot tub that does not function at 100%. If you have Lightning perform work, make sure you have a highly-detailed, itemized invoice of promises, time lines, equipment, & any extras you think are industry no-brainers because once construction starts, the amnesia & denials start! Our new pool construction was promised in 4-6 weeks. When we questioned Jason about the quoted timeline, he reconfirmed a 2nd & 3rd time. We laid out a clear plan of desired features & performance (so we could use our hot tub while enjoying our water features simultaneously) & gave him a fully completed design. He promised us the world in 6 weeks max. All-inclusive price were Jason's words, none of that info was on the signed invoice, so no promises were delivered. When actual construction started, activity was ridiculously slow (2 guys for 3 hours max/1 day a week). 4 weeks after permit, i barely had a rough hole in the ground, no shotcrete & no materials. I again questioned the 4-6 week time frame promise by Jason, at which point Chip explained it was 4-6 weeks from "scratching the ground" meaning the preliminary stakeout of the ground that had taken 2 weeks didn't count. It took another month before the shell was shot. Even the morning of the shell shoot, there were plumbing issues in the hot tub resulting in concrete guys cutting out rebar to make plumbing adjustments just to get plumbing lines inside the concrete shell. A month later, the footing walls were laid out incorrectly resulting in a continuous 4-6" bust along the east side. A majority of plywood form boards & 2x4 form stakes were left in place & buried (termite buffet). A 2nd concrete guy was called in a year later to perform corrective work - scabbing on rebar & concrete to the footing wall so it was in the right location. The Lightning tile crew then showed up to set the waterline tile using our selection of a porous travertine 6x6 tile & stacked stone walls. The installation of tile/ stone was done without waterproofing between the tile/stone & pool shell. The practice used to install the tile/stone was a half-dollar sized glob of mortar placed on the back of tile and then pressed directly onto the pool shell - standard practice is to fully butter the back of tile/stone & press it into a floated bed of flexible mortar...this allows movement without tiles popping off & also helps prevent water escaping the pool through the porous travertine. When we noticed poor practices being done, we issued a 2 month stop-work order to discuss. We had the grout manufacturer perform a technical inspection of the installation. A formal report was issued explaining that it was not the proper installation for their product & future failure (popping tiles/stone & loss of water through the porous tile) was imminent. I gave the technical report to Chip & requested all tile/stone be removed/re-installed at their cost. He informed me nothing done was building code violation, so if i wanted it done right, it would be at my cost plus his markup. I chose to reinstall myself correctly. Lightning resumed work but only after trying to make me sign a promissory note stating that if I spread any negative truths about their practices, whether verbally, on social media, or to the BBB, I would owe them $1,000 per occurrence (of course we did not sign it...but this shows the true character of Lightning Pools). There was not a single phase of construction without major defects. Soil was never properly compacted with a ground compactor prior to paver set. Lightning said wetting it with a water hose for 30 min would do...the pavers have been uneven from day 1. Lightning installed all Hayward equipment/products except the 2 sun shelf bubblers which were Pentair...unfortunately they were wired to the rest of the Hayward electrical and to date, we have no control over their constant color-changing because they communicate independently from the rest of the Hayward automation - Lightning refuses to make this right. Our new hot tub has 4 of 5 jets working properly - Lightning trouble shot this for months with no correction & still refuses to make this right. We have not given Chip his final payment until all items are fixed as promised. He claims they are done - Its been 8 months, Lightning has abandoned the job so we will make no further payments. Crooked Chip threatened to withhold warranty on us too. DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY!!!!

The pool surface has held up, but the light and deck had to be redone due to not being performed correctly by Lightning.

Ok, except the finish is streaky in places

I did call and text Tom to tell him of the problems within a few months to a year but never got a response. I finally got a hold of Chip who came out and said he would "fix" the deck issues but would need to see if Chris was available. He never called back despite my calling him to see where we were on the repairs. Now 2 years later, I am going with someone else. We also had a color changing light retro fitted and after 2 years the LED doesn't work, I don't recommend retro fitting a light in an old fixture and would have liked a better explanation of the options.

We are very pleased with the finished result. Work was accomplished in an efficient and timely manner. We would definitely recommend this company to others.

Overall project went well but follow up service was not good when I noted non uniform color/texturing. Asked for follow up visit a couple of times to evaluate and was told someone would come by but never did. If using this company, make sure you deal directly with owner and he is in charge of your project. Another technician was in charge, and seemed to busy to come by or distance was to far to follow up.

It went great, especially the tile guy; he was just a warrior.

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