
Serving Kirkland, AZ and surrounding areas
In business since 1969
Free estimates
Warranties offered
"We first contacted Henson's fiberglass last year (July 2013) for a ballpark estimate with our rough measurements via email, and received a prompt response. After deciding this winter that we absolutely had to do something about the pool this upcoming year, we contacted Henson's via their website, and Tom came out in mid-January 2014, measured, discussed with us our options, and gave us an estimate that matched the ballpark figure from last year. We thanked him for his time, and told him we would get back to him after taxes so that we knew what we were working with in terms of funds.
We called him back in late March and signed a contract for him to get started. He told us they could set up to drain the pool on a Thursday (he was leaving town Friday), and that then we could turn the drain pump on Sunday so that it would be ready Monday for cleaning and prep, and that we would have our pool in a maximum of 10 to 12 business days, but hopefully only about 5. Since we had decided to go with the granite glass band around the top due to some of the original tiles being missing, I told his prep guy on Thursday that I would like to save some of the tile around the top when he came back, to use as a backsplash on a cabinet top remodel I am doing for the kids' bathroom. The prep guy said okay, and asked me how much I wanted, and I told him about 4 feet of tile. He said that normally they just putty over the tile, which I didn't know, as I assumed when the demo/prep work was done all of the tile would be removed (this is what happened when my mother-in-law had her pool resurfaced in Texas), and replaced with the band. Since I felt bad that I was having him do extra work in removing tile, the kids and I worked over the weekend to remove tile from the shallow end where it would be easier to putty (we have a diving pool so the deep end would have been really unkind). While we were removing tile, the kids asked that we take more tile to make their entire counter top the tile instead of just the backsplash. I agreed, and we removed about 20 feet of tile (still all in the shallow end). Monday, I get a call from the prep guy asking that we not remove the tile as Tom wasn't happy about it, as it creates a need for more putty. Too late :( I list all this out, as I am hoping that it makes others aware to specify ahead of time what can and can't be done.
Anyways, prep work continues off and on from Monday to Thursday (4/7 to 4/10) before we see Tom (and it was frustrating to see only a couple hours prep work done each day because we were worried about how long the pool could sit empty for, but I looked it up, and it was mentioned online that the same prep work gets done at multiple houses in a day, so just because we didn't see a lot going on, the guys were working, just being the most efficient for all customers, so as not to create long wait times). He told us that he was behind and asked if he could work on the weekend. Ha! I don't care, it's not my weekend you're messing up, go right on ahead :) So Tom came out both Saturday and Sunday and worked (his wife even came and helped him), and our pool was finished the afternoon of 4/15 (which we were really grateful for since we'd already committed to a pool party for Easter, oops) and filling.
My only real complaints are the lack of cleanup from his prep team, and a small bit from Tom himself. It's a minor detail but frustrating regardless... at one point during the prep, the secondary prep guy scooped up the last of the debris from the bottom of the pool and dumped it on our desert rock and left it there (about 1 foot by 2 foot patch, a couple inches high), and then Tom left scraps of fiberglass, and we had offered our blower to him from the beginning, so I would have appreciated both of those things being taken care of, but I'm very leery of any form of confrontation and my husband wasn't home, so nothing was done about it because I was too chicken to speak up.
Other than that, I love our pool. It is gorgeous, and fiberglass is amazing. It is truly non-porous, as we were filling it, the water beaded up on the surface, rather than getting it wet like another material would. I do however wish we'd gone with a new tile instead of the granite band, because the water refraction makes it difficult to gauge how full our pool is, where the old tile had a line of grout that I gauged by. I'm probably going to have to do something like take a Sharpie and mark it in some unobtrusive spot (under the diving board maybe!) so that I have that visual aid. The startup chemicals were also really cheap in comparison with our old pool. We used 3 lbs of shock and 8 lbs of stabilizer and we were done. Utter disbelief. I have read reviews of fiberglass and am hoping that we get the same 25-40 years mentioned elsewhere before we have to redo it, because by that time, we'll make the kids pay for it so their kids can swim HA!
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