Get matched with top swimming pool in ground builders or installers in Santa Clarita, CA

"I waited to put up a review for Pacific Outdoor Living until I could give a full story. Our goal was to fix up our backyard which had never been 'scaped before. We had POL put in a patio of pavers with a grill placed and landscape the entire backyard. We also had an in ground water fountain set up. The job went as planned on time. The different crews were extremely polite and respectful. Very professional. The job turned out beautifully but there were some issues, which thankfully POL has been willing to address. To start, they are a solid pavers company. That is their absolute strength. They know what they are talking about here. The patio and grill are awesome. We had it set with electrical wiring for both an outdoor fridge and a countertop outlet. We also had them run conduit over to a spot where we later installed a jacuzzi. They did a fantastic job. We hired them to also do the landscaping and as we learned, while they do this well, it is not their 1st expertise. They provide this in order to do complete jobs. I suspect there is always going to be loss of some vegetation after installation. This is probably the one thing you can't guarantee but there are other companies we got estimates from where landscaping was clearly their primary expertise. Nevertheless, POL has always owned anything that didn't go perfectly. The landscaping looked great but some of the sod and some of the water resistant plants didn't survive. They replaced whatever needed to be replaced. Even after the summer heat wave and drought where we were limited to watering the lawn to twice a week and had grass die. They listened to my issues which they agreed were not my fault. They owned up to the fact that the sprinkler zones were not perfectly laid out. More than a year later, they came out and just added an additional zone for the lawn, replaced some of the ground cover. In addition, the outlet on our new grill/counter shorted out with the heavy rains this winter as somehow water managed to seep under the covered outlets; they replaced this as well. It would have been more ideal if everything turned out perfectly from the beginning but with these projects, one has to assume there will be some issues. What you want is a company that stands by its work and will not balk at fixing things. POL owned it all and has impressed me by doing so. I am so impressed that I am buying a new batch of mulch from them. I would hire them again even with the landscaping issues because they did not walk away from the problems even after the initial three month warranty. They are a class act."

"Robert is very professional and knowledgeable. He responded quickly and made sure he was around through every step to ensure quality of service. He went above and beyond to make sure we were happy with our pool upgrades. The process of getting new surface, lights, tile and deck-o seal went very smoothly. Competitive price too! We highly recommend him!"

With over 10 years experience in building swimming pools, we take care of the entire process from permit stage | city inspections and excavation to shotcrete, pool coping, tile, and plaster or pebble.

"Overall grade: “A”. Summary: Aqua Concepts rebuilt most of my pool (70-year-old, 20’x40’, 9’ deep maindrain, rectangular pool) from the rebar on up, replastered the pool, added new steps, pressure tested my maindrain, installed a split maindrain, and recommended a pool Startup party that I am very happy with. Time Frame: May-June 2021 (COVID time) Issues\Complaints: None My AquaConcepts contact: Chris was always available to answer my questions whether by text, phone call, or in-person visit. He did so in a timely manner. He also suggested alternate approaches and ideas that could be implemented during the rebuild. Very helpful. Background: Initially I planned only to replaster the pool. The surface looked OK except for a few “red spots” in the shallow end. Those spots turned out to be rusted rebar that had penetrated the plaster! This finding changed the entire nature of the job. AquaConcepts dug several “windows” into the plaster and it was evident that rust was widespread. To affect a reasonable rebuild price, they built a new rebar shell (say 6” above the old one), covered both rebar frames with shotcrete (at 3500 psi), bead blasted my existing tile (came out pretty good looking) and all this for half the price of a new pool (new pool of this size: 80-90k.) They also built the rebar shell for the new steps. (As I’m retired, I watched every step of the rebuild closely, asked lots of questions, and enjoyed the process)."

"Eli is a real professional. As soon as you meet him, you see you are dealing with a real professional contractor. We met with 4 different contractors and he was the only one with so much knowledge. I picked him for a full renovation project, we did full kitchen renovation, bathrooms, knocked 3 walls down, exterior was completely redone as well, including a new pool, Stucco, Paint and new drywall where we knocked the walls down. The job was done in 3 months. I was amazed by how many people worked in one day! Would hire them and won't hesitate."

"We contacted California Smartscape to give us an estimate on redoing our front and back yards. They had been destroyed by putting a pool in and by a large tree in the front yard that damaged the hardscape. We spoke at length to Richard and Nick about our budget and our ideas for the yard. The proposal they came back with was within our budget and had all the elements we wanted. We were pleasantly surprised because we had contacted others and their proposals were way above budget and did not have the elements we wanted. The crews that came out to do the work were wonderful. They were professional, considerate and respectful. Steve was a great project manager who attended to things as they came up during the work. Ruben was a good crew supervisor. He had a good relationship with his workers. Now that our project is complete, we couldn’t be happier. The whole yard has been transformed into a natural landscape with easy to care for low water plants, low voltage LED lighting and drip irrigation. We even have a small artificial grass lawn in back! If you need landscape work, this is the company I would recommend."

"Urban Remodeling was amazing to work with and I would hire them again in a heartbeat. The team really listened to everything I wanted, executed everything well, and worked diligently to timely finish the project. Overall, we had a great experience with kind people!"

"Recently had a consultation with US Home Developers regarding a new home construction project I was intending on starting. I spoke with Elaina and she kindly took plenty of time out of her day and walked me through the process. She gave me detailed information, and was very patient and understanding of the fact that I am new to the "housing game" and ultimately made me realize that building a new home might not be right for me at the present time. The fact that Elaina kindly offered me her time to provide me guidance and then tell me a new home build might not be right for me at the moment, clearly shows that you as a potential customer can expect US Home Developers will help you do what is right for you whatever that may be. Highly recommend you work with them, will definitely go back to them in the future!"

"Picture build were great. They did excellent quality work and delivered real value. They put in new driveway (with pavers) and pedestrian staircase, new landscaping with mature trees, new lighting and electrics, new IPE hardwood fencing. Couldn't be happier with their work. I actually use them now for landscape maintenance."

"Final update:  Anyone who has been read my original review will know that I had a lot of problems with my project.  I will list these below along with how they were resolved.  I still have concerns about this company's punctuality, lack of organization, and not keeping foremen or contractors on their job sites, which I think lead to a lot of the problems below. On a positive note, they were willing to go to great lengths to fix things, which is rare for a construction company.  For that alone, I can't review them too badly. They are not bad people, just too busy, maybe.  
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These are the major issues I encountered and how they were fixed.  Now that I look back at the list, a lot of it could have happened with any construction crew.  The one thing I think could have prevented many of these mistakes would have been if a contractor was on hand all the time to oversee the crews.  As I'm speaking to more people in the area though, that is apparently an unusual thing here in Southern California, especially with bigger companies that can offer warranties. I just moved from New Jersey and every contractor I've ever come across there did lots of work themselves and checked their job sites daily.
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So here are the the major issues I encountered and how they were resolved.  I am not including little things like gaps here and there I had to get the crews to fix as I saw them.  Keep these in mind with your renovations as there's a very good chance you'll encounter them too if contractors in this area really don't check their work very carefully:  
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1) Stone flooring wasn't laid out before installing.  We got travertine installed in a Versaille pattern.  Not laying tiles out ahead of time lead to a lot of tiles that had to be redone and a lot more trips to the tile store when we ran out of certain sizes.  This wasted a lot material and a lot of everyone's time. 
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2) Travertine was sealed without cleaning.  I actually found a piece of dog poop sealed onto the floor that the electrician dragged in. The crew also got sealer all over the baseboards, so there were spots that were shiny and had scuff marks sealed onto them.  It took two extra days of work to clean off and reseal the floor.  Some areas had to be regrouted.  It took another day or so for someone to sand off and repaint the damaged baseboards.  Getting the subcontractor to go after all of the dirty spots was like pulling teeth and they did a pretty mediocre job with the resealing (lots of sealant residue which I am slowly working off) because they couldn't follow the directions on the bottle.  They were not happy, I'm assuming, because the company was making them fix it for free.  I think letting them seal the floor was a total mistake.  I had originally intended to seal it myself but when the crew offered it and said I had already paid for it, I couldn't say no.  
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3)  Base shoe was installed on its side.  The hardwood flooring guy left expansion gaps that were much bigger than my liking.  I thought 3/8" base shoe would cover the gaps so I said yes to that base shoe but after it was installed, I find that it's installed with the long side down (3/4" of coverage).  It looked really weird; neighbors I brought in to look at the work noticed immediately.  The company made them remove it and install 1/2" base shoe in the correct orientation.  Some small gaps still needed to be caulked but this looks much better.  I wanted to have 1/2" quarter round installed, which is even less conspicuous but that doesn't come primed and I was told there was no time to prime and paint it before installation.  There was actually lots of time, in retrospect, (see stair nose discussion below, as this all happened at the same time).  It's stuff like this where having a contractor or someone else knowledgeable on hand, may have helped.  I think if you have access to a really meticulous flooring crew, its better to just have them pull off the baseboards and put the flooring underneath.  My neighbor had this done and it all looks flawless. I didn't even know this was an option before my flooring was put in.
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4)  Fireplace patching.  We had our fireplace surround replaced with floor to ceiling tile.  The same crew that did the floor tiling did the wall tile and related demo.  I don't think this was a great idea.  They cut away way too much of the baseboards and drywall.  They put up cement board for the tile but left a big gap between the cement board and the existing drywall.  The cement board and drywall were at a slightly different level, making patching really difficult. The baseboards run below the level of the newly placed tile, meaning its impossible to put a new piece without cracking tile.  Patching the wall and baseboard around the fireplace took almost 3 days, and it still looks messed up if you look closely.  They had to put some quarter around around the tile to cover the gaps and they had to cut little pieces of baseboard (which I had to track down, since they lost the pieces that were cut away) into funny shapes to fill the gaps.  I actually ended up using a Dremmel on one of the pieces myself because the one the guy was trying to wedge in there looked so horrible.  I feel like this was all done in the wrong order.  It would have made a lot more sense to do the fireplace first and redo the baseboard before laying that spot of tile.  I mentioned this to the subcontractors before the tile went down but they just blew me off.  I should probably have gotten the company involved earlier.  Again, it would have been nice to have the contractor keep the crew more organized.
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5)  Crown moulding.  The crown moulding around the fireplace was damaged during demo (easily avoidable, in retrospect) so we decided to build a cornice around the fireplace tile under which we would stick some lights.  They sent a painting/patching crew to do this along with the other cleanup (repainting baseboards, fixing the holes in the walls, etc).  This 6 feet or so of crown moulding stumped them for a week before I finally called it quits.  They never even brought the correct-sized miter saw!  They used up 32 feet of moulding that I had to buy to match what was up in my house.  When I saw them trying to cut the adjacent moulding with a utility knife rather than taking it down to cut correctly, I finally told them to stop working and leave.  The company seemed kind of oblivious during this process.  The contractor was like, "let them finish, it'll look good in the end".  I brought in a moulding guy to see how much it would cost to fix and he laughed out loud when he saw the cuts and pieces that were stuck up there, "Did you let your kids do this?" (my 6 year old could do a better job with his Legos, haha).  ESI ended up deducting the cost of the moulding and the cost for a professional moulding crew to come in.  I don't understand why a company that builds houses doesn't have access to a moulding guy, but oh well.  I am sure that it will look great in the end now that I got Art of Moulding involved.
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6) I had to stain my stair noses myself.  I was told the crew would be coming to do it on Monday (it was Friday).  So there would be no time to order matching ones from the hardwood company ($1000 and it would take a week).  I could pay the hardwood flooring crew to make the stairnoses but it would cost $2800 for that.  I found out blank stair noses only cost $300 and I had a weekend during which I could stain them, so I did it myself.  Turns out the crew doesn't come to install them until almost two weeks later; plenty of time for the factory stair noses to have gotten here.  We have tile on our stair risers and those had to be ins"