Aqua Pool's Designer

As a designer that works for a pool contracting company I would like to add my two cents in. Assuming your 11,000 savings is correct and assuming you are saving 20-30% on a pool it means the original bid was from anywhere from $37-55k. I can tell you for a fact that on pools in this area there have many unforseens that occur. When a GC builds your pool, usually they will eat most of the unforseens unless its a hard-dig or sometimes overbreak. While you would have to pay for the unforseens (these usually range anywhere from 500-2000). Also, a good GC will have a great superintendent that will be at your jobsite after almost every stage to check the work. This person will know where the smallest mistakes are and demand that the sub-contractor comes back and fixes it. Do you truly believe you will know where the mistakes are? Oh btw, trust me when I say subcontractors mess up and they do it quite often. Next issue, did you factor in the amount of hours you are going to waste on this project? Now since most people work for a living, and you are going to be probably wasting about 50-70hrs on this project and those are hours you could be earning money. Also even though we mark up 20-35%, we mark up WHOLESALE prices which are completely different than RETAIL prices which you most likely be paying. I would also like to add the fact that even though you are saving money, you are going to take two times longer to build your own pool because sub-contractors are only going to do your jobs when they get a chance. Sub-contractors will take a GC job over you job. Also, many GC's can call in favors or push the subs to do the work in faster if needed. Now, if you believe you can handle the whole project, make sure its done properly, and that you already factor in your hours, I do have two suggestions 1) Get a bottle, acutally make that two, of aspirin YOU WILL NEED IT when dealing with subcontractors and trying to finish the project in a timely manner 2) Do as much research as you can and I suggest trying to find a superintendent that will oversee your job. In our company we have helped many people build their own pools, and I believe only one person out of all them did it and was happy. That person was a GC himself in his previous life. The rest ended up losing a time, some lost money, and all of them acutally refferred us saying that building your own pool is too hard.