Browse Category: Home Improvement

Home Builder Water Feature Upgrades: Natural Swimming Pools & Koi Ponds

As builders, we often like to keep up with the newest trends on what people are looking to add to their new homes; so we can include those features as upgrades we can sell. Water features are a great way to enhance the look and feel of a home and to increase the value of a newly built home. Ever since COVID started, there’s been an increasing demand for homeowners looking to improve their backyards. Whether it be a total makeover or addition to make it feel more resort-style, the need and desire for these features are stronger than ever.

Most people choose to get a custom home built for them or to buy a newly constructed home because it’s the last home they want to get. And usually, they plan on living there forever. When they get offered the option to upgrade to their same idea of a home, including a water feature they haven’t thought about, most likely they will answer yes to the add on. Senior citizens are always looking for activities they can do and ways to make them more likely to be active. When they can be active at home in their own backyards, it becomes much easier for them to live the lifestyle they want. Having family come over to enjoy their new koi pond or to swim in a pool is also a cherry on top. It makes it easy to sell as it meets the needs of a family.

Natural Swimming Pools & Custom Beach Oases

A natural pool is basically like a pond that gets built in a backyard for people to swim in. Pond Builders Las Vegas usually use sand, pebbles, boulders, and/or dirt to build a natural swimming pool. The point of a natural type of pool is so it looks like a pond, but is actually a pool to swim in. There are filtration systems for these pools to make them easy to clean. That’s even if the owner of the pool wants to use saltwater for a more natural feel. With saltwater, you can open your eyes in the water easily and you won’t be irritated by the harshness of chlorine in your hair or skin.

It is a healthier option than getting a chlorinated pool, but the maintenance has to be well-paid attention to and kept up by a professional. Otherwise, the pool can get murky and septic, making the water unappealing and unsafe to swim in. A poorly made pond like this can cause water damage to the foundation of a home if it’s not contained how it should be.

Back deck with a koi pond underneath in a desert landscape.
Back deck with a koi pond underneath in a desert landscape.

Locally one of the contracting companies we use to design and build ponds, waterfalls, custom water gardens, fountains, and other water features is Stone. They specialize in a particular type of natural pool that’s made with a full sand bottom, something that isn’t easy to do in the industry. Usually like I shared above, these natural swimming pools become septic easily if they aren’t maintained extremely carefully; and even then they become septic at some point.

Luckily, our contractors at Stone developed their own method for building sand ponds in a way that sustains crystal clear water all year long with low maintenance. Essentially the water filtration happens with multiple different components that don’t let the water turn dirty and septic. So when we have a buyer or investor that wants to build a sand pond beach or natural pool in their yard or commercial property, they come in and deliver remarkable work.

Increasing Property Value & Appeal

A water feature like one of these backyard beaches will do wonders to a property’s resale value. Everybody wants a cool water feature in their home; and if you can throw it in as a surprise, it can make all the difference to someone who’s about to retire.

Think about all the people aged 60 and above and their desire to get active. As stated before, if they have a pool it makes them more likely to exercise; but on top of that and more importantly, it makes them more likely to be happy in their home. If a buyer is enjoying their new home, they will always tell others that visit them about how wonderful the builders were to put in the water feature.

If money is a concern, it can certainly be a cheaper water feature such as a fountain or a small water garden. It truly is the thought that counts and would be looked at as a very meaningful token of gratitude from the buyer.

The point is that a natural swim pond like this can increase the value of a home by over $60,000 on average. The more detailed the pond is the better, as well as if it comes stocked with koi fish in it. A koi pond with fish, beach sand, and a paradise style landscape/entrance can make it even higher to around $100,000 to $200,000 added on top of the sale value. It would have to be really good quality work though, so if you’re in Vegas I’d recommend going to Stone and talking to them about it.

Don’t Be Afraid to Invest

If you’re a builder and you have clients that you think are worth impressing, it would be a good idea to do little things for them. Those small things add up in the long run and can move the direction of your relationship with them to a direction that can be very fruitful for both of you. Building and developing real estate is a very expansive and growing industry. There are lots of ties into investments, building a great team, maintaining relationships, getting help from people that work with the city, etc. Stick around to learn more about how we run our developments and other tips like this one you read today.

Water Damage: A Home Builders Nightmare

Water Damage: A Home Builders Nightmare

Constructing homes for residences across the United States is something we’ve been doing for quite some time. Enough time to have well-established systems in place for building new homes at a mass scale one community at a time. Having the ability to construct entire neighborhoods (or even pieces of them); is a great power that needs just as great a responsibility.

We just experienced a nightmare, and it comes from having somewhat a lack of responsibility and lack of supervision. But most of all, the system we thought was in solidly set in place failed; and we had no idea it even happened until it was too late.

This is quite a long story, but I’m going to try to get right down to it while still making it as educational as possible. A lot of our readers that subscribe to our offline magazine and monthly newsletter have gotten a glimpse of this already; and I know this is a very irregular story for our readers; it just got a lot of buzz from our subscribers. So we thought we’d share it for free with our “yet to subscribe” few.

$1,600,000 in Water Damage Repair Costs

One morning I woke up to a phone call a little earlier than I expected to wake up. It was 3:45 am my time when I got a shocking call from one of our foremen on the Eastern division of our company. I live in Las Vegas, so being on Pacific time and receiving a call that early from a foreman is never ever a good thing.

He tells me there’s a big problem and asks me if I’m sitting down. I cuss at him immediately telling him I’m laying in bed in the middle of sleeping what the hell is it?! He says we have about $1.6MM worth of damages that need repairing. Of course I immediately jump out of bed as if I were struck by lightening. This guy just told me I lost $1,600,000!
He goes on to tell me it was all because of a water leak that happened in over 20 finished houses on one of the communities we’re building.

You Said What?!

Now, just as you may be thinking, how the hell are 20 of our custom homes gonna have water damage in them at the same damn time! Well, it turns out that the plumbing company that was hired installed copper pipe that had.. wait for it… HOLES in the piping! To those of you that are newer to this stuff, this NEVER HAPPENS!

Well, the story gets a little crazier. These holes that were found in the copper pipes (of more than 20 houses!!) were made from a nitric acid mist that came out of a tank at the plumbing shops warehouse. They had the pipes laying on the ground nearby in the facility and so they got a little fine spray on them.

Now I’m no chemist, but supposedly nitric acid eats away at copper.

The Mistaken Judgement of a Selfish Foreman

The biggest concern for me was, well…

1. I can’t lie, the nitric acid mist story I heard from the plumbing company owner was a once in a lifetime experience for literally ANYONE in this space.

2. WHY was our inspection process skipped on this massive project!

The entire community we’re working on has over 75 total homes that we built. So when a project is even at 1 custom home, our inspection process can not be skipped! We have it specifically in our handbook to check each and every job ourselves. as well as watch our contractors inspect their own work. But guess what happened during the week of the plumbing installation? My foreman was out sick and had his NEPHEW take over for him! How absurd, and I hated doing it, but I had to let the foreman go, and he’s been with us for 4 years now.

The foreman was straight forward with me and let me know he was more concerned about his paycheck than the integrity of the work he was hired to do. None of this would have happened if the pipes were tested for leaks before the company left. This is standard operating procedure for any contractors work, as well as our own work for that matter. We can’t let these things happen again so we had to let him go.

Water Damage Restoration to the Rescue, but at a Price

We are a “household name” if you will in this space and we have many accounts that give us repeat business. The main reason it cost the $1.6MM is because we needed the repairs done as fast as possible; so no one caught whiff of this story anywhere. We went ahead and got in touch with our people at water damage restoration Las Vegas that are always on par with us in our Las Vegas community builds we do. They got us in touch with someone they knew can get the job done right for us over on the east coast. If it wasn’t for them, we’d be dead meat right now and our reputation would be toast.

They did a great job cleaning up and repairing the damage for us so it was well worth the money. Also, now we have a water damage connection in our eastern states. The owner was more than happy to give me a call and thank me for his business. I’m glad we got connected, but I’m still upset at the circumstances.

In this space, you never know what will happen next. It’s one thing after the other. And if you don’t keep a close eye on your guys and gals working for you across state lines; mistakes will happen much more often. Let this be a lesson learned for you; never take you eye off the ball until you have someone that can replace you within the organization. This was the last time for me, and now I’m on the hunt to find someone that can take over for me when I’m gone and not there to oversee things.