June 18, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode of the Luxury Outdoor Living Podcast, Mike and Trey Farley of Farley Pool Designs return with the second installment in the two part series of building your dream backyard. Key topics include the difference between plot plans and surveys, the significance of understanding utilities and easements, tips on navigating HOA and city regulations, and the critical role of soil reports. The episode also features a segment on outdoor kitchen essentials and tips for winterizing. Viewers are encouraged to engage and ask questions, as the hosts aim to provide invaluable insights for homeowners looking to create their own backyard oasis.
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00:00 Introduction to Luxury Outdoor Living 01:28 The Importance of Site Analysis 02:46 Understanding Surveys and Plot Plans 08:48 BBQ Bits: Alfresco Bartender and Burner 13:30 Utility Marking and Rerouting 15:08 Dealing with Easements and Septic Systems 20:10 Managing Utilities During Construction 24:50 Permeable Surfaces and City Regulations 26:18 Understanding Permeability in Property Design 28:35 Importance of Site Analysis 29:07 Managing Grades and Drainage 31:55 Navigating City and HOA Regulations 34:13 Views and Sight Lines in Design 37:58 Soil Types and Their Impact on Construction 42:03 The Role of Trees in Design 47:57 Handling Unexpected Discoveries 51:34 Concluding Thoughts and Future Insights
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to Luxury Outdoor LivingPodcast with Mike and Trey
Farley of Farley Pool Designs.
For over 40 years, we've helpedhomeowners turn their backyards
into personal retreats, spaces ofjoy, relaxation and unforgettable
memories, and whether it's a cozy as.
Scape or a resort style oasis.
We design it all.
(00:24):
We know how overwhelming a projectcan feel, and nothing feels worse than
a homeowner having a bad experience.
And that's why after decades ofdesigning and teaching in this
industry, we're here to share ourknowledge, helping you navigate.
The process with confidence.
Every week we break down designtrends and insider tips that
turn your vision into reality.
(00:45):
And since this is about creating somethingamazing together, drop a comment.
If you have any questions, ideas, orjust want to be part of the conversation,
if you find this helpful, a like helpsget this out to more people like you.
And if you want to keep upwith what's next, go ahead
and hit that subscribe button.
We'd love to have you along for the ride.
Let's build your paradise together.
(01:17):
Welcome to the LuxuryOutdoor Living Podcast.
I am the co-host Trey Farley.
I'm here with
This is Mike Farley.
We're both with Farley Pool Designs andwe host the podcast here every week.
Step two,
Yeah.
Step two of the journey,
step two of the journey to your oasis.
So last time we talked aboutthe dream and the budget.
So we're now going to stepinto the critical information.
(01:41):
And this is probablywhere more true climbs.
Occurred than in any other situation.
Yeah.
Imagine spending like 400 K on abackyard and then realizing your pool
was in the wrong spot the whole time.
Or even
that could be bad.
Or the other thing is you go to spend$400,000 on the backyard and then the.
Construction superintendent saysyou need another a hundred thousand
(02:04):
dollars of retaining walls.
Ooh, that sounds After they dig the hole.
Yeah.
That's not
fun.
No, it's not fun.
So site analysis is keyto every project working.
Okay, so this is where projects failbecause projects weren't analyzed
properly on what's gonna happen.
(02:24):
And so there's several things youhave to check in this process.
And this is something that a trueprofessional should be doing to
help figure out your solution.
But you can also.
Do this information and that way,going in if you don't have a true
professional, that you don't get caught.
A couple of things I'lljust tell you real quick.
(02:46):
So I had a project a number of yearsago and they bought the piece of
property because their last yardwas too small and they didn't have
enough room to put a diving pool in.
So they wanted to put a divingpool in and they bought this piece
of property in a big backyard.
So the first thing I ask 'em foris I need a copy of your survey.
(03:07):
Yep.
And what did they send me?
Hopefully they send you the survey.
No, they didn't send me the survey.
They sent me the plot plan.
Oh no.
This is a very confusing thing.
This is where crime starts,is at the very beginning.
'cause I ask for onething and so what happens?
This is the scenario that usually happens.
You are buying a new home, and so you'rebuying it from a sales agent that's
(03:31):
in the model, that's the salesperson.
And so the pool guy asks for a survey.
So you go in and ask the salesagent, I need a copy of the survey.
And so he gives you a documentand you send it off to me.
And I look at it and I'm like.
This isn't a survey.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
This is what's called a plot plan and thesales person will never have the survey,
(03:53):
so what's the difference between the two?
Okay.
So a plot plan is when they plotwhere they think they're going
to put the house on the property.
That's what's submitted to the city.
Does this have any topos, anything?
Generally not
utilities, setbacks, nothing like that.
Okay.
So this is just a documentthat they draw the house on.
(04:15):
There usually is a front setback.
They're showing where that is.
And that's usually, that'sall that's on that document.
And you're saying this is ahead of timebefore they actually build the house.
So
this is before the house has started.
This is what they submit to the cityto get the permit to build the house.
So even if they went off ofthis plan, the house could be a
completely different measurement?
Correct?
(04:36):
Mm. And And this is where theproblem comes in, in some cases.
Is the permit is then issuedand they don't put the house
where it was on the plot plant.
Yeah, they move it?
Okay.
For some reason, like I had onemoved a couple years ago because of
a couple trees in the front yard thatthey said you can't kill these trees.
(04:57):
And so they pushed the house back,which totally changed everything.
Now, can surveys be wrong?
I've seen it, yeah.
Happen.
It's very rare.
Yeah.
That a survey is wrong.
So what happens is once they set the formsof the house, then the surveyor comes out
to see if they put it in the right spot.
Okay.
(05:17):
Okay.
And then they have to turn thatinto the city before they give them
the green tag to pour the concrete.
Because once the concrete's poured,that house is going in that spot.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what happens sometimes is they've movedit back farther, which for the builder
is not a big problem, but when you'redealing with a really small backyard and
(05:38):
he shoves the house and another seven feetfarther back, and now you've lost seven
feet out of the yard and you designedeverything to the nth degree, now you
can't build that project that you had.
No.
So the first thing is you need a survey.
Survey will always have a stamp onit that's stamped by the surveyor
saying this is, a certified survey.
(06:00):
So the form survey is thefirst survey that's done.
I. That'll work.
now a lot of times what happensis there's another survey done
when you close on the house.
Yeah.
Okay.
And that survey will have the driveway onit, that'll have the front walkway on it.
It'll have where the patios are itmay show grades on the property.
(06:22):
It may show trees on the property.
So depending on the survey that youget, a lot of times, most of the
time they don't have grades on it.
Okay.
And most of the time they don't have treeson it, but you can get a tree survey.
And you can also get a grading survey.
So once you get the survey, the criticalthing that's on the survey that's
usually not on the pot plan is easements.
(06:43):
Okay.
easements are for drainagepurposes, they're for wall
maintenance, they're for utilities.
This is a space in your propertywhere you can't build anything.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
So what happens is in that space, it'sreserved for the underground utilities.
It's reserved for drainage,so the yard drains properly.
(07:07):
It's reserved for maintenanceon a zero lot line house wall.
Yeah.
So there's all these different easementsthat you could have on the property
and you can't build in that space.
So if you have a pot plan thatdoesn't show any easements.
And you go design something and then youget the survey and you find out can't put
what we wanted in this space in my career.
(07:29):
Going back 40 years, landscaping andpool design and outdoor living design.
I've had two easements modified.
Oh, wow.
So they don't change often.
They don't change very often.
Is there anything differentwith waterfront lots.
A lot of times there is setbacksfrom lakes that you have to
be a certain distance from.
(07:50):
There's a flood easement.
Mm-hmm.
That's another one.
Yep.
That you could have.
There's properties that are onthe Army Corps of Engineers.
That there's flood control on.
So any Lakeside property,there's special notes on that.
there's all kinds of things thatmay show up on the survey, okay.
Okay.
That you need to have and understand.
(08:12):
So if you're buying a piece of property.
You haven't purchased it yet.
You want a copy of a survey?
Yeah.
Okay.
So you can see all the things andunderstand where all the easements are,
and setbacks and flood control and all thethings before you go and build a house.
Because you might think that your fenceis the perimeter of what you can work
with, but that's not actually true.
(08:33):
That's a lot of times not true.
That is correct.
so the first thing in the site analysisis you need to get a copy of that survey.
Not a plot plan, but a survey.
We are gonna take a break here for asecond and get into outdoor living.
So with outdoor living, we like togo to barbecue bits here we're gonna
share some information of everythingthat you may want to consider in
(08:56):
your outdoor living space as far asfeatures, especially for the kitchen.
Hope you enjoy this.
The most popular burnerthat we carry, it's 400 BTU.
So I can put a bechamel sauce,like a cheese sauce or a glaze, and
I can go as high as 65,000 BTUs.
And then if I had family and friendsover, and if I want to expand, I
(09:19):
can take out and put a walk, um,itegrated walk system inside of
it, uh, for a quick meal solution.
This is their deep storage roar.
I'm a pretty big guy, but the salesrep would always come in and stand in
it and show you how strong it was andI can't do that at this point in time.
But, but uh, it all stores theirgriddle, it stores their walk.
(09:43):
So when the customer's done withthe cooking and entertaining,
everything goes into its place.
So is that a drawer that youcould also use underneath a,
uh, a green acre or a primo?
It is.
Um, it's something that we see a lotof specifiers put in there because of
the weight loads and, uh, hard linesthat support the ceramic side from
(10:05):
the plates, uh, the cast iron pieces.
Yes.
Great comment.
Right.
I like to put those in.
Yeah.
Uh, pot filler faucet,uh, that you can use.
Uh, that's, that's their, that's outdoorrated, uh, that's really common with
this, with this, uh, particular company.
So what does outdoor rated mean?
Um, outdoor rated is gonna be,uh, resistant from, uh, sub
(10:28):
temperatures, something that's goingto handle, uh, salt pool systems,
uh, to marine grade stainless.
Uh, that's gonna resistpitting and rusting.
And a lot of your.
Components that you see now aregonna be 3 0 4, uh, stainless.
What does that mean to the customer?
It has a lot of chromiumand nickel in that.
(10:48):
That's something that CLsells only is marine grade.
It's what we sell only is marine grade.
That's gonna be a higher qualitystainless and resist, uh, resist
corrosion in the outdoor element.
So,
so like we had to freeze.
A couple weeks ago.
Okay.
How do you winterize something like this?
So it, it performs well.
(11:09):
You can go into that and, and I can gointo it, build some builder's comments
and how this, the, the installers willput armor flex and prepare for that.
Uh, make sure that yoursinks are on inside walls.
Uh, make sure we have termination pointslike water shutoffs, home runs, what we
call for all of our electricity, all ofour water, uh, you know, when we winterize
something, we want to go to the source.
(11:30):
We want to turn it off.
But also we want to open up the valvesystem on the faucets so air can flow
through the plumbing and the water that'scapturing there doesn't expand and break.
So that's something to thinkabout whenever you do a kitchen.
Where's my home run at?
You know, if I do any type of lightingor, um, any type of plumbing, where
do I go to to access everything?
(11:51):
To, to do preventative maintenance?
So,
okay.
Bar, bar sink system's.
Very popular.
One of our most.
Poplar sink systems that Alfresco makes.
Um, it's an insulated sink and it thenit turn, then you can hold ice in that.
You can use it as a washout.
Uh, but also it's anentertainment, uh, sink system.
(12:12):
So it's got a speed rail for mixers,uh, bottle caps for domestic and
import beers, and then, uh, crassfor produce, or if not wine bottles.
However you want to set upyour entertainment style.
So.
A little bit different than the PrepCenter or is that the, the Prep Center?
This one here is a, uh, sink.
It's a bartender sink, and then theprep center is something we don't show
(12:34):
that Alfresco makes, that has an icewell inside of it that you can put your
cheeses marinades in there whenever youprep to do either a baked potato bar.
Or if you do, uh, pizzas, it'llbe your prep area for pizzas.
Okay, so is this storagethat's underneath it?
Is this another seal one?
Or going back to your point, uh, how doI access the sink as far as winterizing?
(12:56):
This would be for winterizingand then accessing.
Accessing actually the J Trappthat's underneath the sink.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
But that's not a sealed, this isnot, you'll find it on sink entrances
that will always be open so we canaccess the J trapp and the plumbing.
Yeah, yeah.
Totally makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
So I hope you enjoyed the barbecuebits that we just featured today, and
(13:20):
we'll have more coming up next week.
If there's something in particular thatyou're interested for, let us know and
we'll get back into the episode now.
Now the next thing after thatis you want to call 8 1 1.
Yep.
Do you know why they call eight one one?
They call 8 1 1 to mark theutilities and all that kind of stuff.
(13:40):
Okay, so everything that'sunderground gets marked?
There are utilitiesthat are up in the air.
They're connected to telephone poles.
So those, they're not going to mark them.
They're going to assume you can see them.
Okay.
So if, and this is really critical.
So if I'm working in Dallas, it dependson what side of the alley that I'm on,
(14:03):
if I'm gonna have a challenge or not.
Yep.
Because if the poles are on my sideof the alley, that means I have to be
farther away from those electrical lines.
Yes.
Okay.
If they're on the other side of thealley, usually I don't have a problem.
It's far enough away.
'cause the alley's 15 feet wideand most of the time you're
have to be, 12, 15, 17 feet.
(14:24):
It depends on the voltage that'sin the lines and how far you
have to be away from these lines.
What about zero alt lines?
There's a lot of those in Dallas.
With a zero outline inregards to electrical,
no, to utilities andsurveys, is it any different?
You have a maintenance usuallyeasement that's along with that
so you can maintain the walls.
But the other thing is, what's uniqueis a lot of times the electrical
(14:48):
is in the neighbor's backyard.
And so that easement's there, soyou can actually run the electrical
line to get it into your backyard.
Yeah.
Okay.
So need to know where all the utilitiesare that are underground and above ground.
So it's
gas, electric, water, sewage,
Cable.
Yep.
sewer is a big one.
(15:09):
And sewer, there's two thingsthat come into play that you
need to know on your site.
Analysis one.
Is if you have a sewer system that'sgoing into the city sewer or if
you're dealing with septic Yes.
And septic tanks.
Mm-hmm.
So here's another true crime.
Oh, I didn't finish the first one.
(15:29):
The client built, bought the pieceof property, put a diving pool.
There was an easement that ranfrom one corner of their backyard.
To the other corner of the backyard.
Oh dear.
And a 45 degree angle across, oh no notlike from back corner to back corner.
This ran right throughthe middle of the yard.
It was a utility easement for asubdivision that ran through their
(15:53):
backyard and it was 20 feet wide.
Wow.
So basically wiped outalmost the whole backyard.
I was able to design a swimming,a diving pool in one corner.
That was the only place it would go.
Oh, wow.
And so they actually ended up taking thehome builder to court over it because
(16:14):
it wasn't disclosed to them at all.
They'd moved into the house.
Wow.
And this wasn't disclosed.
They moved there just tohave a bigger backyard.
To have a diving.
Yeah.
Wow.
I had a client up in Prosper,bought a two acre lot.
Okay.
So with the two acre lot,they had a septic system.
Yep.
So I had septic tanks and aerobic heads.
(16:34):
Okay.
they also had six bathrooms in the house.
So that means you have to designa very large aerobic septic
system to accommodate that.
Now they already have a septic system.
Why are you designing a new one?
What was happening is thehouse was under construction.
Okay.
So when they first started,they didn't know where the
septic system heads were going.
(16:56):
Okay?
Which was an advantage here becauseonce we talked to 'em about the
calculations, the other thing that alot of times people don't realize is.
They think about the septic head andyou can't put anything in that area.
There's a distance beyondthe head because of wind.
Okay?
in some places it's 25 feet.
(17:16):
Some places it's 30 feetdifferent in different places.
And so they had this layoutgoing and so what ended up
happening is they had two acres.
They had barely enough room off thehouse that we were able to design
their project, which was nothing crazy.
Yeah, it was just a pool and some patioarea and the deck area There wasn't
(17:41):
a, cabana or anything like that, butbecause we designed it and then we
had 'em lay out the heads afterwards,we were able to fit everything.
I mean, They used the whole front yard.
The whole backyard.
It was because they had so manybathrooms that they had, we tried to
argue with, well no, they're not gonnabe using all these bathrooms at once.
At the, yeah.
(18:01):
But they said well, you couldhave a party in the 4th of July.
Everybody show up and use the pool.
And those bathrooms could allbe being used at the same time.
So possible, but not, It's importantto understand where your utilities
are at septics a big one.
The other thing you have to know is wherethe tanks are gonna be because you have
to be a certain distance from those.
Mm-hmm.
(18:22):
The other bigger issuesometimes is access.
Yep.
Because those tanks are in the side yard.
And that's your access to drive through.
And I've never dropped adump truck in a septic tank.
But it's been done a number of times.
So something that would bea really crappy situation.
Yeah,
you don't want that.
So Yeah, they don't want that.
you call 8 1 1, they're gonna locateall your utilities that are underground.
(18:46):
Sewer doesn't get marked in Texas.
Yeah.
Now maybe in some other part ofTexas it does, but it didn't get
marked where I grew up in Lubbock.
It doesn't get marked here in DFW.
And so you have to make some assumptionsand sometimes you have to guess on
where that is 'cause it's not marked.
And the way, like Kevin used to tellme in Arizona, they did mark it.
(19:09):
Okay.
And the way they mark it is whenthey put the sewer line is they put
a tracer line on it and that waywhen they come to find it, they can
find the tracer line underground andput the little flags in your yard.
Where it all is.
That's what they do with gas.
Okay.
Electric.
They don't have to do itbecause they can find it.
'cause it's metal to begin with.
So the sewer and like a Dallas project,almost all the sewer runs to the alley.
(19:34):
So the sewer's probably gonna runright through the middle of the pool.
Yeah,
you can almost plan on it runningright through the middle of the pool.
So what you want to try to do is findthe clean outs to give you an idea where
it might be going, and you might be ableto find the clean outs in the alley.
And if you can find both of them, thenyou can, you know where the sewer's gonna
be now if you have a utility linerunning right through the project, right
(19:55):
through the area, you want it to putthat pool or whatever the project is.
Is that the end of the worldor are you able to reroute
any of these utility lines?
Oh no.
You can move utility lines all day long.
Okay.
They're just expensive as all get out.
Yes.
And it delays the project.
So one of the things that's criticalfor you as a homeowner to think about
is if you have the utilities markedbefore you have somebody coming in,
(20:18):
you already know where they're at.
So as soon as.
You sign a contract, you can now, okay,this is where the pool's gonna go.
Now we can start working on reroutingthose utilities immediately.
Yeah,
because sometimes it takes two tothree months to get the permit for,
the pool and the engineering andworking drawings all to be done.
(20:39):
And if you know thatat the very beginning.
Then you can have that taking placewhile they're working on all that stuff.
You can have your reroute done.
Yeah.
We had a, a client in Dallas wherethey did that and they they buried the
electrical lines right from the get go.
Remember that?
Yeah.
So we knew that this was anissue, so they, or like, let's
just take 'em underground.
(20:59):
We'll have this done immediately.
The other thing is as I wastalking about electrical.
In Dallas and which side the poles are on.
There was a situation where we had, therewhere we were able to wrap the lines,
so if the line broke, the lines couldn'tfall down and so it shortened up the
distance that you had typically have,which was a much cheaper situation then.
(21:22):
Taking the electrical lines undergroundor raising all the electrical lines.
So when you're dealing with awhole subdivision to raise those
lines up, that's real expensive.
I bet.
Or take 'em undergroundwould be really expensive.
Yeah.
And so what you usually try todo is work around what you can.
So the wrapping situation wassomething that came up on a project
(21:44):
not too long ago in UniversityPark Lately, I've been lucky.
They've all been across the alley,so that hasn't been an issue.
So your sewer, something you gottalook at and then your electrical
and your gas, where those are going.
So you can have a reroutedone on all your utilities.
Now, the most common onethat's in the way is the cable.
(22:06):
And now the cable usuallygets buried about an inch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
An inch or so underneath the grass,they usually just get a spade.
They cut a hole in the grass,they stuff it down in the ground.
Okay.
Yeah.
So there's no trenching doneto put your cable TV line in.
Yeah.
If you don't get a temporary.
I feel like it always getscut every single time.
So here's a tip for you isyou can get a temporary line
(22:30):
installed during construction.
You call 'em up and tell 'emwe're doing construction.
We need a temporary line putabove ground with enough slack
that we can drive underneath.
The line so we don't hit the line and wehave it intact and everybody stays really
happy because your internet is intactduring the construction of your process.
(22:52):
Because when you get it cut duringconstruction, because I had a client
several years ago and he's like,I don't think it's in the way.
And I said, I really think it is in theway and so you should get a temporary,
ah, I don't wanna bother doing that.
And I said if it gets cut, youhave to pay for the repair, which
is several thousands of dollars.
(23:13):
Sometimes used to be they'd come outfor free and fix it, but now they
charge, it might be 1200 bucks for themto come out and fix this cable break.
They don't charge anythingto put the temporary in.
You just gotta call now.
What happens sometimes is theperson that's on the phone's
like, we don't do that.
Oh yeah.
And if they say they don't do that,then you wanna talk to their manager.
(23:34):
Okay.
Because they don't wanna do that.
No, they don't.
but.
If push comes to shove I have not runinto a circumstance where they will
not come and put a temporary line in.
Now, there'll be a story somedaywhere that was the case, but I did
have a client that said that theydidn't think it was gonna be in the
way they left it there, it got broke.
They were upset because theywere without internet and they
(23:57):
had to pay to have it repaired.
So better,
uh, Better internet than gas or,
Yeah.
Breaking a gas line'snot a good thing or no.
Or an electric line, but generallythose are buried deep enough.
Oh yeah.
That you're not gonna have a problem.
Now, we did have a project not toolong ago that we had the utilities
marked, and it was a spec home thatthey knew we were gonna build a pool.
(24:20):
Spa for the new homeowner,whoever bought it.
We designed the projectin the beginning of it.
And then when they went and put theelectrical line in, they decided
to stay away from some trees.
And so they put it reallyclose to the house.
And so there wasn't enough room toput the spa in as it was designed.
So the client chose to.
Move the spot to theother end of the pool.
(24:42):
So we didn't have to do a reroute.
So that was the solutionthat they chose to do.
But you can yes, moveutilities if need be.
this isn't utilities, but permeablesurfaces with roofs and stuff
like that that's really bigwith cities as well, with like
limits of what you're able to do.
Correct.
And that's becoming a bigger and biggersituation with cities is permeability.
(25:04):
So what the issue with a lot of cities is.
Whole systems for the town weredesigned on a certain square footage
being on a piece of property.
And so when you have a certainsquare footage of house, there's
a certain amount of roof.
Water doesn't go into theground where there's a house.
Nope.
Okay.
It runs off into your downspouts andinto your gutters, and so then that
(25:27):
water's gotta go somewhere with the city.
And if a city is designed completelyaround situations like you had a. 3000
square foot house on a one acre lot.
Okay.
And that all worked.
And then 25 years later, everybodydecides those one acre lots are awesome.
Let's tear the house downand build a new house.
(25:48):
Yeah,
but we're gonna build an8,000 square foot house.
On that lot.
Now we have 8,000 square feet of roof.
Actually, you'll have more thanthat 'cause your garage doesn't
count and neither does your porches.
Yeah.
So you probably have 10,000 square feetof roof with your 8,000 square foot home.
Now the challenge is thatamount of water running off.
(26:08):
You do that for house, afterhouse, the system will be overrun.
And then the city can't get thewater out and you'll have flooding.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what cities have come in anddone is say there is a maximum
amount of permeable surface that isrequired on this piece of property.
So we had a project,a couple, last summer.
(26:30):
Last summer, two years ago thatI said, what's the permeability
calculations on this piece of property?
When we first met 'em andthey said, here's what it is.
And I'm like here's the challenge.
You're maxed out now.
Yeah.
We can't do anything in thisbackyard based on what's here.
And they're like, but we want a pool.
And I said, let me thinkabout this for a second.
(26:52):
A couple of things that you can do tocreate more permeability is in some
cities you can take the driveway away.
And you can put a gravel driveway in itsplace and a gravel driveway is permeable.
So now that square footagecan be applied to the pool.
What about decking in
the backyard?
Sure.
So you may have a certainamount of patio area.
(27:13):
So in this particular city, theydidn't count the pool water.
Okay.
Because they said if it rains,the pool will capture that water,
which is a legitimate situation.
The other thing that they didn'tcount was synthetic grass.
Okay,
so put my thinking cap on.
I looked at this backyard.
They had a really ugly back patio,which was really big, and I said, if
(27:36):
I tear the existing patio out and makeit smaller and all I have to do is.
Come up with the coping or surfacearea and put the rest of it in as turf.
For your patio?
Then we're gonna be really close.
The other thing that they countedwas the pool equipment that counted
as your surface area as well.
'cause it was solid.
(27:57):
Yeah.
It sits on a concrete slab.
On a concrete slab.
So we were able to run the calcsand we were able to get them a pool
and a spa and a turf area and areduced patio and the pool equipment.
And then over the turfarea we put an arbor.
And we were able to sit a table on thearbor under the arbor, not on the arbor.
(28:21):
On the arbor.
That would be really crazy.
Yeah.
That would be, let's go sit on thepatio uh, up on top of the arbor.
table was underneath the arboron the synthetic grass, and that
was a great solution and actuallywon some design awards as well.
Oh yeah.
So your site analysis you'vegot your utilities, you've got
your survey and your easements.
(28:41):
The, probably the biggest thing that'simportant in yards is grades and drainage.
Water has to flow away from the house.
So the way the builder sets it up isit drains again away from the house.
There's swales and the contouringof the ground makes the water
leave that particular area.
And in most cases, it's said that stillhas to continue even if you build a pool.
(29:07):
And so some of the things that,you know that's critical to
know is where that all works.
So how the drainage works.
So you have to understandthat with your site analysis.
But the other thing you haveto understand with your site
analysis is do we have hillsides?
Do we have yard going up?
Do we have a yard going down?
And where are those retaining wallsthat hold that existing hillside?
(29:31):
And how are we going tomodify that hillside?
To create a flat placethat water can pool.
Or a flat place where you canhave a patio or a flat place
where you can have a structure.
Because generally all thosethings are built on flat places.
Yeah.
So now we had a kitchen one time when welived in McKinney, and it was anything but
(29:54):
flat so you could roll things clear acrossthe floor, which is quite entertaining.
But most people want a flat spaceto deal with when they're dealing
with all their elements of life.
So the only thing I can thinkof that's not flat that you
can build is probably a slide.
Okay.
Yeah, you could have a slide.
We've incorporated severalslides on hillsides,
but usually it has to be ahill, sloping down to the pool.
(30:17):
Yeah.
Sloping up ideally.
Yeah.
It makes it a little more challenge toride down a slide going up the hill.
Yeah.
So sometimes you'll get asurvey that has grades on it.
Most of the time what happens is there areno grades, and so that has to be measured.
And there's a couple differentways that that can be measured.
(30:37):
one is there's a piece of equipmentcalled a zip level, and I.
Tray's, very familiar with it and
yep.
I use it all the time.
Goes out and takes spot measurementsand locates elevations all through
the yard and at trees and at,existing paving and locates.
(30:58):
Everything from a measurement standpoint,but also from an elevation standpoint.
So then we take that and if you'refamiliar with backpacking and topography
maps, we make a topo map of the backyard.
So the surveyor may have donesome elevations for you also.
There's also a really cool.
(31:19):
piece of equipment called Moser.
And Moser also measures elevations.
So that's a cool pieceof equipment as well.
And it, it's wirelessly, so if you'redoing this yourself, it might be
easier than go and get a zip level.
'Cause you could just shoot spotelevations and stuff like that.
Wirelessly with it runs off of what?
GPS or,
yeah.
Okay.
Once you have elevations, now youcan design things and you can know if
(31:42):
you need additional retaining wallswhich is a quite common situation on
a lot of the projects that we work on.
But in addition, so there arerules that you have to follow.
On a piece of property.
So there's usually two placesthat you have to go to find
out what those rules are.
And sometimes they're not the same.
(32:02):
The city and the HOA, the
city and the HOA are the two places.
Winner, Winner, chicken dinner.
Everyone loves both of those.
Like Everyone's best friend.
Right?
Oh yeah.
in some cases, the HOA ismore strict than the city.
Yeah.
Recently it's been the case a lot.
So you have to understandwhat both of them are.
And usually when you submit, a lot ofplaces require you to submit to the
(32:27):
HOA and get approval from them first.
And once you get approval from them,then you submit it to the city.
Some, it's vice versa but inmost cases today, you've gotta
have approval from both of 'embefore you can start a project.
the.
HOAs sometimes can have someinteresting rules that the
city doesn't require at all.
It all varies from city to HOA.
(32:48):
Yeah.
So you need to knowwhat both of those are.
Before you start designing a project,
The city's gonna requirelike your permeability.
A lot of times they'll requirecertain distances from.
Structures fires a bigdeal with a lot of cities.
You have to be a certaindistance from the house.
(33:08):
Anything flammable.
Yep.
The fence, the neighbors they don'twant you to burn anything down.
In fact, some of the cities, it's notthe building department that enforces
that, but the fire department, yeah.
So you have to gothrough different things.
We ran into one thing not too long ago.
And it came down to definitions.
So what we called a fire pit was amasonry unit with a gas ring and a gas
(33:35):
line that was lit by a manual situation.
I. They don't call those fire pits.
What do they call 'em?
that's actually called a fire appliance.
Oh, some cities require some type ofautomation on those and some don't.
But what they talked about, fire pitwas just, a pit that you burn stuff in.
(33:57):
Okay.
Okay.
And that had to be farther away, butif it was a gas burning well, it's
not controlled technically.
Correct.
Yeah, that makes sense.
so definitions a lot of times come downto importance of understanding something.
So you have to understand those things.
But going to views are reallyimportant from two places.
Views going out.
(34:18):
Okay.
The ideal situation is I wanta floor plan of the house.
Yeah.
Because if I have a floor plan ofthe house, I can figure the view
from walking in the front doorthrough a key set of windows.
I can walk down the staircaseand have a key view here.
Now, one of the things that's changed alot in the last five years is it used to
be there were more walls and less windows.
(34:41):
Oh.
Now it's more windows and less walls,
right?
So what the big deal was you really hadto understand where the windows were.
'cause it was a very narrowview into the backyard.
And so was that likean installation thing?
No, it was just, that was thearchitectural style of the house.
Okay?
Now, today, almost everyhouse has really big windows.
(35:02):
What that requires in the house isusually a steel beam or a big laminate
beam, so they can span these big areas.
And you go back five years ago thatwas not a common situation at all.
Mm-hmm.
So it was real important for meto understand where the windows
were, and then I would go as far astrying to, I'd take pictures from
the, like the kitchen sink and theentrance out of the pantry and the.
(35:28):
Entrance from the garage into theliving room, the entrance from
the front door into the livingroom coming down the staircase.
The views there, 'cause those were viewsyou were gonna see every single day.
The view from the master.
Bathroom door through themaster bathroom windows.
there was these particular linesof sight and when the windows were
smaller, they were very narrowcorridors and sometimes you'd have one
(35:52):
or two places that everything wouldoverlap and it was like something
really important needs to be here.
Yeah.
Because this is key site linesthat you're dealing with.
So your older homes,that's gonna be the case.
Okay.
Your newer homes.
The sight lines are pretty wide openbecause they do a lot of glass and so you
have more opportunity to put key things.
(36:13):
You're not as limitedin where those could be.
But you also have views from a differentplace that's from outside looking in.
one of the things, it's.
Real creative.
If you work with somebody, this isn'tsomething you probably could generate
on your own, but when you lay outyour piece of property, you can go to
Google Earth and you can locate allthe properties that are around you when
(36:38):
you locate the properties around you.
You can take photographs of thoseparticular houses and the carry
windows and doors that they mayhave, especially on the second floor.
Is this for privacy and this wouldbe help you create the privacy.
Views that you wanna block.
That's smart.
Yeah.
in some places where I've had thisbeen a real, real important issue
(36:59):
with a client, we've gone in andour three dimensional modeling.
And
put the houses in and put the viewsfrom those windows and doors in so
we can actually fly into their house.
And look out of their house and seewhat you're gonna see in your backyard.
And then we can place critical plants andtrees in certain areas or case an example.
(37:21):
We designed the one project thislast year and there was a primary
site line and family room thatlooked right into the neighbor's
primary site, line, and family room.
Yep.
And so we built the structureand did a shed roof on it.
And because of the pitch of the roof,it totally blocked the neighbor's view.
And so all they could look at wasthe back of a roof, a roof structure.
(37:43):
Instead of looking into theliving room and the clients looked
from their living room into the.
Shade structure which had a really nicewater feature on the front and a TV in it.
So it was a nice view.
your views both from inside andoutside can be really important.
Another thing that's reallyimportant to understand is soil.
So as we mentioned in part oneabout costs varying greatly
(38:07):
because of various soil types.
Here in Dallas Fort Worth, we areblessed with very different soil types.
Okay.
So that can make life very interesting.
Mm-hmm.
Other parts of the country,it's like, we're, on 30 A
in Florida and it's all sand
or All Rock somewhere, or
it's all Rock somewhere.
Or it could be even all Clay somewhere.
(38:28):
But then, you know, basically everybody'sbuilding the same here, not so we have
everything from solid rock to sand.
The expansive clays.
And so it could change from
one neighbor to the other.
Correct.
Like Two houses couldbe completely different.
Yeah.
I Your front yard could bedifferent than your backyard.
That is correct.
I, I had a project in Friscoa number of years ago.
(38:49):
We dug the pool, it wascompletely fine in our backyard.
The project right behind us, literally15 feet away was in solid rock.
Wow.
it happens.
So having a soils report done isextremely helpful on a project.
Oh
yeah.
So a soils report is, you're gonnahave someone come out, they're
(39:09):
gonna do a boar, typically at least20 feet deep, and they're gonna
come back and analyze that soil.
And so they're gonna beable to give you the exact.
Parameters of that soil.
So now we can take that to theengineer and he can say exactly what
the structure is going to be needed.
We don't overdo it, we don't underdo it.
We dial things in very accurately.
(39:30):
So here, I highly recommend peopleto get a soils report done because
that's information that would be veryhelpful if you're building a new home.
That's automatic.
Yep.
The points where they boreis important though, as well.
If it's a bigger piece of property, yes.
That's important to know.
If there's a lot of topography changeyou could have a really different type
(39:52):
'cause you might be sitting up on a bluffon a higher point and there could be a
lot of clay down in a lower point 'causethe soil erodes over a period of time.
Hundreds of years.
But having the SOS reportis extremely helpful.
If you're doing a custom build, they'regoing to have a SOS report on your
property, and you may have multipleborings on the particular property.
(40:12):
And if it's a big piece of property,you may want to have a boring
done where the pool's gonna go.
Yeah.
The other situation is you're buildingin a subdivision, and when you build
in a subdivision, they typically do asoils report for the whole subdivision.
What they typically do is everythird house, they do a soils report.
And so you may be having to lookat three different soils reports
(40:33):
to get an idea what yours might be.
Okay.
Or you might have the one boring wason your particular piece of property,
but soils are very important tounderstand so you can figure out.
What you're going to have to dofrom a structural standpoint.
That goes back to the first part of thiswhole scenario, this journey where we
talked about understanding the budget.
(40:55):
this is a huge detail that cancompletely change your budget,
right?
So you wanna understand at thevery beginning what's going to be
necessary so you don't have surprises.
a lot of times when I'm running a budget,we don't have the soils report in yet.
So I have a general feel ofwhat the neighborhood might be.
Yeah.
In some cases.
I know it's bad.
Yeah.
(41:15):
And so I'm gonna figure, okay, let'sfigure worst case scenario, let's
figure, we're gonna need peers, we'regonna need an upgraded structure.
We're gonna need a substructure and We'regonna need a substructure and void boxes.
if I know it's really bad, I mayfigure all those things in and realize
if we get the soils report and it'snot as bad than we save some money.
(41:37):
Woo-hoo.
Okay.
Much better than not telling about it.
Yep.
Getting the sole's report and going, oh.
You need to spend $50,000more on a substructure.
when we're working on budgets, it's betterto be a little high than a little low.
So once you have your site analysis,one of the things that you wanna do is
plot all this information on a document.
(41:58):
So it's to scale, oh, I forgotalmost the most important thing.
What's up trees?
Trees are a big deal.
They alter all the designs unlessyou just wanna get rid of them all.
Yeah.
In some cases you can't do that today.
That's, I, yeah, you're right about that.
So some cities have particular hair,they'll call them heritage trees or.
(42:19):
Something along those linesthat you can't remove the tree
or If you cut one down, you haveto plant one somewhere else.
Usually if you cut one down,you're planting five or 10.
Oh.
That's usually what the requirement is.
We like trees though, so that's cool.
So I do a lot of design around trees.
Yeah.
And when we're looking at trees,there's several things that
are critical to think about.
So the first thing is tray's gottafigure out exactly where it's at
(42:40):
on the property, how big it is.
And then the second thingis how big is the tree?
And working with arborists the rule ofthumb with the trees that I deal with
here is for every one inch of caliber,that's the width of the tree trunk.
I've gotta multiply thatby 10 to get the diameter.
That's the kill zone.
(43:01):
If I get inside that space anddo something, then I'm gonna
most likely kill the tree.
Now in that I can't change the elevation.
I can't trench and I certainly can'tput deck or a pool in that space.
What if someone says it's if we juststay within underneath the canopy?
Instead,
(43:21):
The canopy's usually bigger than that.
Okay.
Okay.
So most trees, the canopy'sbigger than the kill zone.
Okay.
The rule of thumb that I workwith the trees that I work with
predominantly, which I deal with alot of post oaks is we get about a
95% success rate with those rules.
Okay?
Now, sometimes people are like likewe met with somebody on Friday.
(43:42):
They had some live oaks that wereprobably 36 to 42 inches across.
They're massive.
They're massive.
And so the massive zoneunderneath that is, it's massive.
Sometimes people are like, okay,I understand these are the rules.
Are there things that we can do to help?
Minimize the impact on these.
(44:03):
And so with these particular client, Itold 'em, you need to talk to an arborist.
Yep.
And they smartly had already talkedto an arborist, which that's rare.
Mm-hmm.
Hardly anybody's already talked tothe arborist and they've actually
started root pruning those trees.
So they're gonna root prune'em and they're gonna feed 'em.
And those are gonna, so what that setsup is the success of that tree going
(44:25):
through the impact and part of thechallenge that's taking place there.
It's not just the pool and outdoor livingspace that's going in, is the house
is going to impact these trees 'causethey're enlarging the house footprint.
Yeah.
Now they have one advantageis part of that is already
covered by an existing driveway.
So that's not allowing air andmoisture to the roots of those trees
(44:48):
and they've been there for decades.
Mm-hmm.
So they're used to not having air andmoisture in that one particular spot.
So there's probably less rootgrowth in that particular area.
Yeah.
But.
It's also really good to have arb comeout and just check out the trees to make
sure, 'cause you might plan the designaround this tree and not realize that
it's actually not in good shape at all.
And then it might actually befine just to cut it down 'cause
(45:11):
it's not gonna survive another
winter.
Yeah.
We just took a tree out at our house.
It was hollow inside andit had died a year ago.
But Two years ago, it was doing fine.
Yeah.
So if I would've done some planningin that space based on that tree,
and then all of a sudden it up anddies I would've been disappointed,
but it was hollow on the inside.
(45:31):
Arborist would've told methat if it had come out.
And he told me when he did come out,' cause I was like, why'd this die?
He's it's hollow inside,so it was going to die.
Yeah.
I was like, oh, okay.
So I didn't do something to kill it.
Prevailing winds are real important,especially when you're dealing with
outdoor living and seasonal things.
That people are gonna be out, especiallyin the wintertime when it's colder.
(45:53):
You want to know where yourprevailing winds are coming
from, and they usually changeseasonally, like here in North Texas.
Southwest is where we predominantlyget it from the summer.
So that's really nice to have that breezethat's available to you to cool things
off when it's a hundred degrees outside.
Oh yeah.
You don't necessarilywanna block that wind.
Okay.
But now the northwest wind iswhere it comes from the wintertime.
(46:16):
Okay.
We've got a project right now thatwe're doing, we put screens on two
sides of the structure, not all foursides, because what they wanted to
do is predominantly block the wind.
so we set up heats inside the structureand we put screens in to block the winds.
And so that was the situationthat we had and we were doing.
(46:37):
So it's important to understandwhere those are going.
I. Another thing in site analysis that'simportant to understand is what's sacred.
Okay.
And sometimes just somepeople, it's trees.
Yep.
And sometimes it's a particular thingand sometimes people have buried
things in their backyard that has alot of sentimental value to the family.
(46:59):
Yeah.
When you're digging a pool, makesure that you account for that.
Yeah.
If you talk to the client.
They can plan accordingly.
Sometimes it's very important, furryfriends that have been, they have a
graveyard in the backyard of all the petsthat they've had, and they just wanna make
sure that you stay away from that space.
And sometimes people don't thinkabout it because you're not
putting the pool right there.
(47:21):
But a lot of times wehave to do trenching.
And for utilities or reroutes orall kinds of things, and we're gonna
have to go through space that youdon't think we're gonna go through.
But if we know that there'ssomething important in that
space, we can stay away from it.
It's not a pleasant situation foranybody if that those places of
(47:42):
that are sacred are disturbed.
So sometimes it's just a plant thatwas planted in the memory of somebody.
It could be a lot of different things,but it's just something if you know
there's something in the backyardthat's important, then you wanna
make sure that they're aware of that.
Another thing with the site analysisyou have to be careful about is when
you find buried cars you, it happens.
(48:04):
It happens.
So you wanna first make surethere's no dead bodies in it
before you call the authorities,could have been a crime scene.
I mean, We had that one job wherethey had a that, what was it?
It was this Historicallypreserved land right behind them.
I think it was maybe a a graveyardof some kind or something like that.
But they were nervous.
They're like, if we dig thisup, are we gonna find anything?
(48:27):
And
we didn't.
No, we did not.
But there are rules in certain areas.
we talked with somebody, john Kenyonmentioned up in Toronto that there's
a lot of sacred areas where there'snative, burial stuff and things like
that, that they have to bring a storyout and make sure that there's not gonna
be anything that you find on the pool.
(48:47):
Dig like that.
Now, if you find.
Treasure, on the pool dig,that usually goes to the
excavator and the pool designer.
No.
Just kidding.
But, there are a lot of things thatare under the ground that you wanna
make sure that you're aware of.
But sometimes there are surprises.
I did have a project a number ofyears ago we were putting a pool in
(49:08):
and the existing pool had cracked.
Okay.
And half.
And so they were like we want a new pool.
In fact, we want a diver instead ofa recreational pool like this one.
Okay.
And so we started digging thepool and we got down to the deep
end of the pool and we hit trash.
Now what?
Yeah, so this subdivision,this particular lot was at the
very back of the subdivision.
(49:30):
And so when they were building30 years earlier, this is where
everybody went and dumped their trash.
Yeah.
Then at the very end of the development,they built the new house and they just
threw some dirt over the top of it.
It was three or four feet of dirt.
Okay.
And so the trash, but the trashwas settling over a period of time.
Yeah.
And so that's why the originalpool cracked was because
(49:52):
there was trash underneath it.
You got a big
void.
The engineer, I called him up andI said, what am I supposed to do?
And he's dig the trash out.
And I said, how much of it?
And he's like, all of it.
We were down nine feetwhen we hit the trash.
Oh, wow.
The trash went down 10 feet.
Oh my goodness.
So the hole was over 20 feet deep.
Yeah.
(50:12):
For this pool.
Goodness.
So we had to backfill it with road base.
Yeah.
That's how we stabilized the site.
But I had somebody that showed up.
The day before they put the backfill inand walked up and called me up and he's
like, what kind of pool are you doing?
Is this person a scuba diveror what is going on here?
This is the deepest hole I've ever seen.
I was like, and I wish that was backbefore we all had cameras on our phones.
(50:36):
Yeah, I wish that had a picture of that.
That would've been really cool.
But that's wild.
Sometimes there's things you don'tknow about and you're gonna find
and you're gonna have to deal with.
And that's part of.
The construction business, but yoursite analysis, if you could plot
everything on it, then as you do thedesign, you can create certain things
(50:57):
to take advantage of what's there.
Yeah.
And then solve certainproblems that are there.
And that's what good design'sall about, is trying to make
all those pieces go together.
And you can always tell a project thathad a good site analysis done, because
when it's done, it looks like the project.
Just grew there.
It all fits.
(51:17):
It fits with the grades, it fits withthe trees that are already there.
It fits with the drainage.
All the things work.
And it looks like it belongs,
yeah, it belongs with the house
versus, you shove something inand, you had to do all kinds
of things to make it work.
it's always a better solution.
In our process here we talked about thedream, we talked about the budget, we've
(51:39):
now talked about the site analysis.
And your home and whatall that looks like.
So after this, now we can start theresearch to come up with your best design.
So we'll talk about that with you next.
I look forward to talking to you later.
Hope you all have a good day.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
This show is all about helping you becomea better buyer, a better pool owner,
(52:03):
and hopefully you're gonna find someinsights into how to enjoy your pool even
more so how to help your friends, yourfamily, anybody looking to buy a pool in
the future or that want to remodel theirbackyard, add an outdoor fireplace, fire
pit, add an outdoor kitchen area, addsome shade cells, or whatever else it is.
We wanna be that resource for you and, andthat's the end goal here, and we promise.
(52:27):
That there's gonna bea ton of information.
We'll try to go through it, youknow, as relatively quickly, but
also slow so people can understand.
But the intent of the show, thereason Mike and I are doing this
is because we just got a lot inour heads and we wanna share it.
So we hope to see youhere every single week.
Thanks for listening.
I.
Welcome to Luxury Outdoor LivingPodcast with Mike and Trey
Farley of Farley Pool Designs.
For over 40 years, we've helpedhomeowners turn their backyards
into personal retreats, spaces ofjoy, relaxation and unforgettable
memories, and whether it's a cozy as.
Scape or a resort style oasis.
We design it all.
(00:24):
We know how overwhelming a projectcan feel, and nothing feels worse than
a homeowner having a bad experience.
And that's why after decades ofdesigning and teaching in this
industry, we're here to share ourknowledge, helping you navigate.
The process with confidence.
Every week we break down designtrends and insider tips that
turn your vision into reality.
(00:45):
And since this is about creating somethingamazing together, drop a comment.
If you have any questions, ideas, orjust want to be part of the conversation,
if you find this helpful, a like helpsget this out to more people like you.
And if you want to keep upwith what's next, go ahead
and hit that subscribe button.
We'd love to have you along for the ride.
Let's build your paradise together.
(01:17):
Welcome to the LuxuryOutdoor Living Podcast.
I am the co-host Trey Farley.
I'm here with
This is Mike Farley.
We're both with Farley Pool Designs andwe host the podcast here every week.
Step two,
Yeah.
Step two of the journey,
step two of the journey to your oasis.
So last time we talked aboutthe dream and the budget.
So we're now going to stepinto the critical information.
(01:41):
And this is probablywhere more true climbs.
Occurred than in any other situation.
Yeah.
Imagine spending like 400 K on abackyard and then realizing your pool
was in the wrong spot the whole time.
Or even
that could be bad.
Or the other thing is you go to spend$400,000 on the backyard and then the.
Construction superintendent saysyou need another a hundred thousand
(02:04):
dollars of retaining walls.
Ooh, that sounds After they dig the hole.
Yeah.
That's not
fun.
No, it's not fun.
So site analysis is keyto every project working.
Okay, so this is where projects failbecause projects weren't analyzed
properly on what's gonna happen.
(02:24):
And so there's several things youhave to check in this process.
And this is something that a trueprofessional should be doing to
help figure out your solution.
But you can also.
Do this information and that way,going in if you don't have a true
professional, that you don't get caught.
A couple of things I'lljust tell you real quick.
(02:46):
So I had a project a number of yearsago and they bought the piece of
property because their last yardwas too small and they didn't have
enough room to put a diving pool in.
So they wanted to put a divingpool in and they bought this piece
of property in a big backyard.
So the first thing I ask 'em foris I need a copy of your survey.
(03:07):
Yep.
And what did they send me?
Hopefully they send you the survey.
No, they didn't send me the survey.
They sent me the plot plan.
Oh no.
This is a very confusing thing.
This is where crime starts,is at the very beginning.
'cause I ask for onething and so what happens?
This is the scenario that usually happens.
You are buying a new home, and so you'rebuying it from a sales agent that's
(03:31):
in the model, that's the salesperson.
And so the pool guy asks for a survey.
So you go in and ask the salesagent, I need a copy of the survey.
And so he gives you a documentand you send it off to me.
And I look at it and I'm like.
This isn't a survey.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
This is what's called a plot plan and thesales person will never have the survey,
(03:53):
so what's the difference between the two?
Okay.
So a plot plan is when they plotwhere they think they're going
to put the house on the property.
That's what's submitted to the city.
Does this have any topos, anything?
Generally not
utilities, setbacks, nothing like that.
Okay.
So this is just a documentthat they draw the house on.
(04:15):
There usually is a front setback.
They're showing where that is.
And that's usually, that'sall that's on that document.
And you're saying this is ahead of timebefore they actually build the house.
So
this is before the house has started.
This is what they submit to the cityto get the permit to build the house.
So even if they went off ofthis plan, the house could be a
completely different measurement?
Correct?
(04:36):
Mm. And And this is where theproblem comes in, in some cases.
Is the permit is then issuedand they don't put the house
where it was on the plot plant.
Yeah, they move it?
Okay.
For some reason, like I had onemoved a couple years ago because of
a couple trees in the front yard thatthey said you can't kill these trees.
(04:57):
And so they pushed the house back,which totally changed everything.
Now, can surveys be wrong?
I've seen it, yeah.
Happen.
It's very rare.
Yeah.
That a survey is wrong.
So what happens is once they set the formsof the house, then the surveyor comes out
to see if they put it in the right spot.
Okay.
(05:17):
Okay.
And then they have to turn thatinto the city before they give them
the green tag to pour the concrete.
Because once the concrete's poured,that house is going in that spot.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what happens sometimes is they've movedit back farther, which for the builder
is not a big problem, but when you'redealing with a really small backyard and
(05:38):
he shoves the house and another seven feetfarther back, and now you've lost seven
feet out of the yard and you designedeverything to the nth degree, now you
can't build that project that you had.
No.
So the first thing is you need a survey.
Survey will always have a stamp onit that's stamped by the surveyor
saying this is, a certified survey.
(06:00):
So the form survey is thefirst survey that's done.
I. That'll work.
now a lot of times what happensis there's another survey done
when you close on the house.
Yeah.
Okay.
And that survey will have the driveway onit, that'll have the front walkway on it.
It'll have where the patios are itmay show grades on the property.
(06:22):
It may show trees on the property.
So depending on the survey that youget, a lot of times, most of the
time they don't have grades on it.
Okay.
And most of the time they don't have treeson it, but you can get a tree survey.
And you can also get a grading survey.
So once you get the survey, the criticalthing that's on the survey that's
usually not on the pot plan is easements.
(06:43):
Okay.
easements are for drainagepurposes, they're for wall
maintenance, they're for utilities.
This is a space in your propertywhere you can't build anything.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
So what happens is in that space, it'sreserved for the underground utilities.
It's reserved for drainage,so the yard drains properly.
(07:07):
It's reserved for maintenanceon a zero lot line house wall.
Yeah.
So there's all these different easementsthat you could have on the property
and you can't build in that space.
So if you have a pot plan thatdoesn't show any easements.
And you go design something and then youget the survey and you find out can't put
what we wanted in this space in my career.
(07:29):
Going back 40 years, landscaping andpool design and outdoor living design.
I've had two easements modified.
Oh, wow.
So they don't change often.
They don't change very often.
Is there anything differentwith waterfront lots.
A lot of times there is setbacksfrom lakes that you have to
be a certain distance from.
(07:50):
There's a flood easement.
Mm-hmm.
That's another one.
Yep.
That you could have.
There's properties that are onthe Army Corps of Engineers.
That there's flood control on.
So any Lakeside property,there's special notes on that.
there's all kinds of things thatmay show up on the survey, okay.
Okay.
That you need to have and understand.
(08:12):
So if you're buying a piece of property.
You haven't purchased it yet.
You want a copy of a survey?
Yeah.
Okay.
So you can see all the things andunderstand where all the easements are,
and setbacks and flood control and all thethings before you go and build a house.
Because you might think that your fenceis the perimeter of what you can work
with, but that's not actually true.
(08:33):
That's a lot of times not true.
That is correct.
so the first thing in the site analysisis you need to get a copy of that survey.
Not a plot plan, but a survey.
We are gonna take a break here for asecond and get into outdoor living.
So with outdoor living, we like togo to barbecue bits here we're gonna
share some information of everythingthat you may want to consider in
(08:56):
your outdoor living space as far asfeatures, especially for the kitchen.
Hope you enjoy this.
The most popular burnerthat we carry, it's 400 BTU.
So I can put a bechamel sauce,like a cheese sauce or a glaze, and
I can go as high as 65,000 BTUs.
And then if I had family and friendsover, and if I want to expand, I
(09:19):
can take out and put a walk, um,itegrated walk system inside of
it, uh, for a quick meal solution.
This is their deep storage roar.
I'm a pretty big guy, but the salesrep would always come in and stand in
it and show you how strong it was andI can't do that at this point in time.
But, but uh, it all stores theirgriddle, it stores their walk.
(09:43):
So when the customer's done withthe cooking and entertaining,
everything goes into its place.
So is that a drawer that youcould also use underneath a,
uh, a green acre or a primo?
It is.
Um, it's something that we see a lotof specifiers put in there because of
the weight loads and, uh, hard linesthat support the ceramic side from
(10:05):
the plates, uh, the cast iron pieces.
Yes.
Great comment.
Right.
I like to put those in.
Yeah.
Uh, pot filler faucet,uh, that you can use.
Uh, that's, that's their, that's outdoorrated, uh, that's really common with
this, with this, uh, particular company.
So what does outdoor rated mean?
Um, outdoor rated is gonna be,uh, resistant from, uh, sub
(10:28):
temperatures, something that's goingto handle, uh, salt pool systems,
uh, to marine grade stainless.
Uh, that's gonna resistpitting and rusting.
And a lot of your.
Components that you see now aregonna be 3 0 4, uh, stainless.
What does that mean to the customer?
It has a lot of chromiumand nickel in that.
(10:48):
That's something that CLsells only is marine grade.
It's what we sell only is marine grade.
That's gonna be a higher qualitystainless and resist, uh, resist
corrosion in the outdoor element.
So,
so like we had to freeze.
A couple weeks ago.
Okay.
How do you winterize something like this?
So it, it performs well.
(11:09):
You can go into that and, and I can gointo it, build some builder's comments
and how this, the, the installers willput armor flex and prepare for that.
Uh, make sure that yoursinks are on inside walls.
Uh, make sure we have termination pointslike water shutoffs, home runs, what we
call for all of our electricity, all ofour water, uh, you know, when we winterize
something, we want to go to the source.
(11:30):
We want to turn it off.
But also we want to open up the valvesystem on the faucets so air can flow
through the plumbing and the water that'scapturing there doesn't expand and break.
So that's something to thinkabout whenever you do a kitchen.
Where's my home run at?
You know, if I do any type of lightingor, um, any type of plumbing, where
do I go to to access everything?
(11:51):
To, to do preventative maintenance?
So,
okay.
Bar, bar sink system's.
Very popular.
One of our most.
Poplar sink systems that Alfresco makes.
Um, it's an insulated sink and it thenit turn, then you can hold ice in that.
You can use it as a washout.
Uh, but also it's anentertainment, uh, sink system.
(12:12):
So it's got a speed rail for mixers,uh, bottle caps for domestic and
import beers, and then, uh, crassfor produce, or if not wine bottles.
However you want to set upyour entertainment style.
So.
A little bit different than the PrepCenter or is that the, the Prep Center?
This one here is a, uh, sink.
It's a bartender sink, and then theprep center is something we don't show
(12:34):
that Alfresco makes, that has an icewell inside of it that you can put your
cheeses marinades in there whenever youprep to do either a baked potato bar.
Or if you do, uh, pizzas, it'llbe your prep area for pizzas.
Okay, so is this storagethat's underneath it?
Is this another seal one?
Or going back to your point, uh, how doI access the sink as far as winterizing?
(12:56):
This would be for winterizingand then accessing.
Accessing actually the J Trappthat's underneath the sink.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
But that's not a sealed, this isnot, you'll find it on sink entrances
that will always be open so we canaccess the J trapp and the plumbing.
Yeah, yeah.
Totally makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
So I hope you enjoyed the barbecuebits that we just featured today, and
(13:20):
we'll have more coming up next week.
If there's something in particular thatyou're interested for, let us know and
we'll get back into the episode now.
Now the next thing after thatis you want to call 8 1 1.
Yep.
Do you know why they call eight one one?
They call 8 1 1 to mark theutilities and all that kind of stuff.
(13:40):
Okay, so everything that'sunderground gets marked?
There are utilitiesthat are up in the air.
They're connected to telephone poles.
So those, they're not going to mark them.
They're going to assume you can see them.
Okay.
So if, and this is really critical.
So if I'm working in Dallas, it dependson what side of the alley that I'm on,
(14:03):
if I'm gonna have a challenge or not.
Yep.
Because if the poles are on my sideof the alley, that means I have to be
farther away from those electrical lines.
Yes.
Okay.
If they're on the other side of thealley, usually I don't have a problem.
It's far enough away.
'cause the alley's 15 feet wideand most of the time you're
have to be, 12, 15, 17 feet.
(14:24):
It depends on the voltage that'sin the lines and how far you
have to be away from these lines.
What about zero alt lines?
There's a lot of those in Dallas.
With a zero outline inregards to electrical,
no, to utilities andsurveys, is it any different?
You have a maintenance usuallyeasement that's along with that
so you can maintain the walls.
But the other thing is, what's uniqueis a lot of times the electrical
(14:48):
is in the neighbor's backyard.
And so that easement's there, soyou can actually run the electrical
line to get it into your backyard.
Yeah.
Okay.
So need to know where all the utilitiesare that are underground and above ground.
So it's
gas, electric, water, sewage,
Cable.
Yep.
sewer is a big one.
(15:09):
And sewer, there's two thingsthat come into play that you
need to know on your site.
Analysis one.
Is if you have a sewer system that'sgoing into the city sewer or if
you're dealing with septic Yes.
And septic tanks.
Mm-hmm.
So here's another true crime.
Oh, I didn't finish the first one.
(15:29):
The client built, bought the pieceof property, put a diving pool.
There was an easement that ranfrom one corner of their backyard.
To the other corner of the backyard.
Oh dear.
And a 45 degree angle across, oh no notlike from back corner to back corner.
This ran right throughthe middle of the yard.
It was a utility easement for asubdivision that ran through their
(15:53):
backyard and it was 20 feet wide.
Wow.
So basically wiped outalmost the whole backyard.
I was able to design a swimming,a diving pool in one corner.
That was the only place it would go.
Oh, wow.
And so they actually ended up taking thehome builder to court over it because
(16:14):
it wasn't disclosed to them at all.
They'd moved into the house.
Wow.
And this wasn't disclosed.
They moved there just tohave a bigger backyard.
To have a diving.
Yeah.
Wow.
I had a client up in Prosper,bought a two acre lot.
Okay.
So with the two acre lot,they had a septic system.
Yep.
So I had septic tanks and aerobic heads.
(16:34):
Okay.
they also had six bathrooms in the house.
So that means you have to designa very large aerobic septic
system to accommodate that.
Now they already have a septic system.
Why are you designing a new one?
What was happening is thehouse was under construction.
Okay.
So when they first started,they didn't know where the
septic system heads were going.
(16:56):
Okay?
Which was an advantage here becauseonce we talked to 'em about the
calculations, the other thing that alot of times people don't realize is.
They think about the septic head andyou can't put anything in that area.
There's a distance beyondthe head because of wind.
Okay?
in some places it's 25 feet.
(17:16):
Some places it's 30 feetdifferent in different places.
And so they had this layoutgoing and so what ended up
happening is they had two acres.
They had barely enough room off thehouse that we were able to design
their project, which was nothing crazy.
Yeah, it was just a pool and some patioarea and the deck area There wasn't
(17:41):
a, cabana or anything like that, butbecause we designed it and then we
had 'em lay out the heads afterwards,we were able to fit everything.
I mean, They used the whole front yard.
The whole backyard.
It was because they had so manybathrooms that they had, we tried to
argue with, well no, they're not gonnabe using all these bathrooms at once.
At the, yeah.
(18:01):
But they said well, you couldhave a party in the 4th of July.
Everybody show up and use the pool.
And those bathrooms could allbe being used at the same time.
So possible, but not, It's importantto understand where your utilities
are at septics a big one.
The other thing you have to know is wherethe tanks are gonna be because you have
to be a certain distance from those.
Mm-hmm.
(18:22):
The other bigger issuesometimes is access.
Yep.
Because those tanks are in the side yard.
And that's your access to drive through.
And I've never dropped adump truck in a septic tank.
But it's been done a number of times.
So something that would bea really crappy situation.
Yeah,
you don't want that.
So Yeah, they don't want that.
you call 8 1 1, they're gonna locateall your utilities that are underground.
(18:46):
Sewer doesn't get marked in Texas.
Yeah.
Now maybe in some other part ofTexas it does, but it didn't get
marked where I grew up in Lubbock.
It doesn't get marked here in DFW.
And so you have to make some assumptionsand sometimes you have to guess on
where that is 'cause it's not marked.
And the way, like Kevin used to tellme in Arizona, they did mark it.
(19:09):
Okay.
And the way they mark it is whenthey put the sewer line is they put
a tracer line on it and that waywhen they come to find it, they can
find the tracer line underground andput the little flags in your yard.
Where it all is.
That's what they do with gas.
Okay.
Electric.
They don't have to do itbecause they can find it.
'cause it's metal to begin with.
So the sewer and like a Dallas project,almost all the sewer runs to the alley.
(19:34):
So the sewer's probably gonna runright through the middle of the pool.
Yeah,
you can almost plan on it runningright through the middle of the pool.
So what you want to try to do is findthe clean outs to give you an idea where
it might be going, and you might be ableto find the clean outs in the alley.
And if you can find both of them, thenyou can, you know where the sewer's gonna
be now if you have a utility linerunning right through the project, right
(19:55):
through the area, you want it to putthat pool or whatever the project is.
Is that the end of the worldor are you able to reroute
any of these utility lines?
Oh no.
You can move utility lines all day long.
Okay.
They're just expensive as all get out.
Yes.
And it delays the project.
So one of the things that's criticalfor you as a homeowner to think about
is if you have the utilities markedbefore you have somebody coming in,
(20:18):
you already know where they're at.
So as soon as.
You sign a contract, you can now, okay,this is where the pool's gonna go.
Now we can start working on reroutingthose utilities immediately.
Yeah,
because sometimes it takes two tothree months to get the permit for,
the pool and the engineering andworking drawings all to be done.
(20:39):
And if you know thatat the very beginning.
Then you can have that taking placewhile they're working on all that stuff.
You can have your reroute done.
Yeah.
We had a, a client in Dallas wherethey did that and they they buried the
electrical lines right from the get go.
Remember that?
Yeah.
So we knew that this was anissue, so they, or like, let's
just take 'em underground.
(20:59):
We'll have this done immediately.
The other thing is as I wastalking about electrical.
In Dallas and which side the poles are on.
There was a situation where we had, therewhere we were able to wrap the lines,
so if the line broke, the lines couldn'tfall down and so it shortened up the
distance that you had typically have,which was a much cheaper situation then.
(21:22):
Taking the electrical lines undergroundor raising all the electrical lines.
So when you're dealing with awhole subdivision to raise those
lines up, that's real expensive.
I bet.
Or take 'em undergroundwould be really expensive.
Yeah.
And so what you usually try todo is work around what you can.
So the wrapping situation wassomething that came up on a project
(21:44):
not too long ago in UniversityPark Lately, I've been lucky.
They've all been across the alley,so that hasn't been an issue.
So your sewer, something you gottalook at and then your electrical
and your gas, where those are going.
So you can have a reroutedone on all your utilities.
Now, the most common onethat's in the way is the cable.
(22:06):
And now the cable usuallygets buried about an inch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
An inch or so underneath the grass,they usually just get a spade.
They cut a hole in the grass,they stuff it down in the ground.
Okay.
Yeah.
So there's no trenching doneto put your cable TV line in.
Yeah.
If you don't get a temporary.
I feel like it always getscut every single time.
So here's a tip for you isyou can get a temporary line
(22:30):
installed during construction.
You call 'em up and tell 'emwe're doing construction.
We need a temporary line putabove ground with enough slack
that we can drive underneath.
The line so we don't hit the line and wehave it intact and everybody stays really
happy because your internet is intactduring the construction of your process.
(22:52):
Because when you get it cut duringconstruction, because I had a client
several years ago and he's like,I don't think it's in the way.
And I said, I really think it is in theway and so you should get a temporary,
ah, I don't wanna bother doing that.
And I said if it gets cut, youhave to pay for the repair, which
is several thousands of dollars.
(23:13):
Sometimes used to be they'd come outfor free and fix it, but now they
charge, it might be 1200 bucks for themto come out and fix this cable break.
They don't charge anythingto put the temporary in.
You just gotta call now.
What happens sometimes is theperson that's on the phone's
like, we don't do that.
Oh yeah.
And if they say they don't do that,then you wanna talk to their manager.
(23:34):
Okay.
Because they don't wanna do that.
No, they don't.
but.
If push comes to shove I have not runinto a circumstance where they will
not come and put a temporary line in.
Now, there'll be a story somedaywhere that was the case, but I did
have a client that said that theydidn't think it was gonna be in the
way they left it there, it got broke.
They were upset because theywere without internet and they
(23:57):
had to pay to have it repaired.
So better,
uh, Better internet than gas or,
Yeah.
Breaking a gas line'snot a good thing or no.
Or an electric line, but generallythose are buried deep enough.
Oh yeah.
That you're not gonna have a problem.
Now, we did have a project not toolong ago that we had the utilities
marked, and it was a spec home thatthey knew we were gonna build a pool.
(24:20):
Spa for the new homeowner,whoever bought it.
We designed the projectin the beginning of it.
And then when they went and put theelectrical line in, they decided
to stay away from some trees.
And so they put it reallyclose to the house.
And so there wasn't enough room toput the spa in as it was designed.
So the client chose to.
Move the spot to theother end of the pool.
(24:42):
So we didn't have to do a reroute.
So that was the solutionthat they chose to do.
But you can yes, moveutilities if need be.
this isn't utilities, but permeablesurfaces with roofs and stuff
like that that's really bigwith cities as well, with like
limits of what you're able to do.
Correct.
And that's becoming a bigger and biggersituation with cities is permeability.
(25:04):
So what the issue with a lot of cities is.
Whole systems for the town weredesigned on a certain square footage
being on a piece of property.
And so when you have a certainsquare footage of house, there's
a certain amount of roof.
Water doesn't go into theground where there's a house.
Nope.
Okay.
It runs off into your downspouts andinto your gutters, and so then that
(25:27):
water's gotta go somewhere with the city.
And if a city is designed completelyaround situations like you had a. 3000
square foot house on a one acre lot.
Okay.
And that all worked.
And then 25 years later, everybodydecides those one acre lots are awesome.
Let's tear the house downand build a new house.
(25:48):
Yeah,
but we're gonna build an8,000 square foot house.
On that lot.
Now we have 8,000 square feet of roof.
Actually, you'll have more thanthat 'cause your garage doesn't
count and neither does your porches.
Yeah.
So you probably have 10,000 square feetof roof with your 8,000 square foot home.
Now the challenge is thatamount of water running off.
(26:08):
You do that for house, afterhouse, the system will be overrun.
And then the city can't get thewater out and you'll have flooding.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what cities have come in anddone is say there is a maximum
amount of permeable surface that isrequired on this piece of property.
So we had a project,a couple, last summer.
(26:30):
Last summer, two years ago thatI said, what's the permeability
calculations on this piece of property?
When we first met 'em andthey said, here's what it is.
And I'm like here's the challenge.
You're maxed out now.
Yeah.
We can't do anything in thisbackyard based on what's here.
And they're like, but we want a pool.
And I said, let me thinkabout this for a second.
(26:52):
A couple of things that you can do tocreate more permeability is in some
cities you can take the driveway away.
And you can put a gravel driveway in itsplace and a gravel driveway is permeable.
So now that square footagecan be applied to the pool.
What about decking in
the backyard?
Sure.
So you may have a certainamount of patio area.
(27:13):
So in this particular city, theydidn't count the pool water.
Okay.
Because they said if it rains,the pool will capture that water,
which is a legitimate situation.
The other thing that they didn'tcount was synthetic grass.
Okay,
so put my thinking cap on.
I looked at this backyard.
They had a really ugly back patio,which was really big, and I said, if
(27:36):
I tear the existing patio out and makeit smaller and all I have to do is.
Come up with the coping or surfacearea and put the rest of it in as turf.
For your patio?
Then we're gonna be really close.
The other thing that they countedwas the pool equipment that counted
as your surface area as well.
'cause it was solid.
(27:57):
Yeah.
It sits on a concrete slab.
On a concrete slab.
So we were able to run the calcsand we were able to get them a pool
and a spa and a turf area and areduced patio and the pool equipment.
And then over the turfarea we put an arbor.
And we were able to sit a table on thearbor under the arbor, not on the arbor.
(28:21):
On the arbor.
That would be really crazy.
Yeah.
That would be, let's go sit on thepatio uh, up on top of the arbor.
table was underneath the arboron the synthetic grass, and that
was a great solution and actuallywon some design awards as well.
Oh yeah.
So your site analysis you'vegot your utilities, you've got
your survey and your easements.
(28:41):
The, probably the biggest thing that'simportant in yards is grades and drainage.
Water has to flow away from the house.
So the way the builder sets it up isit drains again away from the house.
There's swales and the contouringof the ground makes the water
leave that particular area.
And in most cases, it's said that stillhas to continue even if you build a pool.
(29:07):
And so some of the things that,you know that's critical to
know is where that all works.
So how the drainage works.
So you have to understandthat with your site analysis.
But the other thing you haveto understand with your site
analysis is do we have hillsides?
Do we have yard going up?
Do we have a yard going down?
And where are those retaining wallsthat hold that existing hillside?
(29:31):
And how are we going tomodify that hillside?
To create a flat placethat water can pool.
Or a flat place where you canhave a patio or a flat place
where you can have a structure.
Because generally all thosethings are built on flat places.
Yeah.
So now we had a kitchen one time when welived in McKinney, and it was anything but
(29:54):
flat so you could roll things clear acrossthe floor, which is quite entertaining.
But most people want a flat spaceto deal with when they're dealing
with all their elements of life.
So the only thing I can thinkof that's not flat that you
can build is probably a slide.
Okay.
Yeah, you could have a slide.
We've incorporated severalslides on hillsides,
but usually it has to be ahill, sloping down to the pool.
(30:17):
Yeah.
Sloping up ideally.
Yeah.
It makes it a little more challenge toride down a slide going up the hill.
Yeah.
So sometimes you'll get asurvey that has grades on it.
Most of the time what happens is there areno grades, and so that has to be measured.
And there's a couple differentways that that can be measured.
(30:37):
one is there's a piece of equipmentcalled a zip level, and I.
Tray's, very familiar with it and
yep.
I use it all the time.
Goes out and takes spot measurementsand locates elevations all through
the yard and at trees and at,existing paving and locates.
(30:58):
Everything from a measurement standpoint,but also from an elevation standpoint.
So then we take that and if you'refamiliar with backpacking and topography
maps, we make a topo map of the backyard.
So the surveyor may have donesome elevations for you also.
There's also a really cool.
(31:19):
piece of equipment called Moser.
And Moser also measures elevations.
So that's a cool pieceof equipment as well.
And it, it's wirelessly, so if you'redoing this yourself, it might be
easier than go and get a zip level.
'Cause you could just shoot spotelevations and stuff like that.
Wirelessly with it runs off of what?
GPS or,
yeah.
Okay.
Once you have elevations, now youcan design things and you can know if
(31:42):
you need additional retaining wallswhich is a quite common situation on
a lot of the projects that we work on.
But in addition, so there arerules that you have to follow.
On a piece of property.
So there's usually two placesthat you have to go to find
out what those rules are.
And sometimes they're not the same.
(32:02):
The city and the HOA, the
city and the HOA are the two places.
Winner, Winner, chicken dinner.
Everyone loves both of those.
Like Everyone's best friend.
Right?
Oh yeah.
in some cases, the HOA ismore strict than the city.
Yeah.
Recently it's been the case a lot.
So you have to understandwhat both of them are.
And usually when you submit, a lot ofplaces require you to submit to the
(32:27):
HOA and get approval from them first.
And once you get approval from them,then you submit it to the city.
Some, it's vice versa but inmost cases today, you've gotta
have approval from both of 'embefore you can start a project.
the.
HOAs sometimes can have someinteresting rules that the
city doesn't require at all.
It all varies from city to HOA.
(32:48):
Yeah.
So you need to knowwhat both of those are.
Before you start designing a project,
The city's gonna requirelike your permeability.
A lot of times they'll requirecertain distances from.
Structures fires a bigdeal with a lot of cities.
You have to be a certaindistance from the house.
(33:08):
Anything flammable.
Yep.
The fence, the neighbors they don'twant you to burn anything down.
In fact, some of the cities, it's notthe building department that enforces
that, but the fire department, yeah.
So you have to gothrough different things.
We ran into one thing not too long ago.
And it came down to definitions.
So what we called a fire pit was amasonry unit with a gas ring and a gas
(33:35):
line that was lit by a manual situation.
I. They don't call those fire pits.
What do they call 'em?
that's actually called a fire appliance.
Oh, some cities require some type ofautomation on those and some don't.
But what they talked about, fire pitwas just, a pit that you burn stuff in.
(33:57):
Okay.
Okay.
And that had to be farther away, butif it was a gas burning well, it's
not controlled technically.
Correct.
Yeah, that makes sense.
so definitions a lot of times come downto importance of understanding something.
So you have to understand those things.
But going to views are reallyimportant from two places.
Views going out.
(34:18):
Okay.
The ideal situation is I wanta floor plan of the house.
Yeah.
Because if I have a floor plan ofthe house, I can figure the view
from walking in the front doorthrough a key set of windows.
I can walk down the staircaseand have a key view here.
Now, one of the things that's changed alot in the last five years is it used to
be there were more walls and less windows.
(34:41):
Oh.
Now it's more windows and less walls,
right?
So what the big deal was you really hadto understand where the windows were.
'cause it was a very narrowview into the backyard.
And so was that likean installation thing?
No, it was just, that was thearchitectural style of the house.
Okay?
Now, today, almost everyhouse has really big windows.
(35:02):
What that requires in the house isusually a steel beam or a big laminate
beam, so they can span these big areas.
And you go back five years ago thatwas not a common situation at all.
Mm-hmm.
So it was real important for meto understand where the windows
were, and then I would go as far astrying to, I'd take pictures from
the, like the kitchen sink and theentrance out of the pantry and the.
(35:28):
Entrance from the garage into theliving room, the entrance from
the front door into the livingroom coming down the staircase.
The views there, 'cause those were viewsyou were gonna see every single day.
The view from the master.
Bathroom door through themaster bathroom windows.
there was these particular linesof sight and when the windows were
smaller, they were very narrowcorridors and sometimes you'd have one
(35:52):
or two places that everything wouldoverlap and it was like something
really important needs to be here.
Yeah.
Because this is key site linesthat you're dealing with.
So your older homes,that's gonna be the case.
Okay.
Your newer homes.
The sight lines are pretty wide openbecause they do a lot of glass and so you
have more opportunity to put key things.
(36:13):
You're not as limitedin where those could be.
But you also have views from a differentplace that's from outside looking in.
one of the things, it's.
Real creative.
If you work with somebody, this isn'tsomething you probably could generate
on your own, but when you lay outyour piece of property, you can go to
Google Earth and you can locate allthe properties that are around you when
(36:38):
you locate the properties around you.
You can take photographs of thoseparticular houses and the carry
windows and doors that they mayhave, especially on the second floor.
Is this for privacy and this wouldbe help you create the privacy.
Views that you wanna block.
That's smart.
Yeah.
in some places where I've had thisbeen a real, real important issue
(36:59):
with a client, we've gone in andour three dimensional modeling.
And
put the houses in and put the viewsfrom those windows and doors in so
we can actually fly into their house.
And look out of their house and seewhat you're gonna see in your backyard.
And then we can place critical plants andtrees in certain areas or case an example.
(37:21):
We designed the one project thislast year and there was a primary
site line and family room thatlooked right into the neighbor's
primary site, line, and family room.
Yep.
And so we built the structureand did a shed roof on it.
And because of the pitch of the roof,it totally blocked the neighbor's view.
And so all they could look at wasthe back of a roof, a roof structure.
(37:43):
Instead of looking into theliving room and the clients looked
from their living room into the.
Shade structure which had a really nicewater feature on the front and a TV in it.
So it was a nice view.
your views both from inside andoutside can be really important.
Another thing that's reallyimportant to understand is soil.
So as we mentioned in part oneabout costs varying greatly
(38:07):
because of various soil types.
Here in Dallas Fort Worth, we areblessed with very different soil types.
Okay.
So that can make life very interesting.
Mm-hmm.
Other parts of the country,it's like, we're, on 30 A
in Florida and it's all sand
or All Rock somewhere, or
it's all Rock somewhere.
Or it could be even all Clay somewhere.
(38:28):
But then, you know, basically everybody'sbuilding the same here, not so we have
everything from solid rock to sand.
The expansive clays.
And so it could change from
one neighbor to the other.
Correct.
Like Two houses couldbe completely different.
Yeah.
I Your front yard could bedifferent than your backyard.
That is correct.
I, I had a project in Friscoa number of years ago.
(38:49):
We dug the pool, it wascompletely fine in our backyard.
The project right behind us, literally15 feet away was in solid rock.
Wow.
it happens.
So having a soils report done isextremely helpful on a project.
Oh
yeah.
So a soils report is, you're gonnahave someone come out, they're
(39:09):
gonna do a boar, typically at least20 feet deep, and they're gonna
come back and analyze that soil.
And so they're gonna beable to give you the exact.
Parameters of that soil.
So now we can take that to theengineer and he can say exactly what
the structure is going to be needed.
We don't overdo it, we don't underdo it.
We dial things in very accurately.
(39:30):
So here, I highly recommend peopleto get a soils report done because
that's information that would be veryhelpful if you're building a new home.
That's automatic.
Yep.
The points where they boreis important though, as well.
If it's a bigger piece of property, yes.
That's important to know.
If there's a lot of topography changeyou could have a really different type
(39:52):
'cause you might be sitting up on a bluffon a higher point and there could be a
lot of clay down in a lower point 'causethe soil erodes over a period of time.
Hundreds of years.
But having the SOS reportis extremely helpful.
If you're doing a custom build, they'regoing to have a SOS report on your
property, and you may have multipleborings on the particular property.
(40:12):
And if it's a big piece of property,you may want to have a boring
done where the pool's gonna go.
Yeah.
The other situation is you're buildingin a subdivision, and when you build
in a subdivision, they typically do asoils report for the whole subdivision.
What they typically do is everythird house, they do a soils report.
And so you may be having to lookat three different soils reports
(40:33):
to get an idea what yours might be.
Okay.
Or you might have the one boring wason your particular piece of property,
but soils are very important tounderstand so you can figure out.
What you're going to have to dofrom a structural standpoint.
That goes back to the first part of thiswhole scenario, this journey where we
talked about understanding the budget.
(40:55):
this is a huge detail that cancompletely change your budget,
right?
So you wanna understand at thevery beginning what's going to be
necessary so you don't have surprises.
a lot of times when I'm running a budget,we don't have the soils report in yet.
So I have a general feel ofwhat the neighborhood might be.
Yeah.
In some cases.
I know it's bad.
Yeah.
(41:15):
And so I'm gonna figure, okay, let'sfigure worst case scenario, let's
figure, we're gonna need peers, we'regonna need an upgraded structure.
We're gonna need a substructure and We'regonna need a substructure and void boxes.
if I know it's really bad, I mayfigure all those things in and realize
if we get the soils report and it'snot as bad than we save some money.
(41:37):
Woo-hoo.
Okay.
Much better than not telling about it.
Yep.
Getting the sole's report and going, oh.
You need to spend $50,000more on a substructure.
when we're working on budgets, it's betterto be a little high than a little low.
So once you have your site analysis,one of the things that you wanna do is
plot all this information on a document.
(41:58):
So it's to scale, oh, I forgotalmost the most important thing.
What's up trees?
Trees are a big deal.
They alter all the designs unlessyou just wanna get rid of them all.
Yeah.
In some cases you can't do that today.
That's, I, yeah, you're right about that.
So some cities have particular hair,they'll call them heritage trees or.
(42:19):
Something along those linesthat you can't remove the tree
or If you cut one down, you haveto plant one somewhere else.
Usually if you cut one down,you're planting five or 10.
Oh.
That's usually what the requirement is.
We like trees though, so that's cool.
So I do a lot of design around trees.
Yeah.
And when we're looking at trees,there's several things that
are critical to think about.
So the first thing is tray's gottafigure out exactly where it's at
(42:40):
on the property, how big it is.
And then the second thingis how big is the tree?
And working with arborists the rule ofthumb with the trees that I deal with
here is for every one inch of caliber,that's the width of the tree trunk.
I've gotta multiply thatby 10 to get the diameter.
That's the kill zone.
(43:01):
If I get inside that space anddo something, then I'm gonna
most likely kill the tree.
Now in that I can't change the elevation.
I can't trench and I certainly can'tput deck or a pool in that space.
What if someone says it's if we juststay within underneath the canopy?
Instead,
(43:21):
The canopy's usually bigger than that.
Okay.
Okay.
So most trees, the canopy'sbigger than the kill zone.
Okay.
The rule of thumb that I workwith the trees that I work with
predominantly, which I deal with alot of post oaks is we get about a
95% success rate with those rules.
Okay?
Now, sometimes people are like likewe met with somebody on Friday.
(43:42):
They had some live oaks that wereprobably 36 to 42 inches across.
They're massive.
They're massive.
And so the massive zoneunderneath that is, it's massive.
Sometimes people are like, okay,I understand these are the rules.
Are there things that we can do to help?
Minimize the impact on these.
(44:03):
And so with these particular client, Itold 'em, you need to talk to an arborist.
Yep.
And they smartly had already talkedto an arborist, which that's rare.
Mm-hmm.
Hardly anybody's already talked tothe arborist and they've actually
started root pruning those trees.
So they're gonna root prune'em and they're gonna feed 'em.
And those are gonna, so what that setsup is the success of that tree going
(44:25):
through the impact and part of thechallenge that's taking place there.
It's not just the pool and outdoor livingspace that's going in, is the house
is going to impact these trees 'causethey're enlarging the house footprint.
Yeah.
Now they have one advantageis part of that is already
covered by an existing driveway.
So that's not allowing air andmoisture to the roots of those trees
(44:48):
and they've been there for decades.
Mm-hmm.
So they're used to not having air andmoisture in that one particular spot.
So there's probably less rootgrowth in that particular area.
Yeah.
But.
It's also really good to have arb comeout and just check out the trees to make
sure, 'cause you might plan the designaround this tree and not realize that
it's actually not in good shape at all.
And then it might actually befine just to cut it down 'cause
(45:11):
it's not gonna survive another
winter.
Yeah.
We just took a tree out at our house.
It was hollow inside andit had died a year ago.
But Two years ago, it was doing fine.
Yeah.
So if I would've done some planningin that space based on that tree,
and then all of a sudden it up anddies I would've been disappointed,
but it was hollow on the inside.
(45:31):
Arborist would've told methat if it had come out.
And he told me when he did come out,' cause I was like, why'd this die?
He's it's hollow inside,so it was going to die.
Yeah.
I was like, oh, okay.
So I didn't do something to kill it.
Prevailing winds are real important,especially when you're dealing with
outdoor living and seasonal things.
That people are gonna be out, especiallyin the wintertime when it's colder.
(45:53):
You want to know where yourprevailing winds are coming
from, and they usually changeseasonally, like here in North Texas.
Southwest is where we predominantlyget it from the summer.
So that's really nice to have that breezethat's available to you to cool things
off when it's a hundred degrees outside.
Oh yeah.
You don't necessarilywanna block that wind.
Okay.
But now the northwest wind iswhere it comes from the wintertime.
(46:16):
Okay.
We've got a project right now thatwe're doing, we put screens on two
sides of the structure, not all foursides, because what they wanted to
do is predominantly block the wind.
so we set up heats inside the structureand we put screens in to block the winds.
And so that was the situationthat we had and we were doing.
(46:37):
So it's important to understandwhere those are going.
I. Another thing in site analysis that'simportant to understand is what's sacred.
Okay.
And sometimes just somepeople, it's trees.
Yep.
And sometimes it's a particular thingand sometimes people have buried
things in their backyard that has alot of sentimental value to the family.
(46:59):
Yeah.
When you're digging a pool, makesure that you account for that.
Yeah.
If you talk to the client.
They can plan accordingly.
Sometimes it's very important, furryfriends that have been, they have a
graveyard in the backyard of all the petsthat they've had, and they just wanna make
sure that you stay away from that space.
And sometimes people don't thinkabout it because you're not
putting the pool right there.
(47:21):
But a lot of times wehave to do trenching.
And for utilities or reroutes orall kinds of things, and we're gonna
have to go through space that youdon't think we're gonna go through.
But if we know that there'ssomething important in that
space, we can stay away from it.
It's not a pleasant situation foranybody if that those places of
(47:42):
that are sacred are disturbed.
So sometimes it's just a plant thatwas planted in the memory of somebody.
It could be a lot of different things,but it's just something if you know
there's something in the backyardthat's important, then you wanna
make sure that they're aware of that.
Another thing with the site analysisyou have to be careful about is when
you find buried cars you, it happens.
(48:04):
It happens.
So you wanna first make surethere's no dead bodies in it
before you call the authorities,could have been a crime scene.
I mean, We had that one job wherethey had a that, what was it?
It was this Historicallypreserved land right behind them.
I think it was maybe a a graveyardof some kind or something like that.
But they were nervous.
They're like, if we dig thisup, are we gonna find anything?
(48:27):
And
we didn't.
No, we did not.
But there are rules in certain areas.
we talked with somebody, john Kenyonmentioned up in Toronto that there's
a lot of sacred areas where there'snative, burial stuff and things like
that, that they have to bring a storyout and make sure that there's not gonna
be anything that you find on the pool.
(48:47):
Dig like that.
Now, if you find.
Treasure, on the pool dig,that usually goes to the
excavator and the pool designer.
No.
Just kidding.
But, there are a lot of things thatare under the ground that you wanna
make sure that you're aware of.
But sometimes there are surprises.
I did have a project a number ofyears ago we were putting a pool in
(49:08):
and the existing pool had cracked.
Okay.
And half.
And so they were like we want a new pool.
In fact, we want a diver instead ofa recreational pool like this one.
Okay.
And so we started digging thepool and we got down to the deep
end of the pool and we hit trash.
Now what?
Yeah, so this subdivision,this particular lot was at the
very back of the subdivision.
(49:30):
And so when they were building30 years earlier, this is where
everybody went and dumped their trash.
Yeah.
Then at the very end of the development,they built the new house and they just
threw some dirt over the top of it.
It was three or four feet of dirt.
Okay.
And so the trash, but the trashwas settling over a period of time.
Yeah.
And so that's why the originalpool cracked was because
(49:52):
there was trash underneath it.
You got a big
void.
The engineer, I called him up andI said, what am I supposed to do?
And he's dig the trash out.
And I said, how much of it?
And he's like, all of it.
We were down nine feetwhen we hit the trash.
Oh, wow.
The trash went down 10 feet.
Oh my goodness.
So the hole was over 20 feet deep.
Yeah.
(50:12):
For this pool.
Goodness.
So we had to backfill it with road base.
Yeah.
That's how we stabilized the site.
But I had somebody that showed up.
The day before they put the backfill inand walked up and called me up and he's
like, what kind of pool are you doing?
Is this person a scuba diveror what is going on here?
This is the deepest hole I've ever seen.
I was like, and I wish that was backbefore we all had cameras on our phones.
(50:36):
Yeah, I wish that had a picture of that.
That would've been really cool.
But that's wild.
Sometimes there's things you don'tknow about and you're gonna find
and you're gonna have to deal with.
And that's part of.
The construction business, but yoursite analysis, if you could plot
everything on it, then as you do thedesign, you can create certain things
(50:57):
to take advantage of what's there.
Yeah.
And then solve certainproblems that are there.
And that's what good design'sall about, is trying to make
all those pieces go together.
And you can always tell a project thathad a good site analysis done, because
when it's done, it looks like the project.
Just grew there.
It all fits.
(51:17):
It fits with the grades, it fits withthe trees that are already there.
It fits with the drainage.
All the things work.
And it looks like it belongs,
yeah, it belongs with the house
versus, you shove something inand, you had to do all kinds
of things to make it work.
it's always a better solution.
In our process here we talked about thedream, we talked about the budget, we've
(51:39):
now talked about the site analysis.
And your home and whatall that looks like.
So after this, now we can start theresearch to come up with your best design.
So we'll talk about that with you next.
I look forward to talking to you later.
Hope you all have a good day.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
This show is all about helping you becomea better buyer, a better pool owner,
(52:03):
and hopefully you're gonna find someinsights into how to enjoy your pool even
more so how to help your friends, yourfamily, anybody looking to buy a pool in
the future or that want to remodel theirbackyard, add an outdoor fireplace, fire
pit, add an outdoor kitchen area, addsome shade cells, or whatever else it is.
We wanna be that resource for you and, andthat's the end goal here, and we promise.
(52:27):
That there's gonna bea ton of information.
We'll try to go through it, youknow, as relatively quickly, but
also slow so people can understand.
But the intent of the show, thereason Mike and I are doing this
is because we just got a lot inour heads and we wanna share it.
So we hope to see youhere every single week.
Thanks for listening.
I.
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