The Most Overlooked Part of Buying a Pool Table: Your Installer

Most people shopping for a pool table compare brands, finishes, sizes and prices. Very few ask who is going to put it together. That's a mistake, because a pool table doesn't arrive ready to play. It arrives as a frame, three pieces of slate, a set of rails and a roll of cloth, and how it plays for the next twenty years depends on the person who assembles it.

A great table can play badly

A poor install can ruin even the best table:

• An unlevel playing surface. Balls drift and slow shots roll off line.
• Bad slate seams. You feel a bump or see the ball hop where the slates meet.
• Loose or wrinkled cloth. The table plays slow and the cloth wears out early.
• Rails that aren't set right. Bounces are dead or unpredictable.

This is a specialty, not furniture assembly

Installing a pool table is a trade. The slate has to be leveled to a few thousandths of an inch, the seams filled and smoothed, the cloth stretched evenly by hand and the rails torqued down correctly. A general delivery or furniture assembly crew doesn't do this every day, and it shows.

When you buy online, the installer is the company

Here's something most buyers don't think about. When you order a table online, the seller usually sends a contracted installer to your home. More often than not, that installer is the only person from the whole transaction you will ever meet face to face.

That makes the installer the seller's representative in your home. You're trusting them with your floors, your walls, your new table and a few hours inside your house. You want someone who is:

• Knowledgeable: they know your table, your cloth and how to handle whatever your room throws at them.
• Skilled: leveling, seaming and stretching cloth are learned by doing, table after table.
• Physically fit: strong enough to carry the slate and the other heavy pieces, even upstairs if needed, without huffing and groaning like it's the heaviest thing they've ever lifted, and without banging up the table, your walls or your floors along the way.
• Using the proper tools: the Starrett 98 machinist level is sensitive to 0.005" per foot, and it's the level professional installers rely on. If your installer isn't using one, then what's the point?
• Trustworthy: this person will be in your home for hours.
• Clean cut: professional in how they look, talk and leave your room when they're done.

Years in business isn't the same as years of experience

It's not how long the company has been in business. It's how long the actual person they're sending has been doing this. A company with 30 years behind it can still send someone on their third install.

Questions worth asking before you buy

1. Who exactly will install my table, and how many years has that person been doing it?
2. Is installation done by your own people or handed to whoever is available?
3. What level do they use?
4. Is the installation covered by a warranty, and for how long?
5. Who do I call if something isn't right afterward?

How we handle it

We've been installing pool tables for 15 years. Pool Table MD is a member of the Billiard Congress of America, and outside our own service area your installer is chosen from the BCA network of billiards professionals. Every table we sell includes professional installation with a 1-year warranty.

Want to see our work? Browse our Instagram, @PoolTableMD2.0.

Text us at (305) 915-4398, or email us at Info@PoolTableMD.com.