Anyone here have a pool?

[Finch]

So kinda contemplating getting a pool for the summer. I never thought I'd hear myself say that but the wife and kids would love it. I don't want an in ground because I don't want to spend the money. They make some really nice above ground and semi in ground pools that are mostly DIY installs. I feel like you can get a quality one for under $3K. The ones at the below link seem to be really well made.

Anyone regret getting a pool? I'd say we'd get a good 4 months of use here in Virginia. Too much trouble?

Above Ground Pools | Semi Inground Pools | Swimming Pool Supplies

Looking for Above Ground Pools, Semi Inground Pools, Pool Chemicals, Covers & Equipment? Shop Swimming Pools & Supplies with free delivery.

www.thepoolfactory.com

 

[FLAK]

Had one once. Never, Ever will I own another pool.

 

[rickjames80]

We do an above ground in summer and have for the last few years. I think ours is 15' Diameter and 4' deep. We have some friends that have a 20' thats 5' deep. The kids have a ton of fun in them. I was against it originally, but the wife takes care of it mostly and the kids use it a good 3-5 times a week. They are almost a daily chore though. Between checking ph, adding chemicals, changing filters and keeping it clean. I would never do an in ground one.

 

[thinhorn_AK]

I’d rather have a hot tub.

 

[robtattoo]

Pond count?
Sorry, I live in the south.......
Above ground pools seem to be (I have no personal experience) amazing for the first few months. Then apathy sets in & they end up a pile of tubing & blue tarp dumped in the yard that everyone wants $600 for on facebook but is realistically worthless.

That's certainly what I've seen around here anyway. I think you buy them with scratch off ticket winnings.....

 

[Trr15]

I moved my family to Texas 3 1/2 years ago and one of the stipulations, to make my wife and kids happy, was that I get them a pool. Like a sucker, I did. Bought a house with an inground pool/hot tub combo. Its a pain in the ass, although we do enjoy it 7 months of the year. Especially when its 100+ degrees outside. The hot tub is nice even in the winter. With that said, I will never own another one.

 

[KineKilla]

I have a 33,000gal in ground pool currently. They do require a good amount of cleaning, water testing, treatment, etc.

If you are not the kind of person that enjoys spending time in the yard then a pool is not for you.



Sent from my SM-N976U using Tapatalk

 

[Indyal]

You know the best kind of pool to swim in?
somebody else’s!!

Seriously, I own an in ground pool. When we first moved to our current home, our then 15 yo daughter and her friends used it a lot. Then the novelty wore off.

If your kids are younger than teenage, I suspect you will get a lot of use for a few years.

There is a lot of maintenance

 

[Eltigreblanco]

I'll jump in as well. I have an in ground pool and will never own another one.

 

[ODB]

Pools are like big boats - I like them both when they are owned by good friends.

 

[Traveler]

Is this the COVID talking? If it is, hold out. A pool is forever...

 

[LookinforDirt]

I’m a first time pool owner. We bought a house with an in ground. Can use it 6 months a year. 7 or 8 if you can take some chilly water. I refuse to heat it. It is nice after a day of yard work or coming home from dirt bike riding to jump in the pool and have a beer. On the real hot Texas days it makes it easier to be outside. Like BBQing when it’s 106f. My son is young and loves it and it helps get him outside.

Once you learn how to take care of them they are not that bad. It is regular maintenance though, no to ways about it, so be prepared for that. We have a a lot of trees and get bombarded with leaves and the other one million things oak trees drop seemingly year round. I dread January and February pool maintenance. Ours had some issues with the water balance and equipment that was a real pain to figure out. I had zero knowledge of pool maintenance and equipment and spent a good number of hours learning, troubleshooting, and repairing. Now it is leaking and we have to add water regularly to keep the water level up. Not great for the water bill. I think I know what the issue is but it won’t be easy to fix. Tip, don’t build a pool among a bunch of oak trees. Roots go where they want.

Overall I’m glad we have it. Only because the weather is hot here and we have a lot of sunny days. And it has been fun for my son and his friends. Can’t imagine owning one in the Midwest where we use to live. To many cold and grey days to make it worth the trouble. I’m one and done though and won’t own a house with one again. Have many other ways I’d rather spend my time and money. No real regrets after three years of living with it but won’t miss having one when we eventually move.

 

[TheGDog]

Have one. In ground. It's a terrible ROI. You pay for that pump to run 365 days a year. But realistically it's a very small window in which you actually like using it.

Chemicals. Repair and maintenance chores can be a PETA. Today was spent replacing the seals on the pump. Also will have to replace the seals on a diverter valve further upstream on the incoming/suction side. It's sucking in air somewhere, so when it shuts off... the built-up air pressure blasts water backwards thru it and the skimmer bubbles up a bunch of water. Then... in the AM... when timer kicks on... since that air pocket going backwards thru it creates a void... pump is therefore not primed. So gotta open it up...poor water in to prime. So therefore it's not an automatic thing at the moment, thus disallows you to hunt, since you can't rely on the fam to handle this isht. And...if they forget and don't... the motor will heat up and potentially damage the seals in there, since no water flowing to cool it back down.

And ya gotta remember to fire up your heater occasionally and let it run a bit. Otherwise spiders get in there and do things like spin webs across pilot holes, requiring you to do surgery and disassemble the parts related to that and clean the blocking materials outta there.

It's cool when you're hosting a pool party and I like having the house full of people, since I'm so isolated working from home all the time. But... it's sooooo NOT worth the trouble. Having said that... I would say that investing in a largish Hot tub would be a not so bad investment.

Cause here's the dealio... once you and your friends groups advance in age... it's like pulling teeth getting these older b**ches to have enough drinks in them to where they will finally get in the damn pool. Since they are more apprehensive about their bodies appearance in a bathing suit. It's soo exasperating some times. And instead of EZ-UP's... don't use them... use individual Umbrellas... otherwise the stick-in-the-mud typed all hundle under the shade and never go in the damn pool!

You have to orchestrate and plan your whole event with experience and cunning, with the single thought in mind of making sure the women get into the spirit. Like any party, you get the women having a good time, and everybody will have a good time. Which dictates you crafting the right kind of environment. One tool that worked very well last few years has been starting off with 360 Double Chocolate Vodka Shots! They were well received, even by ones I'd judge as tea-totallers.

Also... you end up having to carefully plan where you place items in the backyard around the pool for the day of the event. For example, you NEVER place the food or drinks near to where the door for going in and out of the house is. That's numero uno! Secondly... place your food and the beverages at opposing ends of the space. This forces them to traverse the space and thus inter-mingle with everyone at your event. And that way you don't get any traffic jams in the space that are annoying to deal with.

Another tool that helped a lot was I bought this rather large floating rectangle that up to like 5-6 adults can congregate and layout upon. People seem to like using that thing.

Ya gotta (politely) beat it into your guests heads about the no glass around the pool thing. Keep re-iterating the injury aspect of it since if the pieces fall into the pool somebody will step on it and cut themselves. They all want to be good about it, but as the night wears on and the spirits flow... they get forgetful about it sometimes. So just be prepared to remind them again.

Expect the unexpected! I sh*t you not... I had this one m*ther-f*cker (who is soo damn lucky it was a social gathering and therefore there were a lot of eyes on me, it was EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to resist the urge to pummel him to death!) ... he literally picked up my Rat Terrier... and hurled her into the pool! A stranger to me. A guest at my home. Who f**king does that!!!

Now thankfully I made sure since day one that my dogs could swim and manage to extract themselves. But this f**kin yahoo doesn't know that! I had to be very loud and stern and commanding with him... but then I felt everyones eyes on me at that point, so I had to let it go at the moment once she was extracted. So anyway, be prepared for any manner of stupid isht to pop-off.

EDIT: Also... every 3-5 years or so... you have to dump the water and refill it... because due to evaporation... the water.. think about chemistry class back in highschool... the solution of the water reaches a saturation point with the minerals... and when it does... those minerals act as a buffer to the acid you must use to balance the pH of the water. Thus.. you get to a point where you simply can no longer keep the water balanced anymore and thus... the chlorine does not stay, at functioning levels, in the pool anymore. I'm at around 15,000 gals and it's something like $300-$350 to replace all the water. What I typically do these days instead... is I will dump the water in the spa side..... which is maybe like 1/8th or 1/10th of the total capacity of the whole pool. And I'll do that repeatedly for several weekends in a row so that way you can get some new fresh "empty" water into your solution so it can take on the chemicals properly again.

EDIT2: I will say this though... I do NOT ever get tired of seeing Mama in a Bikini floating around on a lounger in the pool though, so there is that!

 

[Jacack]

Have a inground here in sw fl. Honestly can't imagine not having one here. Yesterday was about 80 outside and 97%humidity. Summer is brutal with the humidity.

My son is in it 3-4 days a week and 7 in the summer. Solar heater on ours and it was 84 degree water yesterday. Have to shut the heat off in the summer as just the sun keeps it in the high 80s

We have a screen enclosure so not too much stuff gets in it.

I took care of everything myself for the first two years but decided it's worth the 70 a month to just let a pool guy come clean and test water and add chemicals weekly.

I wouldn't own one if others parts of the country but here its worth it.

 

[Crghss]

When you have kids there are fine. Once kids leave/out grow it then it just sits with no one using it. Nice when I have parties around it, not in it.

If you get a salt water pool there pretty easy to maintain. add some chemicals every now and then. Also modern variable speed pumps make things easy also. If it is straight chlorine they suck.

Nice thing with above ground is you can get rid of it. I’m stuck with my in ground.

 

[TheGDog]

My son is in it 3-4 days a week and 7 in the summer.

That part is cool. I love watching my kid grow each year in his swimming prowess!

Another fun part when my Brizzy girl was healthy was that she'd spend the whole day when we had guests... bringing the tennis ball back to them and dropping it in the water by them, so that they could throw it for her! And the guests loved that!

 

[TheGDog]

BTW... another thought here... before you go for an in-ground pool... understand that when it comes time to repair the vessel of your pool and have it redone... it costs about the same amount of money to have it redone, as it does to have it removed. Because of how, by code, they have to compact all the dirt they put back in to fill it with, and that has to get signed off by an inspector too.

So if you don't have it removed properly that'll be a major ding in your property value. Since the new guy would then have to have that done properly, because a bank would want that done right before they'd fund a loan for that house. Just for liability reasons.

And if you go for an above ground pool, the sucky part about that is that you can't really be rambunctious in those pools. There's no cannon-balling into them or diving into them, anything like that, because they can only take soo much force being exerted on that rim and siding material before that rim will let go. You can push it a little bit, but it's risky. For a bit there my mom had an above ground pool, and I'd put my little brother on a floating ring in the center... and what I'd do is.... give a big shove downward on that floating ring.... then watch the wave ripple outward to the wall and come back converging on the center... and you them time it so that when that wave ring converges in the center and lifts up the floating ring... when it's falling back down in height you then give another big shove downward into the water and just keep doing that and timing it... and pretty soo you get this big-@$$ peak of water lifting the person in the floating ring up quite a ways... but when that circular wave of water starts picking up energy when it radiates back to the wall.... you're starting to play a real dicey game there! It's a damn lot of force for that rinky-dink rim to hold on and withstand!

 

[Antarctica]

Got one of those cheap intex things with the blow up ring. I think its 15 feet across and 42 inches deep. I've had two now over about 7 years. Paid about $175 for each of them. Also picked up an intex sand filter system for about $125 I think it was. Love them. Put it up in the summer and down in the fall. Throw some chlorine tabs in the floater every week or so and it more or less takes care of itself for 3-4 months.

I love it. The kids love it. They will be in and out of it 3-4 times per day 7 days a week in the summer.

Unfortunately, I think the prices on the Intek pools has gone through the roof over the past two years with tariffs and corona. I used to look at it as disposable but now I try to actually take care of it. When prices come back down, I'l buy a spare.

 

[bigjohn]

Got a mid grade above ground 20’ for my kids. Bought the automatic pool vacuum which IMO is a must. Installed it myself so deck and all I’ve got about $4500 in it. Other than throwing some shock in it every week and sticking the vacuum in it I don’t touch it. It probably takes me 30 minutes a week to maintain it. Worse thing I can say about it is the increase in electricity due to pump and having to repaint the deck. When my kids are done with it I plan on having a nice fire pit where it currently sits.

 

[Finch]

And if you go for an above ground pool, the sucky part about that is that you can't really be rambunctious in those pools. There's no cannon-balling into them or diving into them, anything like that, because they can only take soo much force being exerted on that rim and siding material before that rim will let go. You can push it a little bit, but it's risky. For a bit there my mom had an above ground pool, and I'd put my little brother on a floating ring in the center... and what I'd do is.... give a big shove downward on that floating ring.... then watch the wave ripple outward to the wall and come back converging on the center... and you them time it so that when that wave ring converges in the center and lifts up the floating ring... when it's falling back down in height you then give another big shove downward into the water and just keep doing that and timing it... and pretty soo you get this big-@$$ peak of water lifting the person in the floating ring up quite a ways... but when that circular wave of water starts picking up energy when it radiates back to the wall.... you're starting to play a real dicey game there! It's a damn lot of force for that rinky-dink rim to hold on and withstand!

Appreciate the insight and I honestly didn't think about not jumping or cannonballing into them. Makes sense and I just read the warranty and it strictly prohibits that. I'm sure it'll be hard to get the kids to adhere to this or even myself if I've had a few.

This might be one of those things where getting a summer membership somewhere would make more sense. Definitely have other/better things we could spend the money on.