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IveGotTwins

IveGotTwins

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Anybody own/maintain their own in-ground pool?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm looking at buying a house some time over the next couple of weeks. I found one that is 4 bedroom, 2000 sq ft, has a pool and it's within my price range. I was thinking too good to be true but it turns out it's a bank owned property.

I just don't know if I'll have the time or money to invest into maintaining the pool that comes with the house.

Is letting it lie dormant for a while with some sort of cover an option? I have small children and having a giant hole in the backyard doesn't seem safe.

Any opinions appreciated.
 
IveGotTwins said:
Anybody own/maintain their own in-ground pool?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm looking at buying a house some time over the next couple of weeks. I found one that is 4 bedroom, 2000 sq ft, has a pool and it's within my price range. I was thinking too good to be true but it turns out it's a bank owned property.

I just don't know if I'll have the time or money to invest into maintaining the pool that comes with the house.

Is letting it lie dormant for a while with some sort of cover an option? I have small children and having a giant hole in the backyard doesn't seem safe.

Any opinions appreciated.
Click to expand...

Pools are easy to maintain, just check them with the test strips and add stuff as needed. Salt water pools are even easier. I spend maybe 10 minutes per week maintaining our ordinary non-saltwater in-ground pool. The pump's on a timer and that runs an automatic pool sweep. Add a couple chlorine tablets to the intake every couple of days (more in the summer when it's hot). Empty the leaves and grass and sand from the sweep every so often. Add acid every few weeks. Usually don't need clarifier or algaecide at all if you keep the pH and chlorine in the box.

If you forget to look at it for a week and get an algae bloom, then yeah it's a bitch to clear up.


Most covers aren't going to be kid-safe. There are a few kid-safe automatic ones out there that can be (expensively) retrofitted to existing pools. You either need it to be in a fenced area the kids can't access, or lock and alarm the house doors leading to it.

Our cover is just a thermal blanket. It extends the swimming season a lot, and helps keep most debris out during the winter when we don't use it, but it's definitely not a safety feature.
 
Other things to factor in are if there are blooming trees near the pool. If so, the clean up can be more extensive depending on how big the trees are.
There are also sensors that you can get for when the pool surface is disturbed for child safety. Have never used one, but have heard there are lots of false alarms.

Salt water pools are easier to maintain in the short term but tend to cause excessive wear on the equipment and some of the stone coping around the pool.

Pool services are very expensive and, in my experience, a rip off. I would avoid if you can do it yourself.

If I had it to do over, I would not get a pool. Everyone in my family disagrees, but they are not the ones doing the work.

Good luck and keep your kids safe.
 
Pools=elitism...
 
Robert Loblaw said:
Pools=elitism...
Click to expand...

i-see-what-you-did-there-261.jpg
 
Gern Blansten said:
If I had it to do over, I would not get a pool. Everyone in my family disagrees, but they are not the ones doing the work.
Click to expand...

It's going to be 100+ degrees here for the next 5 months. I wouldn't go so far as to say I would refuse to live here without a pool ('cause that might make me an elitist 🙂) but that hole in the ground was the first home improvement we did and was money well spent.
 
pgg said:
It's going to be 100+ degrees here for the next 5 months. I wouldn't go so far as to say I would refuse to live here without a pool ('cause that might make me an elitist 🙂) but that hole in the ground was the first home improvement we did and was money well spent.
Click to expand...

There are some communities that have "community pools," which I would like a lot better, I think. I admit that I enjoy having a pool, but it is not without headaches, expenses, and repair costs.
 
Gern Blansten said:
There are some communities that have "community pools," which I would like a lot better, I think. I admit that I enjoy having a pool, but it is not without headaches, expenses, and repair costs.
Click to expand...

That would be a commoner's solution, yes. If it's the best you can do, I say take it or plebe it...
 
Gern Blansten said:
There are some communities that have "community pools," which I would like a lot better, I think. I admit that I enjoy having a pool, but it is not without headaches, expenses, and repair costs.
Click to expand...

Community pool?!
Just the thought's making me itch and have a Caddyshack flashback. I belong to a pool and tennis club. That's how the 1% roll. Of course the 0.1% have their own olympic size pool and tennis courts. That's balling. I thought about putting a pool in when we bought the house, but between the club and the beach, I'm covered.

Cheers!
 
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My recommendation after owning a hot tub for a while is to get a Taylor drop test kit. You will be amazed at how far off the strips can be.

Taylor Complete FAS-DPD Pool Water Test Kit K-2006

That one is for chlorine maintenance, they have a separate one for bromine.

Taylor Complete FAS-DPD Pool Water Test Kit K-2106

I prefer bromine, but it requires a floater of some sort where chlorine doesn't (at least in the hot tub). Salt water chlorine generator is the bomb if you can get one installed on your system.

A helpful calculator for figuring out how much of each chemical you need to add

http://www.poolcalculator.com/

Check out the pool and hot tub chem sections on poolspaforum.com. Really good info on pool and spa maintenance.

- pod
 
Robert Loblaw said:
Pools=elitism...
Click to expand...

It's only elitism if YOU put in a pool. If you buy a house that already has one, the previous owner is the one that paid the bulk of the cost, because the value of the home is not increased much (if at all) by the cost of the pool.
 
I'm with Arch. I work in the PICU, so the answer has always been clear to me. My parents are retiring in Florida and didn't get their own in ground pool because of my kids who will visit from time to time. Unless all of your kids are excellent independent swimmers-- I say no to the pool until that is the case-- and even then with great caution.

I'm totally being a downer here, but the number of children we see after near drownings is staggering-- year round-- and it's always because a kid somehow ended up in the backyard with no supervision and was found facedown in their own pool, grandma's pool, the neighbor's pool....it's horrible. 2 year olds, 5 year olds, older kids.... Or a kid falls in the empty hole in the winter because there's a hole in the cover, etc. etc. and they have a TBI. Fences aren't fool proof-- older kid leaves fence door open for a brief second, little kid hobbles in....the last kid I saw was a 10 month old.

Even when my kids are excellent swimmers I won't get a pool because I'd be freaked out about neighbor children somehow getting into it. Can't have that on my conscience.

Obviously I'm a little jaded but this is what I see. Sorry to be depressing. My 2 cents.
 
IveGotTwins said:
Anybody own/maintain their own in-ground pool?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm looking at buying a house some time over the next couple of weeks. I found one that is 4 bedroom, 2000 sq ft, has a pool and it's within my price range. I was thinking too good to be true but it turns out it's a bank owned property.

I just don't know if I'll have the time or money to invest into maintaining the pool that comes with the house.

Is letting it lie dormant for a while with some sort of cover an option? I have small children and having a giant hole in the backyard doesn't seem safe.

Any opinions appreciated.
Click to expand...

I don't have a pool, but I would like to know what kind of smoker your avatar is!
 
So to summarize...

it's not that hard to maintain a pool
Salt water easier to maintain but hard on the components
I'm not elitist because I'm not putting it in myself
If I let my horse(s) use it then maybe I am elitist
My children and the neighborhood kids will most certainly meet a watery end

I appreciate all the info. I am seriously thinking about not even looking at the house because I do worry about the risk of one of the kids falling in.

My smoker is a brinkman split-door, found at the most elitist of haberdasheries -
Wal-mart.
 
jwk said:
It's only elitism if YOU put in a pool. If you buy a house that already has one, the previous owner is the one that paid the bulk of the cost, because the value of the home is not increased much (if at all) by the cost of the pool.
Click to expand...
So ripping out an existing and putting in a new one must make me completely reprehensible...
 
Before I bought my house with a pool, I was a firm 'no pool we got kids' guy. Then a house become available on THE ONLY STREET we wanted to live on and it had a pool so we sucked it up and bought it. We closed early May.

Opened the pool a month later - what a mess.

Ran the pump and filter for a solid week and eventually the water was clear and sparkling.

Kids weren't great swimmers - scattered swimming lessons here and there.

By the end of the summer, my older kid was diving and doing laps, and my younger kid was able to breath-hold and jump into the deep end and dog paddle to the shallow side. They swam almost every day the entire summer. Monitored, of course. But they took to the pool so quickly it amazed us.

Maintaining a pool is easy if you use the bleach-borax-bicarb method of chlorine/pH/alkalinity balancing. Getting a good non-test strip pool testing kit is key, and resist the pool guy's 'bring a sample of your water to test' which always results in $300 of chemicals you didn't need.

This year's pool opening was much easier since we maintained it and closed it properly. Only took two days to make the pool swimmable.

The old tarp cover is going south fast so we're thinking of getting one of those mesh safety covers that will support 500 lbs/sq foot for child and dog safety and plain aesthethics. It will be expensive but if lasts 10+ years, money well spent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upTo5RipGFM&feature=related

IMG_20120511_173732.jpg
 
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dhb said:
What about a pool for your horses?
Click to expand...

dhb wins the thread with this. Also, I grew up in a house with a pool. And while I did absolutely none of the work for it (i sometimes cleaned the filters) I would say having a pool was fantastic! we were required to take lots of swimming lessons at a young age, there was a fence, and the door to go outside had a lock and an alarm. Plus, the kids will be the envy of all their friends! And our dog only almost drowned it in once the first week we had him, but luckily even the dog wasnt allowed near the pool unsupervised, and my dad dove in for the rescue.
 
dhb said:
Nice pool tkim
Click to expand...

thanks - 16 x 40. never considered a pool this large, but now i couldn't see a smaller pool making sense. being able to do long laps in the pool makes a difference. besides, the horse can only swim in the deep end.
 
michigangirl said:
I'm with Arch. I work in the PICU, so the answer has always been clear to me. My parents are retiring in Florida and didn't get their own in ground pool because of my kids who will visit from time to time. Unless all of your kids are excellent independent swimmers-- I say no to the pool until that is the case-- and even then with great caution.

I'm totally being a downer here, but the number of children we see after near drownings is staggering-- year round-- and it's always because a kid somehow ended up in the backyard with no supervision and was found facedown in their own pool, grandma's pool, the neighbor's pool....it's horrible. 2 year olds, 5 year olds, older kids.... Or a kid falls in the empty hole in the winter because there's a hole in the cover, etc. etc. and they have a TBI. Fences aren't fool proof-- older kid leaves fence door open for a brief second, little kid hobbles in....the last kid I saw was a 10 month old.

Even when my kids are excellent swimmers I won't get a pool because I'd be freaked out about neighbor children somehow getting into it. Can't have that on my conscience.

Obviously I'm a little jaded but this is what I see. Sorry to be depressing. My 2 cents.
Click to expand...

Using this logic there should be no pools anywhere, privately owned or public.

Why don't we ban farm ponds? Lakes? Rivers? Any open body of water is an invitation to a kid.

Don't get me started on bathtubs - how many kids drown there every year, not to mention over-the-hill alcoholic drug-abusing divas?
 
IveGotTwins said:
Anybody own/maintain their own in-ground pool?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm looking at buying a house some time over the next couple of weeks. I found one that is 4 bedroom, 2000 sq ft, has a pool and it's within my price range. I was thinking too good to be true but it turns out it's a bank owned property.

I just don't know if I'll have the time or money to invest into maintaining the pool that comes with the house.

Is letting it lie dormant for a while with some sort of cover an option? I have small children and having a giant hole in the backyard doesn't seem safe.

Any opinions appreciated.
Click to expand...

I have small children and a pool. I was also very, very, very concerned about the safety factor, before I bought my house. Here are the following things that made having a pool acceptably safe for my wife and I:

#1. Watch your kids every second (by itself no guarantee, I know) and respect the fact that a 2 minute distraction can be catastrophic. This applies to kids and not just pools, but lakes/ponds/rivers, roads and cars, subways, hotels/apartments with balconies, human beings (child predators), round food items (grapes, hot dogs, nuts) that can cause a silent choking death in 4 minutes, cords on blinds/treadmills which kids can strangle on accidentally (happened to Mike Tyson's kid), medications, drain cleaner, firearms, etc. Having kids can just plain be scary at times, in general. You have to assume accidents can happen and that prevention is key.

#2 Door alarms that chime every time a house door opens in my home, so that the kids can't sneak out unnoticed. An added layer of safety.

#3 Pool safety fence that is actually drilled into the pool deck with a self locking, self closing gate (by itself, no guarantee, I know). Another added layer of safety.

http://www.protectachild.com/pool-fence-products.html

#4 Trampoline cover for off season which you can actually walk across.

#5 Swimming lessons for my kids since age 2 (by itself, no guarantee, either, but the sooner they are proficient swimmers, the better). Another added layer of safety.

#6 Age appropriate teaching so your kids understand the danger of pools/lakes/rivers and water in general (also, by itself, no guarantee).

#7 Again, watching your kids every second.

These factors combined greatly increase the safety of having a pool.

Kids are just accidents waiting to happen, in general, and as a parent you have to be vigilant every second/minute/hour/day/year and never let your guard down.

There are no guarantees, and "never say never", but I worry much more about my my kids being at a birthday party where someone has an uncovered, unfenced pool, with 20 kids, 20 distracted parents, lots of noise, and a chaotic environment where everyone's guard is down.

If you're not comfortable with a pool, don't get one. Without the above measures, I wouldn't be either.
 
periopdoc said:
Check out the pool and hot tub chem sections on poolspaforum.com. Really good info on pool and spa maintenance.

- pod
Click to expand...

Used a Taylor drop test growing up taking care of my pool. And I was far from an elitist.

Incidentally, you ever see any douche behavior, spats or bans over at that forum? Big fights over salt v. chlorinated? How often you should backwash?
 
My fiance wanted (past tense emphasized) to get a house with a pool when we get married, until I told her that I have no intention to lift a finger to maintain a pool, and will have to study instead...and I'm not going to pay for the upkeep of a pool with student loans.

I previously held a job where I helped maintain a pool (chemicals and using the net/vacuum to clean out leaves). My coworker and I did a great job with that pool; he was very sharp and taught me a lot.

The utility bill will increase in peak season, but I guess you've got that covered. If there were little kids running around the house that had a pool, I would fill it in with sand and let it be a big sand box/playground for the kids to play on. Or even better, fill it in with sand, thin pave concrete over it to make a basketball court for me to play on. To me, the safety risks/concerns/work/cost of a pool outweigh the benefits. You don't own a pool, it owns you and your time.

If your kids have neighborhood friends, and said friends want to swim in your pool, make both of their parents sign a form (I'm sure that you can write it) that releases you of any wrong doing/liability/healthcare costs if their kid gets injured/dies in your pool. Very unlikely and unfortunate if it were to occur, but you are a doctor who will be making a decent income, and unfortunately someone out there would like to make your money their money.
The same concept should go for a large trampoline if you have one of those, too.
 
Bertelman said:
Incidentally, you ever see any douche behavior, spats or bans over at that forum? Big fights over salt v. chlorinated? How often you should backwash?
Click to expand...

Funny you should say that, the last sentence of my post, that I ultimately deleted before posting, read something like this... "You will find a bunch of douchebag behavior and ridiculous bashing of 'uninformed opinions,' but you should be used to that after participating on SDN... and like SDN there is a lot of gold if you filter through the rubble."

- pod
 
Narcotized said:
Converted to saltwater chlorine generator 2 years ago. Best pool move I ever made.
Click to expand...

Took 3-4 years before I started seeing the wear and tear of the salt water on the components and the natural stone with mine. Before that, I thought it was awesome.
 
Narcotized said:
Well that's definitely not what I wanted to hear.
Click to expand...

I have heard others that did not have as big of a problem and have seen others that had a bigger problem than me. It seems variable. Flagstone or other natural stone coping does not fare well in my experience.
There is sealant you can get that helps the slow the stone erosion. One person says you should frequently seal it (once a year) and rinse the coping after each use with a water hose. The salt water gets dripped on the coping stone and when it evaporates, only the salt is left which slowly erodes. Hopefully your stone coping is more resistant or is some sort of man made stone (brick material seems to do better).
I did a quick search on google and found this page where people have written in to gripe about flagstone specifically.
http://www.the-flagstone-experts.com/flagstone-coping-around-swimming-pool.html
 
Gotta love internet forums!

I'm looking forward to having a pool again one day. Maybe I should join up there so I can extend my join date, then lurk for a while before building my post count/forum cred. I bet there's good pool porn pics, too. Sick water falls, PVC plumbing, and unbelievable filter clogs.
 
jwk said:
Using this logic there should be no pools anywhere, privately owned or public.

Why don't we ban farm ponds? Lakes? Rivers? Any open body of water is an invitation to a kid.

Don't get me started on bathtubs - how many kids drown there every year, not to mention over-the-hill alcoholic drug-abusing divas?
Click to expand...

This doesn't make any sense.

Ponds, lakes and rivers are all natural elements. Pools are not.
 
Just about everybody who doesn't have a dangerous pool 25 feet from their back door will have a dangerous public road 25 feet from their front door.

Minimizing the risk from either is the same. Watch the kids, lock the doors. If you add a secondary barrier (fence) +/- an alarm system the pool is arguably safer.

I get that the road is a risk that is common to almost every home everywhere, while the pool is a risk one chooses to have or not have ...
 
Bertelman said:
Gotta love internet forums!

I'm looking forward to having a pool again one day. Maybe I should join up there so I can extend my join date, then lurk for a while before building my post count/forum cred. I bet there's good pool porn pics, too. Sick water falls, PVC plumbing, and unbelievable filter clogs.
Click to expand...

They have a section called "Hot Tub Water Chemistry." I think we all know what that means...
 
pgg said:
I get that the road is a risk that is common to almost every home everywhere, while the pool is a risk one chooses to have or not have ...
Click to expand...

Exactly. And most drivers have eyes and are driving at speeds where STOPPING at the sight of a child is an option in a neighborhood. A pool can't do much to prevent catastrophe. That would be one sophisticated pool.
The comparisons to ponds, rivers, lakes-- c'mon guys. Bathtubs? I know I'm watching my kid in the bathtub, can't control what others do. I do know I can keep other peoples kids from drowning in my bathtub though 🙂 not so much with a pool, even with all safeguards in place.

Having a pool is a choice. If swimming in your own pool is extremely important to you, like anything else, you take the risk. I went skydiving once. I took the risk. I get in my car each day. I take the risk. The car thing, I don't have much choice.There's a higher chance of my children meeting catastrophe when I drive them to school each day then drowning in someone's pool. But I don't care enough about swimming at home to take on the extra risk of my kids or other kids drowning in MY pool. not worth it to me-- but it is worth it to others, and I respect that.
 
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