Swimming pool? Considering one in backyard

I grew up swimming in stock ponds, creeks and the Brazos River. I would not know how to have fun in a backyard pool unless there are several cow pies laying around....
 
We have an in ground concrete pool. It got a lot more use when the kids were young. Not as much now, but I still enjoy it. Maintenance isn't bad IF you have a screen enclosure. Otherwise it's a PITA to keep bugs and leaves out.

Check on insurance. Some companies will cancel your homeowners policy if you have a diving board or a slide, some don't want it more than 5' deep,...
 
The current one is figure of 8 shaped with a 8ft deep end and a 3ft shallow end. 3 ft is still plenty enough for a toddler to drown but too shallow for an adult to do turns. If I ever build a pool its going to be a 5ft deep one lane 20 yd lap pool with a small semicircular shallow area/beach and stairs. My kids are swimmers and guests are just going to have to watch their spawn.
 
We are about 2 weeks away from closing on selling our house - we put a pool in about 10 years ago. We will not be putting in a pool at the new house.

I really wanted the convenience of a pool at home - no driving home in wet swimsuits, packing bags to go to the pool, etc. So we went for it. Initial cost from the pool company 10 years ago was $28k (in ground, gunite), plus the concrete for the deck, plus the code-required fencing. I think we ended up at about $35k all in, with the above bits, water delivery for the initial fill, misc. bits, etc.

The chemicals and maintenance were not a horribly big deal. Chems are not that expensive, and maintenance was 15 minutes a day, and 1 hour a week. We had a robotic vacuum that lived in the pool when we weren't using it. It ran on a secondary timer and helped a lot with the maintenance. It broke 2 years ago, we didn't replace it, and maintenance increased with manual vacuuming. We had no drama from our homeowner's insurance company (I don't think our rates even went up), but we didn't have a diving board, and it was only 6.5 feet at the deep end.

The thing that killed me was the electricity to run the filters. We had a lot of direct sunlight, and sunlight + heat kills chlorine, so we ran the pump 6-ish hours a day from June through August. The rest of the time it was open, it was more like 4 hours a day. That added several hundred dollars a month to our already AC-laden electric bills.

I realized as we were contemplating our next house, that I can get a country club membership at a pretty good place for the same, or less in upfront and monthly costs. And I get tennis, golf, and social activities, in addition to the pools.

I have no idea if the pool added or detracted from our success at selling the house. We got less than I had hoped, but I think that was more due to other factors, than to the pool. We did get a couple bits of negative feedback about it from showing agents - mainly that the neighbors could see right into it from their houses (duh, small lots).

We had fun with it, but I'm not sure we could have had equal amounts of fun at a public pool.
 
I'm the dummy with two pools, in Georgia we built a large vinyl liner pool when we built the house in 2002, kids were young and we used it a lot! Replaced to liner once about 5 years ago. In Destin, we sold a condo with a pool, for a house and we installed a small concrete pool with a hot tub attached. All in on the latest pool was around $65K, including adding natural gas to the house for the heater. We are planning on downsizing our house in Georgia in the next few years and I'd probably do another pool, it would be smaller than what we have now and more of an entertaining area.
 
Put a sip line in and make sure your liability & heath insurance are paid up.... ;)

I've had two houses with pools. One in Maryland about 25 years ago (before it really became the People's Republic) - in ground with vinyl liner, no heater. Used it a few weeks during the summer, spent more time fishing dead mice, voles, moles and other critters out of the pool. Had to replace the liner. Fair amount of other maintenance. More costly than it was worth, but looked great out the bedroom windows. Treed yard. I wanted to fill it in and turn it into a tennis court, but some real estate agent convinced me that the property was worth more with a pool (I'm not sure....).

When we moved to San Antonio, got a house with pool and built-in/attached hot tub, with heater. Pool was great, didn't use it as much as we might have, but I think we spent more time in the hot tub. Still had to keep it clean but the robot did pretty well. Chemicals were expensive and tended to corrode things. I probably spent a few hundred a year on maintenance and chemicals.... until the last year before we moved. Ground settled a bit, the gunnite developed a hairline crack and we'd lose maybe a hundred gallons of water a week (above evaporation, which we had to minimize by law thanks to water restrictions). Had to repair/replace part of the controller that left the heater stuck on (with the yard guy yelling "caliente, caliente" one day as I came home). Given the climate, I'd probably do a pool again in that part of the world with heater and hot tub, but have no illusion that it will be cheap.
 
Buy a C-47 instead.
It will cost about the same to operate as a pool.
Fly it in the rain, and you will get all the water you need, in the back.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
chemicals, electricity for the pumps, and parts that broke. I'm not sure your climate, but in Ohio we realistically only got 3-4 months of use out of the year. The rest of the time, it was this giant part of the back yard that was unusable, and ugly because it was covered up. It also didn't get hot enough because the area was shaded. So we ended up putting solar pool heaters on the roof of the house. That worked great for heating the pool and cooling the house, but cost $6,500 more to put in. I wholeheartedly recommend that. I refuse to run a gas propane heater - the pool came with one and we sold it. That would drive up the cost even further.
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My cousin was going through the same grief with his pool, so he got a permit and bought a pre-fab building to put over the pool, and another small prefab to connect it to his house.
Cost more, up front, but In the end he has a pool he can use all year, and his overall costs have gone down. The pool is a water source in case of fire, so his insurance is lower, and by keeping the pool at 68 degrees, it's a huge heat source for the house.
 
Oh man, I didn't build a pool, but I completely rebuilt one (in ground ofcourse).

Long story, but to with pebbletec for the coating, pentar for the pumps and hardware, REALLY think out the plumbing, I was able to only use one pump with the clever use of some valves for the pool, tub and a separate reflecting pool.

Since then I sold that house and just bought waterfront. A properly set up pool isn't that bad Mx wise, but you're ether going to spend a little more at first, or a little more every month in MX.
 
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