Anyone here have a pool?

[Finch]

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.

Is it saltwater? Seems like I read saltwater is easier to maintain.

Also, which brand did you go with?

 

[FLS]

We had an in ground growing up in FL. It was awesome and a lot of work, but so is anything worth having. I had to keep it clean in order for me and my friends to use it. Lots of good times in and around that pool. Life’s short, have fun.

 

[bigjohn]

Is it saltwater? Seems like I read saltwater is easier to maintain.

Also, which brand did you go with?

It is not . I have just regular water and regular sand filter and honestly I can’t remember the brand. I’ll look and see if I can find a name on it. My mom and dad had one for us and it lasted 15 or more years. I do cover it every winter. 2 bags of shock each week and every now and then I’ll throw some baking soda in. I use a little home test kit to keep things balanced.

 

[Crghss]

This is dead wrong. I had a traditional chlorine pool in Ft Lauderdale, FL for 10 years. I now have a salt water pool in west palm beach, FL for 10 years. The salt is 10 times easier then chlorine.

 

[Keith5579]

We have one. Approx 30k gallons w/ diving board. The wife and kids love it. Like everyone said above, it's a high maintenance item. We're about to have the liner replaced which is approx $3500. Last year the pump was replaced. Year before that it was the vacuum.

 

[Kimber7man]

Salt generator here.

 

[PNWGATOR]

I wouldn’t own another given the choice. Grew up in FL with one and could swim 365 days a year. Didn’t. Maintenance, time and expense simply wasn’t worth it. Not a fan.
That said, sometimes you have to make sacrifices. If it’s the right thing to do for the family, why not.

 

[jmez]

What Antarctica said. We've had an Intek 3 years and should be fine next summer for year 4. We have a sand filter and use salt instead of chlorine. We cover it every night, takes about 45 secs. Hardly any maintenance with salt water. Kids vacuum it once a week. Pretty simple, was cheap, and kids are in it all summer.

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

 

[Carr5vols]

Have a inground pool and the kids and wife love it. They start using it around Easter through Halloween ( georgia). I use it to get clean after working/mowing or going on a long ruck. Would do it again in a heartbeat. Key is to have a pool house so wet people not running in and out of the main house. Salt cells with a cleaner are the way to go very little maintenance. We never even close ours down in the winter. Every year after superbowl me or one of the boys have to get in based on the score .. .

 

[Yard Candy]

“I saw a commercial for an above-ground pool, it was 30 seconds long. Because that's the maximum amount of time you can picture yourself having fun in an above-ground pool. If it was 31 seconds, the actor would say "The water is only up to here? What do I do now? Throw the ball back to Jimmy? Or put some goggles on and look at his feet?"”
— Mitch Hedberg

Joking aside, we have a 25k gallon in ground and love it. As others have mentioned if you're not the kind of person that enjoys working out in the yard, a pool is not for you. They do take some time, patience, and upkeep. Once you get the hang of it though, as long as you keep up with it and test the water often, maintianing healthy water isn't terribly difficult.

 

[Sccritterkiller]

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.

I do construction for living could have probably installed a inground myself...and this is what we did we aren't staying here forever and didn't want to limit my market when we do decide to sell.

I humored the wife and she had some "installers" come out...they wanted some crazy payment scheme like 80% once the hole is dug....so you want 80% of the payment before the concrete truck gets here? When I got a look from the salesmen when he asked what I did for a living I knew the BS was going to be waste deep. I dont know anyone who has installed a in ground pool and raved about how great the experience was....

 

[KurtR]

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!

Your restraint is commendable. I think that guy might have went swimming had i been in that situation

 

[TheGDog]

Your restraint is commendable. I think that guy might have went swimming had i been in that situation

Karma did have his way with the @$$hole to a small degree though. Later on in the evening the idiot stubbed his toe into the legs of one of my bar height lil bistro sized 2'x2' square tables I built for when we entertain. And he was bleeding like a stuck pig! Not ashamed to say that I was laughing maniacally inside about that one!

I feel soo bad for his wife though. Both were Asian, and she was just a doll! The sweatest demeanor. And she was fine too. And you could totally tell that they must have married when they were much much younger and WAY LONG before this chic realized what her worth is. Dude was mo'-fugly.

Same day... I'm in the water with my son... because he was just learning to tread water and traverse the pool length-wise. This f**ktard was on the steps, with his wife. She's on the steps in front of him, facing him. The dude is playing around acting like he's pushing her in... then rapidly catching her again at the shoulders. That alone had me trippin' like "Aw Hell Naw..."

And then... as we're getting close to this area, he does that push a 3rd time... and that 3rd time? Mu 'f**ker didn't even try to catch her! In she goes... clothes and all. Poor thing. And get this! She comes up... and I'm expecting her to be freakin' furious and all right.... but she's just laughin' about it! I think it was more of a nervous reaction to it and the embarassment of it all, to save face.

Anyhoo... just makes ya sick to your stomach to see a good woman like that paired with some a-hole like him that musta lucked-out and met her when they were just kids.

 

[hunt1up]

My kids always ask for a pool. My daughter is 9 and does swim team in the summer. We live in a town of 1400 people and we have a really nice public pool for such a small town that is clean and modern. It's a 3 minute walk from my house and is never crowded. My folks have an above ground pool with a deck around it and my brother just bought a house with salt water in ground pool. They're both 25 minutes away. So the odds of me having a pool at my house are 0%, maybe less than 0%.

Pool People are similar to Boat People. They're objects that you have to enjoy using or else they just sit. Funny that I have zero desire to own a pool but I have two boats.

 

[Laramie]

I have owned a 30K in ground and a couple above ground pools. I hate them, all of them. Huge PIA imo. That said, I will be setting up an above ground in the spring. My wife and youngest both love to swim.

 

[nrh6.7]

My pool was the bane of my existence! Hated the thing with a passion. Between utility costs and chemicals it was costing minimum of $150/month, plus the time I spent working to keep it cleaned and backwashed. It gets dang hot down here and without some form of evaporative cooling to keep the temp down, it was like bath water and not all that enjoyable to swim later in the summer.

So after it came time to redo the plaster and some hardware upgrades, we decided to get rid of it once and for all. Hired an excavator guy to come out and get rid of it. Cost about twice what the repairs were going to run, but I never have deal with it again. Best money I ever spent.

 

[Opah]

spend a little extra and get the salt water converter, never ever ever have to add chlorine, Never ever have to worry about algae or your pool turning green.
For a fun low/low maintenance pool go with salt water.
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[TheGDog]

So can these systems be installed inline with your current system? This sounds interesting if it's not all crazy pricey, as I have sensitive skin and eyes, etc.

 

[Mike Islander]

Had ours for 25 years. In ground that came with the house. We love it. I use it year round, but I am a wild old mountain man. Had to break through the ice on this day.


Above ground is cheap enough that you can always try it for a year or two and see if you like it.

 

[TheGDog]

Just after getting it redone in PebbleTec in 2015...

If you DO end up going for a pool... definitely get a Baja shelf in it. In other peoples places where they have that feature I noticed the people really like hanging out in that part of it.