Pools

[Green Monstah]

Pools are great. One thing I hate about pool in Houston is that they are very rarely fenced in. I'm not sure what advice you want, but spend the extra cash on a fence to keep the little ones out of the water. My little brother was found face down and unconcious in our fenced-in pool, but fortunately, a stepsister was able to administer cpr and revive him.

I have a good buddy that refused to pay a lot of money for the pool chemicals and found some website that tells you how to use bleach and baking soda to keep your pool clean and with the right ph. If you want more info, I can ask him.

[Moliere]

Pools

We also live at the end of a cul de sac with a pie shaped back yard. Good sized pool, lots of trees and bushes, but very little lawn to mow.

We absolutely love our pool for many of the same reasons you guys mentioned. Great for hanging out in the summer with the family and friends. We have people over swimming at least once or twice a week in the summer. It's also great for a quick dip after a hot run or bike ride. Instant cool down.

We have a regular chlorine pool. Some of our close friends have salt water. Theirs is a little easier to maintain and is a little easier on the eyes and swim suits. But I do my own pool work and maintenance and it is not really that big of a deal. Keep the debris traps clean, add chlorine as needed, brush it down once a week in the summer, add chemicals periodically. The only thing I dislike is having to take apart and clean the sand filter. Depending on the time of year and how much crap the kids kick or drag into the pool I have to do every couple of months. Takes 30-60 minutes to do.

If it fits the budget and space in the yard I would recommend a nice waterfall of some sort.
They look nice and the sound is very relaxing.

If I were building a new house I would definitely include an outdoor shower near the pool. Not so much for use before swimming, but it's great to have the kids lather up and get their night time clean up taken care of while they're already wet.

You should also think about what kind of cleaner system you want. Most of the older styles come with the hose and robot cleaners. Newer ones come with pop up cleaners. They are designed to coordinate when they pop up to help push the debris toward the cleaner intake in the deep end of the pool. They are much more subtle and less of a hassle than the automatic sweepers, but I don't think they do nearly as good a job. Just my opinion, as I've only ever had the pop up kind.

Light or dark bottom colored pool? Dark will increase water temps a couple of degrees in the summer. I think they look nicer, but some other friends of ours recently bought a place with a white pool bottom that looks great.

We don't have a pool cover. I'm not too worried about my own kids, as they are excellent swimmers. But we won't invite certain people over any more because they won't closely supervise their own little kids in the yard. Covers also help a ton with water evaporation if water rationing is an issue in your area.

Skip the diving board. Too dangerous, especially as the kids get bigger.

This is good. We have a list of wants, which likely will happen since we lucked out and found a good house that was cheaper than we had planned. We want the following:

- rock waterfall with a rock slide. These are fun and you can jump off of them but we'd limit their height. We've got one pool in our ward that has about a six foot rock formation. It's fun but definitely dangerous when jumping off it.
- hot tub, nothing fancy but it seems those that don't have one wish they did
- half bathroom. This is almost a must to keep wet kids from running through the house
- outside shower, not in the bathroom
- haven't thought about color but the last thing we need is more warmth.

[bluegoose]

This is good. We have a list of wants, which likely will happen since we lucked out and found a good house that was cheaper than we had planned. We want the following:

- rock waterfall with a rock slide. These are fun and you can jump off of them but we'd limit their height. We've got one pool in our ward that has about a six foot rock formation. It's fun but definitely dangerous when jumping off it.
- hot tub, nothing fancy but it seems those that don't have one wish they did
- half bathroom. This is almost a must to keep wet kids from running through the house
- outside shower, not in the bathroom
- haven't thought about color but the last thing we need is more warmth.

We have a hot tub that is attached to the pool filter system. It gets cleaned when the pool gets cleaned. When the filter is on, it also creates another little waterfall into the pool, as it is about 18 inches higher than and right next to the pool.

The down side of having this set up is that its not always hot, meaning when you want to use it you have to turn on the heater. During the summer months when the pool, is about 80-85 degrees it only takes 10-15 minutes to heat up to 100. But in the fall and winter, when the pool temp is in the 50s it can take 45 minutes or more to heat up.

[bluegoose]

[falafel]

Wow dude, that's awesome.

[TripletDaddy]

is that your pool? that is awesome. love it.

[PaloAltoCougar]

BG, the free-form pools looks way better than the basis rectangles, but I'm curious if you lose a lot of water due to evaporation without a cover. With the mandatory 25% cutbacks coming into play, I wonder how this will affect pool owners. At the moment, I wish I had a pool (with a cover) in my backyard rather than a big lawn.

[clackamascoug]

That's not a pool, that's a cement pond.

[Green Monstah]

New house and a pool in a downturn for your industry. #chutzpah

[TripletDaddy]

BG, the free-form pools looks way better than the basis rectangles, but I'm curious if you lose a lot of water due to evaporation without a cover. With the mandatory 25% cutbacks coming into play, I wonder how this will affect pool owners. At the moment, I wish I had a pool (with a cover) in my backyard rather than a big lawn.

is your lawn at least a free-form lawn or is it a basis rectangle?

[bluegoose]

BG, the free-form pools looks way better than the basis rectangles, but I'm curious if you lose a lot of water due to evaporation without a cover. With the mandatory 25% cutbacks coming into play, I wonder how this will affect pool owners. At the moment, I wish I had a pool (with a cover) in my backyard rather than a big lawn.

Our old place was like yours, no pool but huge lawn area. Great for throwing a football, lousy for summer heat management and terrible on mowing day.

We lose a ton of water in the summer from evaporation. We are actually likely going to be one of the lucky cities in the state that gets a mandatory 36% cutback this year. I am going to get a bubble cover to put over most of the pool this year, leaving a couple of openings for the dogs to jump in and cool off. They can reduce evaporation by up to 50-70%, or so says energy.gov.

[bluegoose]

Wow dude, that's awesome.

is that your pool? that is awesome. love it.

Thanks. That picture is 3-4 years old. The two date palms next to the water fall are about twice as big now, and the queen palm on the left is a monster at close to 40 feet. I had the extension ladder and electric pole saw out last weekend trying to clean that sucker up.

[Jeff Lebowski]

That is beautiful, bluegoose. Well done.

[PaloAltoCougar]

is your lawn at least a free-form lawn or is it a basis rectangle?

Free-form, so we don't have a lawn cover.

[fusnik]

I won't post pictures of my pool since BG just won the thread.

We have a spa, water feature, chlorine and its gas heated.

The house has the pool already here, I don't think I could stomach 100k to put in what I want which is probably what you will spend if you get your wish list.

Few thoughts:

We pay someone to take care of it, for 110 bucks they take care of my rocks and clean my pool weekly. I don't see how cleaning it yourself could be much less expensive.

Wish we had a solar heating system. I don't care for the spa so it's not important that it gets super super hot and the solar heating systems can get your pool into the upper 90s, at least in Vegas.

I don't care we don't have a slide, they are usually pretty small anyways. We have friends who went all out, one out in a tree swing which can even support my fat ass, the other a pretty cool slide that originates from a roof of a casita. We also have friends who went the small route, and any kid older than 5 avoids it it seems.

We've been in the pool for about a month now, I don't know the costs of heating it but they don't seem extreme. I'm surprised Cardiac is claiming poverty and saying it costs a small vacation, where you vacationing bro? Little Cottonwood Canyon?

A shower would be amazing.

We have a fence that surrounds our pool (never have seen a pool cover in Vegas or AZ) and alarms on all our outside doors.

I'd skip the slides and just get volleyball nets and a bball hoop. I'm undefeated at HORSE or around the world, nobody can beat me, open challenge.

A pool is seriously like the greatest, we use it so much to relax, play, cool down.