The wife and I have been discussing it and I think we have finally made the decision to go for it.
My question is free form or fiberglass? Pros/cons?
Pool companies in the area? I know the 3 bigger players in the area. Anyone have personal experiences (good/bad) with any particular one? Feel free to PM me if you don’t want to publicly bash any particular company.
Lighting, pumps/filters or any upgrades that I should consider?
Having had both, free form with gunite and tile take a lot more care and cleaning than fiberglass. Make for a much nicer looking pool if you keep up the maintenance though.
Go salt water. Greatly reduces the amount of daily head scratching to keep chlorine levels where they should be.
I agree with TB, salt water is the way to go. Have had or have family / friends who have both & fiberglass is far less headache.
Where I am now we have well water & these dry hot summers are just too much to try & keep it up with my well (some wells can but not my current one).
We went with a swimspa, love it so far. Far less maintenance & chemicals (cannot do salt water on one I went with). It is 15ft x 8ft & 5ft deep, works great for relaxing & one swimmer with jets turned on. Also can use it all year long, as long as you can take the cold trip from the water to the back door in the colder months. Pros & cons for it vs pool but perfect for us.
Getting a pool is like getting a wife, or a kid, or a puppy. You have to take care of it every day and it takes a lot of time and money. Once you have one it’s a constant commitment and not one that can easily be got rid of when tired of it.
We have a large above ground Doughboy, had it about 15 years now. It’s a PIMA and the dog uses it more than I do, but can’t have a green swamp at the back door, so off to clean the pool again.
The salt pools are easier to maintain and cheaper but they all get dirty and pretty quickly. I would be willing to be that most people that do get pools regret it before the end of their first season. I don’t know the maintenance cost of the one at my grandmas but when I stayed there over the summer as a kid the cleaning got old quick. By the time I was in my upper teens I usually avoided using it because it wasn’t worth having to help clean it.
If you get one be prepared to set aside 2-5 hours a week for cleaning depending on vegetation conditions in your yard.
love our pool and besides having replaced the liner once not long after we moved in and the pump twice … not really much trouble at all. we have a inground with gunite and liner type. chlorine. we learned early on easier to keep it open and maintain it through the winter then to shut down and cover…and the covers are pretty ugly to me.love looking out of the window at it…love soaking in it on hot summer days or nights. loved getting in it after a day of fishing or working in the yard. It was here when we bought the house 16 years ago…wouldn’t want to give it up/////and as far as cleaning…no problem at all. have only had algae problem a hand full of time…and was a easy fix. we also have a floating and side mount fountain for it that makes it very peaceful…just have to keep bonzo and capnsandbar out of it
I actually use chlorine and have found it to be pretty easy to work with. Started with a peroxide based chemical but after a couple of years I could not control algae. I looked at the thing you put in to convert salt to chlorine but decided to try regular chlorine first. I keep a floating tablet dispenser in the pool and put 2 scoops of granular in a week and it has worked fine. No “over chlorinated” smell either. Of course I hardly use it so I do all the work for the spouse and kids.
“Apathy is the Glove into Which Evil Slips It’s Hand”, but really, who cares?
A lot of work! You’ll use the heck out of it the 1st season or 2 and then it tapers off! Then it becomes JOB! Constant drain on the wallet and gets to hot in in the middle of the Summer, to be of any value! Plus, it will be a floating Pine Pollen collector in the Spring! You’ll be better off, making a Putting Green with the space! And those are the upsides of pool ownership:face_with_head_bandage:
A lot of work! You’ll use the heck out of it the 1st season or 2 and then it tapers off! Then it becomes JOB! Constant drain on the wallet and gets to hot in in the middle of the Summer, to be of any value! Plus, it will be a floating Pine Pollen collector in the Spring! You’ll be better off, making a Putting Green with the space! And those are the upsides of pool ownership:face_with_head_bandage:
Nah, that only happens if you're old and lazy.
I’m going 9 years strong with ours, switched to salt without any complications. Very easy to maintain, more so if you have very few trees around. Keep up with it and its a piece of cake.
I highly recommend Atkinson Pool company for new construction ,extremely knowledgeable and they’ve been doing business in town since 1984.
We have a few weeks of leaves and then those squiggly things …this year I ordered a leaf net from doheneys…cost me a little over 50 bucks. didn’t oreder the weighted water bags…got some pool stakes and ordered it big enough to stake out without being too too big. wish I had doe this years ago!!! leaves and squigglies fall on top Donnie takes the blower and blows off what the wind hasn’t. I inflated a float and stuck under it to give the center a little more support…the net is pulled tight and about 8 inchs above the water. undo one side and pullit across to vaccum the pool of what little may fall through once a week. For that we have one of the leaf bag things that you hook to a waterhose and push with a pool pole…and heres a tip…uses 59cent knee highs from Walmart instead of the leaf net. double them and they will catch even the smallest debri on the bottom…then just toss away.
we have had our pool for16 years…I do not find it to be hard work at all and we enjoy it more every year we have it…and I am old and lazy
My wife and I moved to a house with a pool a little more than a year ago. Neither if us had owned a house with a pool before and we were kinda ambivalent about it. In the end we really enjoyed it, and spent a lot of summer weekends just hanging out in and around the pool. This was an older pool, fiberglass construction.
We are in the middle of installing a new, free form, gunite, salt pool. Aqua Blue Pools have been a pleasure to work with and gave us some ideas in the design process. Should be finished by the end of May.
I worked at one of the big local pool companies on route maintenance, both commercial and residential.
Fiberglass pools have less issues with algae and stuff that can get into the porous sides and corners of gunnite pools. The coating is more impermeable to black algae and other stuff and reacts better to scrubbing. However, with the right tiles and stuff the concrete pools can look a lot better / high end.
Like a lot of things, pools need a modest amount of regular work (at least weekly). If you can get into the routine it will be fine. If you let it go for two or three weeks and then do the maintenance, it’s a LOT harder.
“You have the right to the pursuit of happiness. You do not have a guarantee that you shall have it.”
You go with the local companies that have been in business for some time and you cant go wrong. They can provide recent references and actually take you to some pools they’ve built. They will leave you with a quality product. The maintenance you perform, or contract, will determine how the wearing surface holds up. Proper water chemistry will give you the best life, poorly maintained pools use more chemicals that will eat the surface. A good quality surface should last 15-20 years, if water chemistry is kept at perfect levels.
…