I'm being transferred to another city and one of the houses on my short list for location just happens to have a little in-ground concrete pool in the back yard. Something like a Fastlane would have to be installed in it to make it a true swimming pool. This being the Great White North, it probably would be usable from late May to mid-September only, unless I put a building over it.
How much work and expense is involved in operating a backyard pool? Is it worth the trouble? I'm assuming it's usable as the MLS photos showed it full of water.
We never would have put in a pool in a million years, but when we moved here my husband fell in love with the house and neighborhood,so we took the pool as part of the deal.
It's not that great of a hassle or expense...a couple of hundred dollars in chems every year. We do the opening (icky) and closing ourselves. I do all the vacuuming and husband does all the heavy overhauling of filter and what-not. Vacuuming takes about 20 minutes about 3 times a week. Not much "fuss" if you ask me.
But when things go wrong - they can really go wrong. When we bought the place we said that we'd keep the pool going until the first thing went wrong with it, and when that happened we'd fill it in. A few years in, the wall (gunnite) developed a crack and we looked into having the pool filled in. Thousands of dollars. It was actually cheaper to fix it (fiberglass) and keep it running so that's what we did.
And I LOVED being the "hangout" when the kids were in high school. Sometimes it was a pain to have kids here all the time but at least we knew where our kids were and who they were hanging out with.
But I never ever thought of it as a fitness investment...purely recreational. And we never put in a heater - if it's hot enough to swim, it's hot enough to be in a 70 degree pool. It usually gets up to 80 by the beginning of August and stays there through the beginning of September - after that it's pretty brisk.
I'm glad we took the plunge!
We never would have put in a pool in a million years, but when we moved here my husband fell in love with the house and neighborhood,so we took the pool as part of the deal.
It's not that great of a hassle or expense...a couple of hundred dollars in chems every year. We do the opening (icky) and closing ourselves. I do all the vacuuming and husband does all the heavy overhauling of filter and what-not. Vacuuming takes about 20 minutes about 3 times a week. Not much "fuss" if you ask me.
But when things go wrong - they can really go wrong. When we bought the place we said that we'd keep the pool going until the first thing went wrong with it, and when that happened we'd fill it in. A few years in, the wall (gunnite) developed a crack and we looked into having the pool filled in. Thousands of dollars. It was actually cheaper to fix it (fiberglass) and keep it running so that's what we did.
And I LOVED being the "hangout" when the kids were in high school. Sometimes it was a pain to have kids here all the time but at least we knew where our kids were and who they were hanging out with.
But I never ever thought of it as a fitness investment...purely recreational. And we never put in a heater - if it's hot enough to swim, it's hot enough to be in a 70 degree pool. It usually gets up to 80 by the beginning of August and stays there through the beginning of September - after that it's pretty brisk.
I'm glad we took the plunge!
