Would've filled it in faster. Got much more use out of the basketball court.

quote:

Take a sample of your water to the nearest Leslie’s, they will make your life easy.

Do NOT do this. Learn to test yourself. It's easy. Leslie's is there to sell chemicals. They once told me I needed pH up and pH down at the same time. That was when I was new to pools but not to water chemistry. I walked out and never went back except for certain things that I weren't available at the supermarket.

https://www.troublefreepool.com/blog/

The big one for me is filters and pump motors moved away from the pool deck, so I don't have to hear them when I am enjoying my pool, or cooking on the deck.

If I had had MY CHOICE, I would have done a big, above ground Swim Spa, but I didn't have any say in the matter.

Almost 18 year owner of in ground pool here.

I got lucky and got everything right the first time unlike most people, but it was pure luck.

Salt water pool. Very easy to maintain your chlorine levels and your eyes won't burn from chlorine, nor will your bathing suits bleach out.

Pebble Tech. Gives you some traction while standing/walking in the pool, looks great, causes no problems at all. If you get dirt or algae in it, you have problems. You won't get dirt build up if you have a good Navigator and you won't have algae problems if you have your chlorine output set right on your chlorinator.

Paper filter. Just take them out every 6 months and flush the dirt out of them and put them back. Couldn't be easier.

Pump powered cleaner (Navigator). Takes care of the majority of your pool cleaning duties when the pump runs.

When COVID started, I put in a 16ft above ground pool at my old house. That is about 5,000 gallons of water.

In April of this year, I bought a house with an existing pool. About 25K gallons, sun shelf deck, spa with spillover, stairs leading into the pool, saltwater and has a gas heater.

If I had to start over from scratch, there is probably not much I would do differently.

Salt vs. chlorine - I cannot say this strongly enough, salt, salt, salt. This is not an apples to apples comparison since my old pool was above ground and the new one is in ground, but I spent a ton of money on chlorine for the old pool. The chlorine tabs were one every 2 weeks, plus a bag of shock every 2 weeks. Plus other various chemicals. The new pool, I have had to throw in the tiniest amount of chemicals one time. And 3 bags of salt in 8 months. And the only reason that number is at 3 bags instead of 2 bags is because of so much rain during hurricane Ian. And each bag of salt is $7. Salt might cost more upfront for the parts, but it is way less expensive (and easier) in maintenance.

I tied a suction cleaner that worked off the pump. But I had to jack the pump up to absurd RPM's, near 3,000, to get it to work correctly. I calculated the cost of running the pump at 3,000 RPM for 2 hours per day and realized I might as well buy a Dolphin. Mine was like $650, so it is not a mac daddy top for he line one, but it works awesome. I am a huge fan of the Dolphin cleaners.

Thanks again, guys.

A bit of background.
Our old house had a ~23k gal pool. Pebbletec, in floor pop up cleaners, water feature, hot tub, 3 pumps & a large cartridge filter.

My plan is to go slightly smaller & simpler. The in-floor pop-ups never seemed to work right, either they would all come up (failed controller wheel), the internal ratchet or spring went bad on a few & they just never seemed to get sufficient coverage.
I did like the 3rd 'skimmer' that our setup had. The main bottom rain of the pool fed into a mesh net prior to returning to the pumps. Caught a lot of debris that would otherwise fall in the pump baskets.

I'm thinking probably around 18k gal if I could put a number on it.
Wife wants a free-form shape, I'm not opposed to rectangular.
We had pebbletec (or similar) for the decking as well, and I definitely don't want that again. Horrible on your feet, though it stayed fairly cool to touch.

We have a lot of mature trees, hopefully won't need to remove any, but am expecting to have more upkeep with keeping leaf litter out of the pool/skimmers.

No HOA, so that's a relief to not need to go through their process. IIRC my old HOA had something like a $10k deposit for pool applications, to cover any common area damages.
Depending on where we fall, might have to get a permit from the city, builder said he'd look into whether we're within the city limits.

You've been there done that, will just add to the existing based on our 30 years with the pool.


Pebbletec finish, use small pebbles are easier on the feet.

Salt water - Salt is $9 a bag, a new container of chlorine tablets at Costco used to be $79, it's now closer to $200.

Pump - Hayward Variable speed programable, super quiet during the slow run periods for simple circulation to filter and process salt into chlorine. Costs less to run

Heat- Go with the heater, skip solar for it's limited range and seasonality.

Cleaner - Been through several, right now the Hayward Navi 50 is what we use.

I would never have a pool up north. Not worth the trouble. Here in Florida I would never NOT have a pool.

I can’t answer construction questions but a pool deck or zero entry is awesome. I don’t have that and I wish I did. My sister has it and what a fantastic feature. It would also allay my fear of my dog falling in and drowning if we weren’t paying attention. We have a Corgi and he patrols the rim of the pool like it is a DMZ.

Salt water. Oh hell yea. On maintenance alone you have to go salt water. It is so much easier than screwing with chlorine. As stated above you still are using chlorine but it is generated from the salt. I am a very lethargic pool chemical guy and I find the chemicals are pretty stable even with my haphazard treatment.

Hot tub is a must.

No thank. you...not again.

Our home had a PebbleTec pool when we moved in. I really like the waterfall feature. Mostly because it has seating underneath so we have an option to use the pool and stay in the shade. If I were designing it I'd want easier access for dogs.

Just met with builder #1, recommended by a friend that's built 3 pools with him.
Very personable & gave recommendations that made sense & advised against things he thought were frivolous or costly, with explanations for why.

Pictures of my pool.

Left side with hot tub. You can also see a little sitting shelf in the pool to the right of the hot tub.


Right side of pool with shallow sitting area and stairs. I sometimes leave the white chairs in the sitting area, but the water circulates better and the skimmer works better if they are not in the pool blocking the flow.

I am old school. I ran a department that included public pools. My main advice is to
learn all about the Langelier Index.
dont get too hung up on architectural details over practical maintenance.
build it once, cry once.
Keep proper pH(acid/soda ash), hardness (calcium), alkalinity (bicarb), and temp.
We ran gas chlorine systems. Later went to liquid chlorine. Then installed UV systems, with liquid backup.
And keep your metallic parts, nuts and bolts rust free in material or painted

I redesigned, rebuilt many systems and sub systems that were made by so called engineers and experts

I would absolutely look into the current state of heatpump technology with regards to pools.

Basically, heatpumps move heat from one location to another. They are, in general, more "efficient" as it requires less energy to move heat from one location to another than to combust fuel against a heat exchanger (and letting much of the heat escape via exhaust gas).

Water carries a ton of thermal energy. It would be awesome to be able to heat your pool using waste heat from your central air conditioning.

30 seconds of Google gives me this as a starting point:

https://www.hotspotenergy.com/pool-heater/

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
30 seconds of Google gives me this as a starting point:

https://www.hotspotenergy.com/pool-heater/

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
30 seconds of Google gives me this as a starting point:

https://www.hotspotenergy.com/pool-heater/

Hmmm, if I read their FAQ's correctly, about $2K plus installation. Any idea how much installation is?

I do not run my gas heater that often. To run it on a regular basis, at current propane costs, can easily be $300 per month.

But we run our A/C year round in Orlando. I might be willing to spend a few K to keep my pool warm all year long. And my A/C units are placed on either side of the pool equipment, so that's a plus.

quote:

Originally posted by frayedends:

quote:

Originally posted by Powers77:
but was advised by local experts that the local water chemistry worked as well or better with chlorine.

I'm really curious of an explanation of this. It makes no sense to me.

I'm not a chemist, play one on TV or have stayed at HI Express last night but the gist of it was that due to the hardness of the water and the specific minerals causing said hardness that the salt water systems weren't worth the added expense in Vegas.