How many pools does your state have?

January 26, 2009 12:41 PM

Say I want to gather statistics on above ground pool ownership in the states. Is there some way to find and aggregate this kind of retail information?

I've googled all kinds of phrases that I thought might yield something but to no avail. I'm looking for hard numbers rather than very general consumer reporting. Does such a resource exist? Some sort of big brother type database?

I'm out of my element here, and yes this is for work. Go ahead and kick me if this is the sort of thing people pay lots of money for etc., etc.

posted by johnbaskerville to Work & Money (6 answers total)

Pool industry association, perhaps? I suspect that above-ground pools are largely unregulated, beyond the standard "attractive nuisance" laws and restrictions placed by HOAs. I mean, you can buy them off-the-shelf at Wal-Mart any more.
posted by jquinby at 12:55 PM on January 26, 2009

Here you go, but the data will cost you about $4k. As you can see here, this report includes annual sales through 2007. It's a start, and if you're persuasive, perhaps you could get some help via this route.
posted by carmicha at 1:21 PM on January 26, 2009

I never thought I would advise this, but Philip M. Parker might be able to help you out here. It's niche and specialized enough that it might be worth the cash, depending on what you're doing.
posted by dunkadunc at 1:46 PM on January 26, 2009

(Maybe you're using the wrong end of Google. Wow, it would be really cool to write a program that picked random tiles from Google maps, and counted the number of houses and the number of pools therein. It should be easier to multiply better-known number of houses by the poolness-rate you find.)
posted by cmiller at 2:28 PM on January 26, 2009

Your community may have a Small Business Development Center. They are nation wide and are funded federally (adjunct of the SBA). The librarian there has access to all kinds of exclusive industry specific Lexus-Nexus data that the center pays for and you can access for free solely based no how well you get along with professional librarians.
posted by Muirwylde at 7:31 PM on January 26, 2009

Wow, it would be really cool to write a program that picked random tiles from Google maps, and counted the number of houses and the number of pools therein.

I thought about this, too, but wasn't sure how you'd distinguish in-ground from above-ground, except that the above ground ones tend to be round. Also, bleah, many of the images seem to be taken during winter which makes a covered above-ground pool not so different looking than a largish trampoline.

Still...
posted by jquinby at 10:51 AM on January 28, 2009