O Bother, a Swimming Pool

September 11, 2009 1:45 PM

How can I preserve a swimming pool for a couple of years without spending too much time and effort on it?

My wife and I are inheriting a house with a swimming pool. Frankly, I find pools to be mainly a nuisance (there's a beach a ten minute walk away), so I'm wondering what to do about it. Eventually, we intend to sell the house, at which point the pool will be an asset, but the market is too soft right now. We hope to be able to sell in a couple of years.

I have heard that simply draining it is asking for trouble, since the pressure of the water inside resists that pressure of the soil and water table outside. If I filled it with sand, I'd have to dig the sand out eventually.

How can I preserve the value of the pool without having to put up with too much of the trouble and expense of it in the meantime? I've had to put a lot of effort into it in the past on behalf of my in-laws (even with the help of a pool service), so I am not looking forward to more of the same.

posted by Jimmy Havok to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

Can you partially drain it and leave it under some kind of heavy duty cover all the time (like the kind you put over it in winter that you can more or less stand on)?
posted by Madamina at 1:48 PM on September 11, 2009

Typically, a pool brings a house's value down, not up.

Do you have a citation for this or is it just based off of anecdotal evidence? I have always found the exact opposite to be true and can't think of any reason why a pool in good shape would bring value down.

To answer the question, you are going to have to do some upkeep and maintenance on this house while it is unoccupied. Hiring a pool company to clean it periodically could be part of the cost of maintenance.
posted by nestor_makhno at 2:21 PM on September 11, 2009

Here's a cite.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:32 PM on September 11, 2009

I find my pool pretty easy. I chuck a couple of lbs of shock in mine every week or so during the summer, about once a month in the winter, make sure there are enough chlorine tablets in the floaty thing, empty the skimmers and the robot's net. Probably an hour a week tops.

Start of the summer, about half way through and at the end of the summer, I take a sample of the water to the local pool shop, the dude there tells me what else I need to throw in, I do that.

When the pressure on the pump gets 15 psi above where it started I clean the filters, that's a 4 hour pain in the ass, twice a year. If my wife allowed me to dump them in the bath with cleaning solution overnight it would be a lot easier, but she has a bit of an issue with that genius idea of mine.

Anything big breaks I call a guy, I've probably paid $500 in maintenance over the last two years.

I don't have to winterize my pool, so that might be a bigger job if you live up north.
posted by IanMorr at 2:48 PM on September 11, 2009

Here's a cite.

Did you read what you linked to? It says that an inground pool on average will add 7.7% more value to the home.

The article did mention that it's not a benefit and does act as a deterrent when you live in Minnesota though.
posted by kylej at 3:46 PM on September 11, 2009

Yes, I read it. I thought it addressed both sides of the equation pretty well, which is why I posted it.

I don't have a dog in this fight -- I'm not a realtor, I don't have a swimming, and I can't afford a price that has one (unless I move to Minnesota, apparently). I'd have completely assumed that a well-kept in-ground pool was an automatic price bump, and it was surprising that it wasn't.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:53 PM on September 11, 2009

Please, just pretend that last post was written in something resembling English.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:53 PM on September 11, 2009

Yeah, our pool isn't that big a deal either. We're lazy lazy pool owners. We pay a company $75 a month to balance the chemicals, and we just empty the skimmer basket a couple times a week (more in the fall/spring because we get a ton of leaves), and hose off the filter once every 2 weeks or so. We only skim/vacuum once a week when we use it in the summer, and just periodically in the fall/winter/spring when the leaves reach an embarrassing level - but I see no need to do that if you never use it. (We live in Texas - so it doesn't get cold enough to winterize.)
posted by delladlux at 4:01 PM on September 11, 2009

Yes, I read it. I thought it addressed both sides of the equation pretty well, which is why I posted it.

I don't have a dog in this fight -- I'm not a realtor, I don't have a swimming, and I can't afford a price that has one (unless I move to Minnesota, apparently). I'd have completely assumed that a well-kept in-ground pool was an automatic price bump, and it was surprising that it wasn't.

Oops, I'm sorry. I thought you were the person who originally posted that pools depreciate in value. I was obviously wrong. Again I apologize.
posted by kylej at 4:04 PM on September 11, 2009

What's planted around the pool? We have a huge pine tree that dumps needles into the pool most of the year, and organic matter does upset the chemical balance. If I could take the damn thing down, I would, since it would solve the need for daily skimming and freququent chlorination.. And, if you live in area where temperatures heat the water to soup temperatures, algae soup will be a constant concern. I've known folks who covered their pools to avoid the maintence, but they didn't stick around to deal with whatever consequences there might have been. As I understand it, the problem with filling the pool with sand is that rain water collection can lead to quicksand conditions. If I could take the pool out and replace it with lawn I would.
posted by path at 4:49 PM on September 11, 2009

Response by poster: We'll be living in the house until we can't bear it any more, then trade it for a condo, so I won't be hiring a pool service. From what I hear, I'm stuck with the pool unless I want to destroy it by cracking the concrete and filling it in.

We're in the tropics, so pools are quite popular. A look at Google Earth shows that about 25% of the nearby homes have pools. Comparable houses in the area are asking just a little under the median for the market as a whole, something a bit surprising to me since I thought it was more of an upscale neighborhood...but, the market is soft, and it is as close to the ass end of nowhere as you can get around here.

I may just decide to rent it out until the market recovers a bit, depending on the economics of that. However, I don't really relish having to deal with tenants, either, especially upscale aspirational ones.

I'm getting the feeling we should just sell the damn thing as soon as we get everything else straightened out...gut it and walk away. The only thing worth saving in the whole house is the piano.

It isn't the house my wife grew up in, so she doesn't have much more affection for the place than I do.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 11:05 PM on September 11, 2009

I dont know how big your pool is but best way to preserve it is to empty it,scrub it with an antifungal product and then brace the walls with telescopic construction props (wall to wall)replace the pool cover and forget about it for now.
posted by 1joseywales at 5:44 AM on September 17, 2009