10 Things You Should Know About Owning A Swimming Pool

For some, life doesn’t get better than a house with a pool — lounging around in the summertime, soaking up the sunshine, and splashing around with the kids in their own private oasis.

But if you’re thinking of getting a pool, you should know that it’s not all fun and games. We’ve compiled a list of all the pros and cons of pool ownership, so you don’t just dive in without knowing what you’re getting into.

1. Hours Of Fun

Yes, having a pool can provide hours of fun for the whole family. You have the swimming, splashing, pool games, ball games and other physically active things you can do in the swimming pool. But you also have the sunbathing, the lounging, the floating and the general chilling out that happens on those warm days. It’s heaven.

2. You’re The Cool House

If you have older children and teenagers, installing a pool in your house, particularly if there aren’t too many in your neighbourhood, will make you the ‘cool house’. This means you’re more likely to be the hang out of choice for your children and their friends, making it easy for you to spend lots of time with your child instead of constantly sending them off to someone else’s house.

3. Looks Great In Your Home

Swimming pools can make wonderful additions to your home. Placed in the right location and with an appropriate amount of design and landscaping of the surrounds, a pool can be a smart addition to any home. It’s likely to even add value to your property, and perhaps make it the tipping point that encourages someone to buy it once you move to another place.

4. Great For Parties And Entertaining Guests

If you have a large social circle and you’re sick of fighting for space at your local park for the best BBQ and picnic spots, worry no more! A pool allows you the perfect entertaining space, a place where both adults and children can enjoy themselves in relative harmony. For those out there valuing the opinions of their friends and social acquaintances, a pool certainly gets you ahead.

5. Great For Staying In Shape

If you’re not a fan of weight-bearing exercise, or you live somewhere very warm, a swimming pool is a great way to stay fit. Swimming laps in your own home means there’s no excuse not to get fit, and with a few simple contraptions, you’ll never have to deal with the public pool again. Perfect!

6. Hours Of Maintenance

Spending lots of time in your pool is great, and you’ll want to be spending quite a bit of time in there to make up for the sheer number of man hours it can take to maintain a swimming pool. You can expect to undertake daily maintenance of your pool including maintaining an appropriate balance of chemicals, keeping the filter clean, clearing vegetation out and more. You could always hire someone to do this, but that’s an extra cost.

7. More Work For You In The Long-Term

Spending time with your kids is great, but if your kids and all their friends are always over at your place to use the pool, you might find yourself getting over it pretty quickly. Just imagine all the cleaning up, supervising and drama-dealing you’ll need to do as the owner of the ‘coolest house’ in your neighbourhood!

8. Slims The Wallet

There’s no escaping the truth about pools: they’re expensive. It’s not just installing a pool that will cost you, although we bet it’s more than you think. As well as the pool, you’ve got the swimming pool pump, the filter, the pool furniture, the pool games and more. What about landscaping your yard to fit the pool? And have you considered the cost of fencing? Don’t make the mistake of getting caught up in the dream by seeing only the price of the pool itself.

9. May Not Add As Much Value As You Think

Just because your pool costs a certain amount, doesn’t mean that’s how much is added to the value of your house. Remember that the value of your swimming pool, just like the value of your home, depends on the market and the demand. So you can’t assume that your house value has increased by $50,000 just because you put a $50,000 pool in. The true ‘value’ of the pool might be much lower.

10. Safety Is On You

There’s a lot of red tape involved in owning a pool, as there should be. Pools are very dangerous spots, and too many young children die each year in Australia thanks to accidental drowning. As a pool owner, the responsibility of making your pool totally safe is on you. This means you need to put in proper fencing, child-proof gates, and make sure there is adequate supervision at all times. If not, you could face fines and much worse.

Now that you know a bit more about swimming pools, do you still want to get one?