Hellobee Boards

So we do not have a pool, but this is off of experience with friends and family members.

Saltwater is so much nicer to swim in, and from our friend that has had both, she prefers the maintenance on the saltwater.

The same friend has an auto cover on hers. The one she has you can actually walk across. I've never walked on it because I was afraid of messing it up, but she's walked on it, her kids have camped on it, my toddler son has walked out on it with her.

You can buy an above ground pool from Amazon for $100 (the brand is intex and it gets great reviews). It is absolutely not the beautiful pool you're planning for, but the cost is so low that I think that it'd be a great way to do a sort of trial to see how much you actually use it, deal with the upkeep, etc. It has a secure cover that I think would make it pretty safe to have without a fence (of course you'd want to look more into that, but I think it's like a hot tub cover that's too heavy for kids to move, that snaps down as well). I personally wouldn't want to make the big investment into a pool without doing something like that first.

We had a pool in our last house. Which we did not install ourselves. My mom has a pool she built.

-Is your pool chlorine/chemically cleaned, or salt water? SALT

-Do you have an auto-cover? If not, do you find covering/uncovering the pool difficult by yourself? NO auto cover, we didn’t cover it. The prior owners left their manual auto cover. We tried it once, but it left a water edge. My mom has a netted cage around her pool and patio, which is very typical in Florida.

-Do you have a hot tub? Is it incorporated into your pool design, or entirely separate? Can it be used year round? NO

-Do you have special features like a waterfall/water wall, sun shelf, stools for a swim up bar, etc.? Mine- no. My mom has a conversation pit in her pool. Great for the non swimmers it provides a booth like place to sit and put a drink. Her pool also has two creatures that shoot out water, a waterfall, and a plant ledge built in. The plant ledge looks awful- she doesn’t have a green thumb. Her pool is also a 3-5-4 depth; I think the sales person pitched it as an activity pool.

-Any feature/component you didn't opt for, but wish you had? NO, for my old pool it was a rectangle, bigger than a “plunge,” and unfussy. For us it was perfect.

-Any feature/component you have, but either feel is not really needed, or actually dislike/wish you didn't have? The plant ledge.

- Do you have any sort of vacuum tool that makes keeping the pool clean (from falling leaves, not chemical levels) easier? YES, which is why when the cover proved to be too small we didn’t replace it.

- and last but certainly not least - what do you do (either actual features on the pool, or family rules) to make the pool safer for your children? If we had stayed in the house, we likely would have drilled a gate around the pool or fortified the sliding glass doors out to the pool more.

-Is your pool chlorine/chemically cleaned, or salt water? We have chlorine. I really love salt and ours can do both, but especially in Phoenix because it's so hot salt is WAY more expensive. You have to run the filter more hours per day. I'm fine with the chlorine because it's way less than a public pool because you don't have nearly as many bodies in it
-Do you have an auto-cover? If not, do you find covering/uncovering the pool difficult by yourself? We live in Phoenix and don't cover our pool. We do plan to use an existing solar water panel to heat it this winter to extend our season. If you're building you might want to look into solar coils in your deck to help heat your pool so you can use it longer
-Do you have a hot tub? Is it incorporated into your pool design, or entirely separate? Can it be used year round? We don't but my in laws do in ca and I love theirs. It's seperate but has a small fall into the pool to deal with overflow
-Do you have special features like a waterfall/water wall, sun shelf, stools for a swim up bar, etc.? We have a Baja step which is glorious with small kids. Our 2.5 year old can walk around on it, she does swim lessons and understands she can't do that off the step so it works perfect for us. We also have an aerator which helps cool the pool in the summer which I like. Our waterfall is pretty but we rarely turn it on, it's noisy and I wouldn't waste money on one if we were building
-Any feature/component you didn't opt for, but wish you had? We have friends with a Baja step at both sides which I think would be great but hubby doesn't like because then you really can't swim in it
-Any feature/component you have, but either feel is not really needed, or actually dislike/wish you didn't have? The waterfall as mentioned above
- Do you have any sort of vacuum tool that makes keeping the pool clean (from falling leaves, not chemical levels) easier? We have an in ground filter which if done correctly is great but ours isn't engineered well. If we had more stuff that fell in our pool I'd buy a vacuum
- and last but certainly not least - what do you do (either actual features on the pool, or family rules) to make the pool safer for your children? We have a fence with auto closing fence. It's a real fence we will leave forever. Not a fan of the small mesh ones that people always take down because they're ugly. I love that kids can play in the rest of our backyard and I don't have to worry

Oh and absolutely use pebble tech. I don't think they do plaster that often anymore but pebble tech is a one time expense, plaster has to be replaced at most every 20 years

-Is your pool chlorine/chemically cleaned, or salt water? chlorine. I personally dislike salt water, it hurts my eyes worse than chlorine.
-Do you have an auto-cover? If not, do you find covering/uncovering the pool difficult by yourself? No cover, we live in Texas.
-Do you have a hot tub? Is it incorporated into your pool design, or entirely separate? Can it be used year round? It is partially separate, with a small waterfall for overflow into the pool, and can be used year round. It is great for before/after the swim season. We usually use it as a warm pool for cooler weather, or for warming up between trips in the real pool. We use it a lot in May and October, and sometimes in winter with out of town visitors. It heats up quickly, unlike the whole pool which takes forever, does not heat up very high, and is expensive to heat.
-Do you have special features like a waterfall/water wall, sun shelf, stools for a swim up bar, etc.? We have some benches, they are great for the kids to be able to stand.
-Any feature/component you didn't opt for, but wish you had? It would be nice if our pool was bigger and rectangular for more usable space, and maybe had a deep end.
-Any feature/component you have, but either feel is not really needed, or actually dislike/wish you didn't have? We have pebble tech and I don't like it, it hurts my feet. We need to replace ours soon, after about 25 years. We can heat up the whole pool, but rarely do, because it is so expensive.
- Do you have any sort of vacuum tool that makes keeping the pool clean (from falling leaves, not chemical levels) easier? We have a vibrating cleaner(creepy crawler), it was not expensive to replace
- and last but certainly not least - what do you do (either actual features on the pool, or family rules) to make the pool safer for your children? We installed a deadbolt on the top of our door. The pool takes up pretty much the whole yard, so we can't really fence around it. We also never use floaties, because they can build undue confidence (my oldest will use a pool noodle). We work with them on safety skills (pushing off of the bottom/bobbing, swimming, holding on to the ledge of the pool and circling to the stairs, climbing out).
We bought our house with the pool, so did not pick out the features. Pools are very expensive to maintain, and we still often go to the community pool, because it is so nice. It is convenient not having to go anywhere, but so expensive.

-Is your pool chlorine/chemically cleaned, or salt water?
Salt water. Our pool company actually mentioned that they only do salt water for new builds, I’m not sure the reasoning though.
-Do you have an auto-cover? If not, do you find covering/uncovering the pool difficult by yourself?
No cover, we are in Florida
-Do you have a hot tub? Is it incorporated into your pool design, or entirely separate? Can it be used year round?
No hot tub. I don’t miss it but it’s hot here. I would definitely want one if I was in a place with all of the seasons.
-Do you have special features like a waterfall/water wall, sun shelf, stools for a swim up bar, etc.?
We have a large sun shelf which gets lots of use! It’s big enough to hold two chaise lounges if we wanted to put them in the water, and it has two bubblers which keep the water moving and sound nice. We can change the speed of the bubblers to be anywhere from a gentle ripple to more of a fountain. We leave them off a lot but I like them and am glad we have them. Also, MOST IMPORTANT, an umbrella hole in the shelf. We’ve got a 10 ft umbrella there which makes plenty of shade for kids to play or lounging out of the sun. We also have a bench on each side of our deep end which is nice. Good place to climb out or sit with a drink.
-Any feature/component you didn't opt for, but wish you had?
Our pool is the pebble tech and I think it’s kind of rough. I wish it was all tile. That’s probably really expensive though.
-Any feature/component you have, but either feel is not really needed, or actually dislike/wish you didn't have?
No but in other pools I’ve seen I’ve not cared for elaborate waterfalls or planter areas.
- Do you have any sort of vacuum tool that makes keeping the pool clean (from falling leaves, not chemical levels) easier?
Yes we have a vacuum thing on a hose that is integrated with the pool and runs around sucking up things on the bottom. It has a little bag we empty when it’s full.
- and last but certainly not least - what do you do (either actual features...
We have a safety fence around the pool itself. We have two kids and for the time being at least we are not comfortable having both kids out there without both parents so we do man to man coverage/supervision.

@PinkElephant: The vac that we have is a bottom and wall cleaner. The brand is Dolphin.

I skim the surface with an old school skimmer on a pole. We have a skimmer basket, but I find the pole style to be very effective and it takes me a few minutes.

@mdf106: just curious what you're having to resurface if you have pebble tech? It should never have to be redone if it was fine correctly

We have talked about putting in a pool as well and we were close to pulling the trigger... but our 2 year old son is a damn ninja with no regard for personal safety and I just know it would make me anxious all the time. So we will revisit the idea in another 5 years or so if we're still in this house. But when we were researching, the things I definitely wanted were salt water, and zero entry. If you do move forward, the first thing I would do is really intense swim lessons for both of your kids, ISR if they are young and more traditional swim lessons if they are older.