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Yes: Pools are worth it....


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Have a few questions for you pool guys, and much appreciate any and all thoughts. Moving in a couple of weeks and first order of business is to get a couple of pool companies out to spec out and quote me, so I'm trying to get informed.

- Is having the attached hot tub worth it? At the house now we have a fiberglass hot tub and it's pretty bad ass. I'm sort of torn between the pool/spa combo which is nice for obvious reasons, or saving $15k and doing the pool by itself, and getting a nice fiberglass hot tub and a nice gazebo or housing for it. 

- What am I getting myself into if I want to extend pool season to late April through October-ish? I've been quoted about $4k for a 400,000 BTU heater but what am I looking at in propane cost, etc.? Does anyone actually do this, or is this one of those things that sounds better than it actually ends up being?

- Is there something I'm missing on the darker finish pools? I think they look much better than the standard finish - is there a drawback to them?

- Any recs on pool builders in Central Texas (New Braunfels)? I have a couple guys I'm talking to, but I trust the Surly collective here.

Appreciate any feedback on this one. Hopefully I'll be posting from the new pool here next spring.

Edited by BradInATX
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If u”you are gonna have a hot tub, attaching it to the pool seems esential as far as look goes. (In my opinion.
Darker pools mean hotter water (supposedly). Not sure if it messes with pool chemistry. The actual aggregate is what im worried about since I have small kids and the rougher pebble finishes could hurt their feet.
No builder recs here, kinda GCing it all myself. Subs are busy as hell and its tough getting gunite. If you sign soon make sure you get on the gunite companies schedule asap.

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Darker pool coupled with adequate sunshine will enable you to use your pool earlier and later in the season without a heater. It will be hotter in July and August.

Don’t have a hut tub with my pool but have some friends who “sunk” a jacuzzi in a way that looked cool.

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I have a toddler and a pregnant wife. Tell me more.

Get your wife to enjoy anal.

To add to the spa, there is nothing better than sitting in the spa on a cold night getting drunk. If you put a tv outside you will enjoy sitting in the spa and watching football.
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10 hours ago, Hate said:


Get your wife to enjoy anal.

To add to the spa, there is nothing better than sitting in the spa on a cold night getting drunk. If you put a tv outside you will enjoy sitting in the spa and watching football.

 

One of the things you said is good, new information that I hadn't considered yet. I'll let you guess which one.

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We had gas heat on our pool at the house we sold. It could warm it from close to freezing to 85 degrees overnight in the middle of winter, but it cost about $100 each time we did it. Extending the seasons it wasn’t that bad because it ran periodically, but heat pumps are much more efficient and cheaper. They can’t operate once temps drop below a certain temp, but we rarely used ours when it got real cold. With the pool we are looking at doing now, we are going to run a heat pump and chiller on the pool and a gas heater on the spa.

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Tonight is one of those nights . Yes, it's worth the money pit hassle.a2241b70cccad85d8a751ee5458b9546.jpg

Excellent!

And the hot tub comments before ... if you have a hot tub and aren’t using it frequently in the winter you’re doing it wrong. Football, drinks, sex, relaxing, warming up, reading a book I mean in the winter we used our last one 3-4 times a week. It’s easily more used than the pool.
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1 hour ago, troph said:


Excellent!

And the hot tub comments before ... if you have a hot tub and aren’t using it frequently in the winter you’re doing it wrong. Football, drinks, sex, relaxing, warming up, reading a book I mean in the winter we used our last one 3-4 times a week. It’s easily more used than the pool.

Exactly!

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We love having a built in hot tub. Same water as the pool. Just heat it up. Plus it easily hold 10 people. It is WAY better than a fiberglass hot tub (which I think are kinda gross). Not even close.

We have our hot tub scheduled to heat up every Wednesday and the family looks forward to it. I'm the winter we will probably bump that up to 3x per week.

Right now the pool is 89 degrees, so the hot tub is less appealing except at night

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The spa was also a great place for our son to learn how to swim. When he was old enough to walk, we put him in a life jacket and would play in the spa. He learned to get used to the water and always had a safe place to stand up when needed. He would “swim” across the part of the spa where there are no benches. It was also nice to have the spa on those warmer winter days for him to swim in. We could heat up the spa and let him play in there with all of his water toys while wearing a life jacket and he loved it.

These days it’s mainly me getting in and watching football during the fall and winter. I make up a little cooler with bourbon and ice and watch. It’s fantastic. Just make sure when you install your TV to put a sound bar on it with a Bluetooth bass speaker. You’ll want that especially if the spa is more than a few feet away from your tv.

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Yeah- we heat the hot tub on thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve when family is over (much cheaper than heating whole pool) and it keeps kids out of the house for 2-3 hours. They inevitably jump in the freezing pool and get back in the hot tub.

Also find drinking in hot tub gets wife in the mood quicker.

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That’s a solid set up for this kids with the deep end, hot tub and slide. I won’t show my boys. No definitely won’t. Cool spot to “chilax” as my kids say and watch the littles as they splash around. I see beers and margaritas with the sun going down with water splashing around in your life very soon.

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1449c19ef644df37ee37d19537db4ba0.jpg
Hoping to plaster this wed. Still need some work for slide/waterfall/ jump ledge area and cool cote on back sidewalk. I will finish those later when slide comes in. My kids wanna swim!!

I like the design. Shallows on the right? Do you mind sharing the size depth and ultimate cost?
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Moved in December and decided not to do a pool at the new house. We’re not around much in the summer and the kids are older and didn’t use it. That plan lasted all of 7 months. Meeting with the pool guy this morning to finalize plans on a 16x42ish pool. Still debating the hot tub on it. I’m having a hard time justifying the price tag they are quoting for it.

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14 hours ago, Brew said:

Moved in December and decided not to do a pool at the new house. We’re not around much in the summer and the kids are older and didn’t use it. That plan lasted all of 7 months. Meeting with the pool guy this morning to finalize plans on a 16x42ish pool. Still debating the hot tub on it. I’m having a hard time justifying the price tag they are quoting for it.

Do it!  Like I've said, make sure you have a TV outside that is within a good view of the spa.  You won't regret it on cool fall and cold winter evenings watching football. 

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Just now, Hate said:

Do it!  Like I've said, make sure you have a TV outside that is within a good view of the spa.  You won't regret it on cool fall and cold winter evenings watching football. 

16x48 pool and a 16x32 covered patio with TV’s on each end. Still having a hard time justifying the hot tub but we’ll see. Quote on it is $35K for a 6 person built in with gas heat and full automation for phone controls. That just feels like I’m getting bent over even more than I’m already in for. I can just heat the pool up for those nights it seems like. Shit who knows. He did say he could plumb everything in and we can add it later.

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The 35k for a spa does seem excessive.  I think mine cost 10K extra, but I'm in the Houston area.  Maybe that makes a difference.  Art any rate, I would still do it.  You'll never want to heat the entire pool to watch football. 

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My depth is 7 ft at one end and 4.5 ft near the spa.
I pretty much owner built mine and havent added up all the costs.
Original pool builder quoted us $70k with the spa, salt and chiller. That did not include my deck of conc/travertine, waterfall, and slide. After the dig/rebar the PB took forever. So,got rid of him and took over.
3 weeks since gunite and Im almost all full of water. Slide shipped today, need to kool cote the existing brown deck and concrete sidewalk from the spa to the slide location, so need to tie up a few things but we are ready to swim. Gonna take a break and get it done in Sept.

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8 hours ago, Brew said:

16x48 pool and a 16x32 covered patio with TV’s on each end. Still having a hard time justifying the hot tub but we’ll see. Quote on it is $35K for a 6 person built in with gas heat and full automation for phone controls. That just feels like I’m getting bent over even more than I’m already in for. I can just heat the pool up for those nights it seems like. Shit who knows. He did say he could plumb everything in and we can add it later.

35k is definitely too much... We just built and have an champagne/infinity edge spa and it was around 20k additional (still thought that was slightly high, but no regrets). Houston area

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15 minutes ago, Brew said:

What size are you guys putting in? That was pricing for a 6 person. I believe the gas heater and automation was about $7k because it was the larger heater to heat the pool also.

Its obscene and not even close.  The difference in a 200k gas heater to a 500k gas heater to the builder is under a grand.  Only if you originally had no automation and added automation would that price be sniffing close.  But that's for the 7k upgrade for heater and automation.

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33 minutes ago, Poolflood said:

Its obscene and not even close.  The difference in a 200k gas heater to a 500k gas heater to the builder is under a grand.  Only if you originally had no automation and added automation would that price be sniffing close.  But that's for the 7k upgrade for heater and automation.

That $35k pricing included the automation and heating. The pool price did not have any of that in the pricing. That put the 6 person hot tub and plumbing at about $27k or so. Going to see if they will work on pricing.

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7 minutes ago, Brew said:

That $35k pricing included the automation and heating. The pool price did not have any of that in the pricing. That put the 6 person hot tub and plumbing at about $27k or so. Going to see if they will work on pricing.

I'm hard pressed with everything,  and I mean everything.... more than 20.  

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This  may specific to me, but I've had my pool for 12 years and I think I've heated the pool twice.  Both times were in late April or early May when the water was just a little too chilly for my wife.  Unless you are sure you are going to heat the pool often, I wouldn't worry too much about it.  Get a heater that will heat your spa to about 99 degrees efficiently and that's all you'll need.  I think I've had mine at 100 degrees a few times, but that was when it was really cold outside. 

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On 8/7/2020 at 9:27 PM, Hate said:

This  may specific to me, but I've had my pool for 12 years and I think I've heated the pool twice.  Both times were in late April or early May when the water was just a little too chilly for my wife.  Unless you are sure you are going to heat the pool often, I wouldn't worry too much about it.  Get a heater that will heat your spa to about 99 degrees efficiently and that's all you'll need.  I think I've had mine at 100 degrees a few times, but that was when it was really cold outside. 

if you get a spa, they will have the heater be able to heat up the spa and the pool, won't be anything extra.

it's nice to have - used it a few weekend this april when the water was in the mid 70s

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Got it full of water and swam all weekend. Kids cant stop seimming. Waiting on slide now to finish up7dccb06b0f729ffa040134a52df26c67.jpg

Keep your homeowners insurance current and get an umbrella policy or don’t let other kids use your pool. Sucks that that’s the case but diving boards and slides are accidents waiting to happen. When I had my pool I had to tell my agent whether I had a slide or a diving board.
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Well fuck.

115cee0460c74169efccc88ec1663048.jpg

We moved here April 2019 and neither pool light (pool or spa) worked. I didn’t worry about it last summer but recently I decided to investigate.

When I pulled the main light it floated to the surface. The interior was dry but the bulb was blown. Screwed in a regular bulb to test and no joy. Then i realized the GFCI was tripping, so I pulled the spa light (had to drain the spa, no biggie) and it was full of water.

Ordered a new bulb and gasket and after some Amazon shenanigans I finally received both. Pulled the light again, dried it out, screwed in the new bulb and voila, let there be light. Put it all back together with a generous application of silicone and it still worked when filled with water. I’m happy, so I went ahead and ordered the (fairly expensive) new color-changing bulb for the main pool light.

Work has been kicking my ass and we’ve had some weather so I haven’t gotten around to replacing it yet. I was planning on doing it today or Friday. But last night as I was going to bed I hit the light switch just to see the spa light come on and...nothing. I’m afraid it might be full of water again and tripped the GFCI. So I get to start all over again.

It’s old so I’m afraid it could be leaking where the power cord attaches to the housing. If that’s the case I think I’m gonna have to call someone and have the whole thing replaced. Fucking annoying.

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