How much does a swimming pool cost to install and run?

[HeyN0nny]

We're house hunting, moving out of London. A swimming pool isn't on our list of essential criteria(!) but it seems that quite a few houses in our search area have heated outdoor pools. All we're after is a garden with some actual grass.

I'm trying to get an idea of a) how much extra we're being asked to pay because of a pool and b) if we did like a house that happened to have a pool, how much we'd have to factor into monthly bills for running costs.

If anyone does have an outdoor heated pool, how much do you actually use it? I can't help feeling we'd be paying over the odds for a house because of a pool that we'd never use due to weather...

[naturalbaby]

I don't know but am interested to know. I have a friend who moved into a house with an indoor, heated pool. When the first energy bill arrived the husband went straight to the pool and switched the heating off. They're now having it removed!

[bishboschone]

Depending on the size they are £20k upwards . They cost a lot to heat!! My mum has just downsized and they had a pool . We only used it in the summer despite it being heated. So it was closed up for 8 months of the year!

[Nocomet]

Heating bills can be horrific. School has an outdoor one, HT had a fit when we had a really cold wet summer term.

They now have solar panels.

We have a giant portable pool, it has solar panama that directly heat the water because we also did the sums and had a fit.

[Nocomet]

Panels

[justaweeone]

A swimming pool can devalue a house. I used to work for a new home developer snd they wouldn't take a home in part exchange if it had a pool.

[BranchingOut]

I think they are fairly easy to remove, so don't be put off a house if it has one.

[ShotgunNotDoingThePans]

With regard to a), my understanding is that a pool actually reduces the asking price as it makes the property less desirable to most people. Perhaps that's not the case for the 'Millionaire's Row' type of houses - I wouldn't know.
I do know that if I see a photo of a pool on property details I swiftly move on as they're insufferably naff imo.

[rhubarbcrumbleplease]

There are quite a few pools in the houses near me; standard outdoor ones & 'pond' type affairs.
They always seem to be having things done to them. The maintenance costs would concern me.

[LadyRabbit]

I'm also interested in this along with OP. does anybody have any actual figures for installation and/or running costs?
I'd be interested in the difference between heating an indoor vs. outdoor and if you need planning permission for pool installation, and solar panel installation.

[Parietal]

Parents have a indoor pool. Around 15k pay heating plus lots of maintenance

[Panicmode1]

Friend lives in the Cotswolds with an indoor pool - probably abou 12x5m I would guess. She says it costs £600 a month (although that was about 4 yrs ago she told me that, so add a bit!).

[HeyN0nny]

Thank you so much for the quick responses.

Interesting to hear that a pool may devalue the house - if that's been taken into account already, I've seen at least two seriously overpriced houses (online only, wouldn't waste my time)! So I was wondering if there was some standard markup for pools.

Ironically, as a family we love swimming. We currently pay £300 PCM for private gym membership (including DC swim lessons) simply for the pool as the public pools near us are awful, so swimming is in the budget already. I used to do triathlons pre-DC and now that the youngest is 2, I'm keen to get into competitive swimming again - but a 6m hole in the back garden, usable for 8 weeks a year, is no good to anyone. My 4yo swims twice a week, can swim 25m unaided, and if we had an indoor pool, would probably be in it everyday - but then we'd still have the costs of leisure centre membership and lessons on top of pool costs. That £600 PCM figure frightens me... And the £15k even more. I've seen some gorgeous indoor pools, but sadly they are the 'millionaire's row' type houses and we're definitely not in that market! I think we may be more at the 'truly shite bodge-job' end of the scale.

Any more views/costs greatly appreciated. We're going to have do some careful sums here.

[MuscatBouschet]

Factor in around £5k to remove the pool properly. Machinery for breaking up and removing concrete isn't cheap. We did it.

[Nocomet]

I'd love a real indoor one if I could have solar panels on the house roof to cut the bills.

Maintenance is no great problem as DH can fix most things, find spares on EBay and has a chemistry degree.

Although this does mean he knows details of pool chemistry you don't need explains while snuggled up in bed.

[Philoslothy]

We have an indoor and outdoor pool. Indoor one gets used every day.

The outdoor one gets used most days during the summer holidays as when we are not at home we have house sitters.

[echt]

You can do this

permaculturenews.org/2009/07/21/convert-your-eco-unfriendly-swimmming-pool

and the pool can brought back to be a swimming pool.

[HeyN0nny]

Philoslothy, having an indoor and an outdoor pool is just greedy ! Roughly what are the running costs for each, and do you heat the outdoor one all year round or just in summer?

We've been keeping an eye on things (rather than actively looking) for several months on Rightmove and Zoopla. The alerts have included five houses with indoor pools, of which three just looked terrible - I figure if the photo shows a condensation/mould/cracked tile issue the reality must be far worse. The other two pools looked nice, one house went quickly (indoor pool was in its own pool house in the garden) and the other house was just totally wrong for us in terms of layout, room size, etc. It looked like they may have converted the original sitting room to be the pool room and either you walked through the pool room to get from the hall/sitting rooms to the kitchen, or you had to walk round 3 sides of it, through two other rooms. There have been quite a few (maybe fifteen or so?) houses with outdoor pools, but only 3 or 4 of those where the pool appeared to be a nice bonus to a lovely house with a great garden. Of the rest, we'd have been interested in maybe 5 if they hadn't had the pool, and they seemed slightly overpriced compared to similar houses without a pool, which is why I wondered how much value a pool added.

echt, the link didn't work but I think I know what you're talking about - I saw an absolutely beautiful 'green' freshwater pool in a house magazine a while back, it was huge too. Probably quite chilly though and I've sold my wetsuit now!

Part of the problem is that so many sellers of houses with pools seem to have put the pools in bloody stupid places (when you're a buyer with two DC under 5). I definitely do not want a hole-in-the-ground type of pool right outside the back door, taking up the supervisable-from-kitchen-window playing space and being a possible death trap. I also don't want the pool to be at the expense of a garden!

nocomet, my DH also has a chemistry degree (inorganic chemistry though, which I guess rules out an outdoor pool ), I don't suppose the technicalities of maintenance would faze him too much, but it's the time aspect as well as the added expense.

I'm tending towards the 'avoid pools at all costs' camp after this thread. A least, though, if the perfect house comes up and it has a pool, we'll be a bit better informed about the cost of the options of keeping or removing it.

[bishboschone]

Ime it put people off buying rather than the other way round and it certainly didn't put the value up. Most people that I showed round the house were going to fill it in or were worried about the cost and maintenance . Also an issue if you have small children .

[SomeSunnySunday]

We had one when we lived abroad, so I can't advise re costs in the UK. I really wouldn't recommend it with 2 small children, it was quite stressful. It literally used to give me nightmares. My children tried to climb the fence, steal the key etc. I was always terrified that the pool maintenance people wouldn't lock up the gates properly. My 2 year old was more interested in running round and round the pool and jumping on the diving board than he was in actually swimming, making it very hard to effectively supervise both DCs. I was quite glad when we moved and didn't have it any more (although it was used every day, and the DCs initially missed it).

[OddBoots]

If a pool is indoors then you could possibly make it pay its way if you got it insured correctly and offered the use of it to one or more swimming teachers to give private lessons in.

[Philoslothy]

very rough guesses, DH says to heat the indoor pool at about £30 a week.

The outdoor pool is used from about June until September. We only heat it during that time. That is about £40-£50 a week depending on the temperature outside.

We have pumps as they have lower running costs.

We have a contract with someone who comes out and does the chemicals for the indoor pool and cares for the indoor and outdoor pool. I think that is about £1500 a year.

We converted our outdoor pool to a natural pond type thing a few years ago which is much cheaper to maintain as there are no chemicals.

We also have a hot tub which DH says is about £10 a week to run.

[Philoslothy]

I hope we never sell our house, we designed it ourselves. So the resell does not bother me.

I love our pools, it adds to our quality of life and means that we can literally laze around the pool as well as using it for exercise.

[HeyN0nny]

Aargh, Philoslothy, you've almost converted me! £30 pw plus £1500 per year would be considerably lower than our current swimming costs!

We're not specifically looking for a pool though - just wondering whether, if we find the right house but it has a pool, the pool would kill the deal. Safety is, of course, a big issue as well as the financial aspect.

Oddboots, that thought had crossed my mind too. However, I think it would only work if the pool was in a pool house separate to the house, and easy (separate) access. It would need its own changing facilities plus there would be issues of privacy, parking, and possibly business rates? Tbh, I don't think we're in the market for the kind of house with the kind of pool that would be commercially viable in that way, sadly!

[Philoslothy]

If you don't have a pump the costs can be double that. We Also heat and light the space the pool is in.

[MaliceInWonderland78]

We considered a pool, but I'm just a little bit too tight fisted. I'd be interested to hear from anyone that has an "endless pool" Perhaps that might be an option OP?