Any regrets or must haves before installing an in-ground swimming pool?

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I’m about to commit to a swimming pool in the garden. In ground 8x4m. Before I do I’d be grateful to hear from anyone who has one and regrets it or any must haves/must avoids. It would have a ground source heat pump and is the type without external pump/pool house which saves space and cost. It’s a huuuuge investment for me so having last minute cold feet. But everyone I speak to in real life say their only regret is not doing it sooner.

We have a pool in our garden- we didn’t install it, it was here when we moved in. I don’t really get involved with it- I don’t do any of the maintenance and I don’t use it.

I worry a lot about how it will affect the sale of the house in the future!

Sounds like you are really looking forward to your pool though- I hope you love it.

Assuming you are in the UK. Don’t. An expensive mistake. Will not get used much, will take ages to clean, will cost to heat and will impact your ultimate sale price.

if you want a pool, move to Europe

I don’t have one now but have had in the past.

you need to do chemicals regularly or pay someone to do so. Dealing with it if it gets out of chemical balance is a pita.

we used ours a lot.

Thanks tortephant. Are you speaking from personal experience? I’m not worried about resale price as not planning to move again. But the cleaning and the not using is my worry

You can get robot cleaners like the robot vacuums for houses.

this plus a brush pretty much sort it.

cleaning was not massively time consuming

You'll only use it a few months a yr. I wouldn't. I might be biased though as I think they're an eyesore, smell horrid and they're deathtraps.

We use ours loads. Ours is 4x9m. I do lengths although 9m isn’t ideal for that. You need a sealed cover for safety and to stop crap falling in. Expensive but worth it. We did get the chemicals out of sync once it took us ages to sort it out but it’s mostly been fine.

Spent all day in ours. Love it. Agree only regret is not doing it sooner! We also put some solar panels in to reduce heating costs. Have a robot cleaner.

Yes. The amount of chemicals, cost and time of cleaning.
also the number of days in a year it was used were minimal.
this was pre-robot cleaners and 15yrs ago. The situation may be different now. I wouldn’t do it again and wouldn’t buy a home with one.

also OP, a very affluent friend of mine built one and filled it in after 5years.

I haven’t installed one but inherited one with the house. It’s a PITA. Takes a huge amount of time and money to maintain, just for the handful of days a year when it’s nice enough to use. Even just planning to use it at the weekend takes several days of prep to get it just right. We’ve tried various pool maintenance companies to do it for us but they are all useless and unreliable. Sorry if that’s a bit of a downer but wanted to be honest.

Ours was a waste of money. I pay someone to maintain it - costs a fortune and mostly haven’t used it between his visits. I think last year I used it once and my daughter and friends used it maybe 3-4 times. The robot cleaner is useless. If you do it, make sure the cover is a safety cover. Also we have a pool liner - has an indoor pool before with tiles and this is better, although no idea how long it lasts.

We’ve got a very good robot and it is great admittedly, but you still need to set it up, skim, clean out the traps etc etc plus all the usual maintenance. We had to have ours relined and retiled recently and the cost was staggering. I’ve lost count of the amount of times we’ve had to replace pumps, heaters and other bits and bobs.

We had one in Australia if anybody was going to use this pool, you thought it would’ve been me. The plans we had.
We ended up not using it very often.
It cost about $5,000 in yearly maintenance and it wasn’t big enough to be actually useful in terms of doing a proper swim

Inlaws have got one.

They never seem to get in it themselves but seem to constantly be trying to persuade everyone else to!

Every family get together is labelled a 'pool party'. But no one gets in. It's a bit cringe.

It cost them a lot. It's too chilly and too overlooked for me to be getting in.

Just bear in mind that it will be an ongoing cost. Not just the annual cost of heating etc but it will need relining in 10-15 years, the pump will need replacing, the heater will need replacing, maybe the paving round it will need redoing... These things dont last forever!

We have a pool, but only because it came with the house. It's quite nice to have, but not really worth all the money we have spent on it over the years. The problem is that once you have it, as each thing goes wrong, it feels like it makes sense to fix it. Plus we've just been quoted 20K to fill it in!!

I joined a gym with an outdoor pool and loved it. It was heated and I was happy to swim in it whatever the weather. Literally, unless they closed it, I was in it, even in the rain and snow! I guess it depends what kind of outdoor swimmer you are. If I had one I'd be in it everyday unless it was thundering *that sounds like an electrocution risk!), so it would be worth it, but it depends how wild you are!

The heating cost actually isn't that high if you have the right heater. We have a air heat exchange pump. Vastly more efficient than the heating we inherited.

They can be unattractive out of season. Our pool is well away from the house so you can't see it from the house. And in season the area is full of flowers and very pretty.

8m is not really big enough to swim in. It's similar to ours I think, and it's nice for a dip and that's all. Oh and the kids like to play volleyball in it. Will you have one of those currents to swim against?

We have one, a bit bigger than your planned one, and we use it a lot. It has a really decent heater, a properly good cover and we have a really reliable guy that comes in for the maintenance. DH swims lengths in it most days and it’s cheaper than his gym membership to heat the pool, but he swam in an outdoor pool at the gym most of the year, and two of my (now adult) kids love wild swimming so happily swim in it when it’s cold outside. Our neighbour has a similar pool and they barely use it.

Ha! I have a tip for you - if you are lucky it shouldn't cost you anywhere near that much. Someone, somewhere in your local area, will be having a new swimming pool constructed and the company digging it will need somewhere to put all the dirt and rubble that comes out of the hole. If you time it right, they can dig that one out and fill yours in at the same time.

Friend once worked for a swimming pool company, and he told me this.