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Northern California Babies
Do you have a swimming pool?
We're looking at a few houses w/ built-in pools and I would love some input from those of you with them in your backyards. On the one hand I love the idea because swimming was my absolute favorite thing as a kid and I would have looooved having a pool at our house. On the other hand I am worried about the safety and maintainance issues (mostly safety!)
So, a few questions:
1) What type of fence or gate system do you use around the pool? Do you use any other safetey measures?
2 How often do you use the pool? When did DC start using it, if he/she is old enough?
3) How much do you spend on maintainance (time and money)?
4) Overall, are you glad you have it - or would you rather not?
Thanks so much!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Do you have a swimming pool?
We don't but some friends did and with a house similar size to our and their was a bit newer our PGE was/is around $100 in the winter (no ac to throw off the comparison) and their was in the $500 range, they had no idea when they bought how expensive the pool was going to be as far as up keep.
Personally I wouldn't trust my kids with a pool in the backyard, even fenced until they were very competent swimmers. I recently read a blog post, written on the anniversary of her sons pool death. 4 years old, she'd left him napping and was tending to another child. He got out the back door and pushed under the gate, like crawled and shimmied under it and got in the pool and they were unable to save him. It really had never occured to me that a little kid could get through a fenced pool like that.
I hate so sound like a debbie downer but I wanted to share so that if you do get one and it's fenced that you really check the security of the gate.
1) What type of fence or gate system do you use around the pool? Do you use any other safetey measures? We don't have a gate around the pool, but we do have alarms on the sliding door to get outside and an alarm on the fence gate. The kids can reach it, but they don't know how to disable the alarm and it is VERY loud. I forgot to disable it once and it went off so the kids are afraid to even touch the door.
2 How often do you use the pool? When did DC start using it, if he/she is old enough? This summer we used it almost everyday! We just bought the house last Oct, so this was our 1st summer with it and the kids loved it! The kids were ages 2, 4 and 6 years old. Laci went in for the 1st time at 4 months old.
3) How much do you spend on maintainance (time and money)? We paid $300 for 3 months of pool service. They cleaned the pool every other week and checked the water balance (ph/chlorine). Ours has an automatic chlorine dispenser so we don't have to worry about that. I decided it wasn't worth it and bought a vaccum that you plug into the pump and it cleans the pool by itself.
4) Overall, are you glad you have it - or would you rather not? I LOVE having a pool! But I did have a pool when I was younger and I helped maintain it as a chore so I knew it was going to be hard. If you can afford a pool service then it'll be easy to have a pool. But if you plan on doing it yourself it takes a lot of time. I have to net out the leaves, empty the pump baskets and connect the vacuum about once a week. Then you have to clean the pump filters every 4-6 months (this is a pain in the ass! I have my brother do it for me and I pay him like $40) Also depending if there are a lot of trees around you might have to clean it more often. We don't have any trees in our yard, but the neighbors do and their leaves always end up in our pool.
Let me know if you have any other questions
We just sold our house with the pool...man I loved that thing!
1) we had a 6' high wrought iron fencing with a hook/eye latch at the top of the gate.
2) we lived in it all last summer. C was still too young but we would take him out in the floater after sunset.
3) ugh. the pool maintenance was a nightmare. we spent probably about $100 a month for the upkeep because of the number of shady trees/needles that would fall into the pool and get caught up in the vacuum.
4) i'm glad we had one but holy sweater, the home owners insurance with a pool is crazy expensive compared to our insurance now, without a pool.
1) What type of fence or gate system do you use around the pool? Do you use any other safetey measures? Right now we have a really ugly cyclone fence around the pool area with a latch that's about 5 feet off the ground. It's safe for now, we'll revisit it when D's walking and much taller.
2 How often do you use the pool? When did DC start using it, if he/she is old enough? We don't pay to heat our pool (crazy expensive, about $1/degree/day), so we don't use it as much as we should. It's better now that we have a cover on it - it heats up much faster during heat waves. D went in 10-15 times this summer.
3) How much do you spend on maintainance (time and money)? We pay $75/month for weekly visits from our pool guy, not counting the parts that break and other maintainance stuff. It doesn't take that much time with the pool guy.
4) Overall, are you glad you have it - or would you rather not? Sometimes I wish we had the $$ for other things, but I think it's worth it for the memories. We've hosted some wonderful parties and gatherings of our families and friends aroun that pool....and I hope that as Dane grows our home will be a gathering place for him and his friends too. That's worth a lot to me. Of course, always being the host has it's own pros/cons....
I don't own a pool, but I have a couple friends that do. They have a censor pool cover system that has an alarm on it. If something were to go on the pool cover say a small child an alarm goes off. You can set it so it doesn't go off for racoons and such.