SA Footy

Backyard swimming pool
Inbuilt
Salt water

What type should I buy ?
Can I get chlorine free pools , or close to chlorine free ?
Likely costs
How difficult are they to maintain?
How expensive are they to obtain?


Basically I dont mind the idea of having a Pool
But I dont think I wanna be a maintanence man for it


Yes or no ?

go to the beach or a fitness centre

You maintain the pool for the kids.

When they leave home it gets harder.

Then you maintain the pool for the grandkids.

There is nothing better to hear excited laughter and play from children in a well maintained pool.

You also are teaching your family to survive.

Only your fear of maintenance of your pool is stopping you?

Get a POOl Mal, There are times when you will regret it.

There will be times when you say "This is the best thing I have done"

Once you get it right, the pool looks after itself.

I have taught many children to swim in the pool.

Becareful, they all say they can swim... You teach them all how to save each others life.

-$20k get you a nice in-ground pool mal.

-Sand filter not a media ( panel ) filter.

-Automatic acid release - keeps the pH @ about 7.6, just like your skin so you wont go all wrinkly if in there for too long.

-Will need to give it the odd chlorine tablet.

-Keep pool toys out of the pool! Noodles,blow up rings and floaty toys have a massive surface area and are a breeding ground for bacteria. People who have a pool turn green over winter generally have left the hose for the cleaner or a toy in the pool.

I don't mind the maintenance...gets me out of the house. If maintained properly, with regular chlorine (or self chlorinated) then it should be relatively maintenence free.

I have a 70,000 litre chlorine pool with a sand filter. It was there when I bought the house. If I was putting one in new, I would go salt water with self chlorinating.

Also you can get it to self clean these days...not sure how though

www.freeheat.com.au/chlorine-free-water ... ation.html

Chlorine free water purification

For specific reasons I am looking for Chemical free systems

luckily we have lots of water in this state

So I'm a late joiner to the swimming pool membership.

As a small business owner I received a grant from the tax office, in the vicinity of 35k.

Knowing it would be in the 50k range to get a pool, we never considered it. Now we have considered it, given we are North Eastern suburbs and the beach is long way away. So we bit the bullet recently, based upon recommendations from others who have done the same thing. The all said, "the final product is great, but the experience is horrible".

Anyway, we have a pool in the ground, but because of our sloping block, we don't have retaining walls and hence don't have the finished product just yet. This summer has reminded us why we decided us to go with a pool heater - we don't seem to get the Adelaide summers we used to get (or is it just me?)

The thing I wanted to mention here is the shocking communication between the pool companies and the customers. We've been left battling to work through the site management. Now, to be fair, our site manager from the pool company has been isolated and since tested positive for Covid but we haven't had any communication from him at all.

I think the thing that lacks from a customer perspective is the communication and understanding of what steps are involved in putting a pool in. It's a hefty investment, worthy of some communication I would've thought!

I put a pool in at a house I owned in Prospect years ago, and enjoyed it for a while - about 9 metres by 4.5, depth 2 meters at the shallow end the nearly 4 metre sat the deep end - but it was a lot of work and money for the time I used it. The people who bought the place several years later just let it deteriorate. It was a concrete one in those days and they start to crack up in time.

I'm not sure how well modern non-concrete ones hold up, but I wouldn't do it again.
Much easier to just drive to the beach and much cheaper...

Last week we visited friends at Glenelg and then went to Somerton beach afterwards, and this week did the same at Grange and swam at Henley

gadj1976 wrote:
The thing I wanted to mention here is the shocking communication between the pool companies and the customers. We've been left battling to work through the site management. Now, to be fair, our site manager from the pool company has been isolated and since tested positive for Covid but we haven't had any communication from him at all.

I think the thing that lacks from a customer perspective is the communication and understanding of what steps are involved in putting a pool in. It's a hefty investment, worthy of some communication I would've thought!

That was pretty much our experience too. "Project Manager" was onsite once, before any work was begun. Never saw or heard from him again.
Any communication came from the office girls, scheduling and such. This info was often wrong and the "wrong" was often my fault apparently.
Contractors were all good though.

Psyber wrote:I put a pool in at a house I owned in Prospect years ago, and enjoyed it for a while - about 9 metres by 4.5, depth 2 meters at the shallow end the nearly 4 metre sat the deep end - but it was a lot of work and money for the time I used it.
I'm not sure how well modern non-concrete ones hold up, but I wouldn't do it again.

Modern pool equipment has taken pretty well all of the work out of pools. Filter monitors water quality and adjusts pH and chlorine as required. Multi speed pumps cheaper to run. Robo cleaners have just about eliminated manual vacuuming.
These days just sit back and enjoy!

Kahuna wrote:

Psyber wrote:I put a pool in at a house I owned in Prospect years ago, and enjoyed it for a while - about 9 metres by 4.5, depth 2 meters at the shallow end the nearly 4 metre sat the deep end - but it was a lot of work and money for the time I used it.
I'm not sure how well modern non-concrete ones hold up, but I wouldn't do it again.

Modern pool equipment has taken pretty well all of the work out of pools. Filter monitors water quality and adjusts pH and chlorine as required. Multi speed pumps cheaper to run. Robo cleaners have just about eliminated manual vacuuming.
These days just sit back and enjoy!

I had a form of robo-cleaner back then too - similar to the Zodiac G2 suction one - it helped a bit.

If you need any contacts etc let me know I’ve been managing community pools for ten years now…. Just drop me a message

gadj1976 wrote:So I'm a late joiner to the swimming pool membership.

As a small business owner I received a grant from the tax office, in the vicinity of 35k.

Knowing it would be in the 50k range to get a pool, we never considered it. Now we have considered it, given we are North Eastern suburbs and the beach is long way away. So we bit the bullet recently, based upon recommendations from others who have done the same thing. The all said, "the final product is great, but the experience is horrible".

Anyway, we have a pool in the ground, but because of our sloping block, we don't have retaining walls and hence don't have the finished product just yet. This summer has reminded us why we decided us to go with a pool heater - we don't seem to get the Adelaide summers we used to get (or is it just me?)

The thing I wanted to mention here is the shocking communication between the pool companies and the customers. We've been left battling to work through the site management. Now, to be fair, our site manager from the pool company has been isolated and since tested positive for Covid but we haven't had any communication from him at all.

I think the thing that lacks from a customer perspective is the communication and understanding of what steps are involved in putting a pool in. It's a hefty investment, worthy of some communication I would've thought!

Is the grant you mean Job Keeper or is there a specific grant you can apply for to build a pool? I have also pondered having a pool, but the cost and messing around/digging up of the backyard puts me off making the first step.

Bought our inground pool from Freedom pools around 20 years ago, think from memory was about $18k back then

Best investment ever made, gets used all year round thanks to solar heating and being under a pergola and verandah roof.

Not alot to do with maintaining it these days, everythings done for you as pointed out earlier

On that note i'm off for a swim

Aerie wrote:

gadj1976 wrote:So I'm a late joiner to the swimming pool membership.

As a small business owner I received a grant from the tax office, in the vicinity of 35k.

Knowing it would be in the 50k range to get a pool, we never considered it. Now we have considered it, given we are North Eastern suburbs and the beach is long way away. So we bit the bullet recently, based upon recommendations from others who have done the same thing. The all said, "the final product is great, but the experience is horrible".

Anyway, we have a pool in the ground, but because of our sloping block, we don't have retaining walls and hence don't have the finished product just yet. This summer has reminded us why we decided us to go with a pool heater - we don't seem to get the Adelaide summers we used to get (or is it just me?)

The thing I wanted to mention here is the shocking communication between the pool companies and the customers. We've been left battling to work through the site management. Now, to be fair, our site manager from the pool company has been isolated and since tested positive for Covid but we haven't had any communication from him at all.

I think the thing that lacks from a customer perspective is the communication and understanding of what steps are involved in putting a pool in. It's a hefty investment, worthy of some communication I would've thought!

Is the grant you mean Job Keeper or is there a specific grant you can apply for to build a pool? I have also pondered having a pool, but the cost and messing around/digging up of the backyard puts me off making the first step.

It was some plan by the Government to stimulate the economy. It's certainly stimulated the pool industry's economy. They're flat out.

Kahuna wrote:

gadj1976 wrote:
The thing I wanted to mention here is the shocking communication between the pool companies and the customers. We've been left battling to work through the site management. Now, to be fair, our site manager from the pool company has been isolated and since tested positive for Covid but we haven't had any communication from him at all.

I think the thing that lacks from a customer perspective is the communication and understanding of what steps are involved in putting a pool in. It's a hefty investment, worthy of some communication I would've thought!

That was pretty much our experience too. "Project Manager" was onsite once, before any work was begun. Never saw or heard from him again.
Any communication came from the office girls, scheduling and such. This info was often wrong and the "wrong" was often my fault apparently.
Contractors were all good though.

We went through a mob called Rainwise and must admit didn't have any of these issues (thankfully). Salesman was excellent to deal with and never dodged our calls, even after the installation was complete and we'd paid them. We've had a coupla issues over the years, but best thing we ever did was f*** the cartridge filter off and replace with a Sand Filter. We have a great Pool Maintenance bloke who put us onto an excellent device for cleaning the pool and he comes in once a month ($99) and does he thing. Haven't had to spend any time on maintaining it now since the filter swap over.

One of the selling points when we put ours in was the salesman telling me he was also the project manager and he'd be on site for every day of works and he was. He was in boots and shorts on the shovel the day they dug the hole, he was on a rope guiding the pool when it was on the crane, he was locking fence together when the temp fence went up and he was there when the water got to a point that I could run the pump. I couldn't have been happier with his service.

Perhaps name them Boon. That is a great big thumbs up.

Great service is what sorts the wheat from the chaff.

Alex from Leisure Pools. Happy to pass his number on if anyone is keen.