Moving to Phoenix. Pool or nah?

Not in the same boat as the OP... I live way up North (Montreal, Quebec)

Have a pool for the first time in my life and it's been a blessing.
I do it all with my dad, from maintenance, closing it for the winter and opening it for summer.
Yes it's work but during the summer (end April/early May to beginning October) it's fantastic.
The maintenance is absolutely nothing in comparesson to the enjoyment you get from a pool.

This is here up in Canada, I can just imagine how much pleasureful it would be down south.

I do have a solar blanket (see video at 49sec.) that I unroll every evening and my temps in the warm days is always above 86F... all the way to September !
Do have a heater for the beginning and end of the pool season.

Pool is 14' x 38'+ ~6' for the steps

Here's a little vid the stamped-concrete company did for his business: My pool

 

Not sure what you use to close it, but until this year I would use a compressor to blow out the lines. Splurged on a cyclone for this year and it's a game changer. Used to take a while to blow out the lines, now it takes minutes. Highly recommend grabbing one.

 

We relocated to outside of Fort Wayne. AAAAAAAAAAAAnd the Misses insisted on ANOTHER pool. As with the other pool I absolutely refuse to have anything to do with it as it is "her thing". From the little I know is this one is a salt water pool and seems a bit easier to deal with. Oh, and it has a heater which kicks the electric bill up to a medium sized car payment.

Woman are complicated.

(Since we are talking about poop) Odd thing is, the dogs now poop on the concrete sidewalk instead of the grass. Sometimes you just can't win...

 

Exactly what I use. Modified a tube to enter the lines and just blow maybe, blow !!! hahaha
Got the trick from the same way I blow out water for my automatic sprinklers.
Takes just a bit longer do to the double water fall (a valve per cascade)

 

What is this closing/opening you all speak of?

 

don't ask...

 

cost of chlorine last year

ALL CLEAR 3" pucks, 50lb tub, 90% chlorine - $159 Still have half the tub left
ALL CLEAR Granular Sanitizer 50lb tub, 55% chlorine - $189
12.5% 1 gal from pool store- Cant remember - we do these on a 4gal bottles rotation

Just searched and the price has since skyrocketed. Luckily still have plenty to probably get us through another summer.

 

All right, so I'm under contract on a house that has a pool and an in-ground hot tub. The hot tub is gas heated. Is that more efficient or something? Didn't realize there were gas powered hot tubs. Looks like the unit is about 15 years old.

 

Btu performance for heating is always better with gas.

I think oil may be better than that, but gas is a lot easier.

 

Hot tub?

Address??

 

We just moved back to the east valley of Phx again. Gas hot tub is preferred

 

100% agree. I’m in Texas and I spend 5-10 minutes a day on it in the summer months….pretty simple actually.

 

So true. My neighbor where I used to live built a big pool, diving board, slide, the works. His kids weren't into it. He let our kids use it all the time just to keep it stirred up. We probably used it 5 times as much as he did. It got so bad I took over doing the vacuuming.....

 

When I had a pool at my old house, my heater was natural gas. It was very efficient, it didn’t use much energy to heat the pool.

 

I was thinking if I wanted to actually use the big tub of water outside, I would go electric heater with solar panels to help offset the costs....I think it could work.

 

definitely pool. pour in place coping. couple of filter boxes. kidney. 10.5" with 215 indys and ojs.....fuck swimming in it.

 

As evidenced in this thread, pool maintenance is largely determined by geography.

I'm in Southern California. Hot tub is used year-round and is where I watched the Super Bowl from. The pool could be used year-round if I allocated tire money to a heating bill, but for now, we mainly use it from April through November. My backyard is all turf, concrete, palm trees, and massive birds of paradise. In other words, I have almost no issue at all with organic debris falling into the pool, and this makes it really, really easy to maintain. The automatic skimmer and vacuum do 98% of the work. I skim a leaf or two once a week. I'll pull the manual vacuum out and use that for 15 minutes if we get a wind storm that brings in a lot of dust. Check the chemicals once per week. That's really it.

The kids love the pool. We have a cave / grotto thing with a waterfall and a slide built-in, and that's where the kids gravitate to. The adults are on the sun shelf with some umbrellas placed with some optional shade. I like to float on top of it while drinking beer and reading a book / magazine. We weren't explicitly looking for a pool when we purchased this place, but now that I have it, I couldn't live in this area without it.

On a related note, the recipe to a stress-free life is easy: turf, concrete, a pool, firepit, and an outdoor kitchen. All function and very limited maintenance.

 

Looks like I'm good. This house has all of the above. After not wanting one initially, the other things won me over. Only plants back there are palm trees and an orange tree or bush, whatever the hell it is, both neighbors on the sides are single story, and nobody behind me so I can be drunk and nekkid whenever I want.

 

Make sure to laugh at all the jackasses who said "no pool" as you take a dip on a nice hot day.

 

I don't know, I still may not ever set foot in that thing. I'm expecting the dog to use it more than I will. Other than the fact that at some point, I'm going to have to jump off the waterfall while drunk. I will use the hot tub nearly every dang day though.