Chapter 1: THE TYPES OF POOLS. How to Build Your Own Home Swimming Pool or Spa
In talking about the different types of pools, it's
important to remember three common-sense qualities that all pools have in
common.
- All
pools are gigantic holes in the ground.
- All
pools are filled with water.
- The
water in all pools needs to be filtered or purified in some way to make it
safe for personal use.
There are some exceptions to these rules, in particular
the first--there are temporary inflatable pools, for example, or above-ground
"tank" style pools--but these tend not to have the same maintenance
issues as classical swimming pools, nor are they as difficult to maintain, nor
are they usually as satisfying. We'll
cover some specific issues about above-ground pools at the end of this chapter,
for those who opt for that often-simpler solution.
But for the most part, there's one crucial distinction
between the different types of swimming pools available to the consumer: the
type of lining used.
All pools more complicated than an "ol' swimming
hole" need to be lined. To
understand why, think about how much space in your home insurance policy is
devoted to the topic of "water damage." Water is an inherently destructive
force. It naturally erodes any container
into which it's placed and it weakens stone moldings and the bonds between
different construction elements. Generally
speaking, it shortens the lifespan of any construction project by at least
half. Your pool is no exception.
The key to pool maintenance is to think of your pool as
a sustained battle between water and container.
If you think of your pool in this way, you'll naturally think of the
container's attributes designed to defend against water damage and to preserve
its structure over time, and you'll understand intuitively what you need to do
in order to keep your pool working safely and consistently over the years.
The fundamental choice that determines how easy or how
difficult it'll be to maintain your pool is the choice of lining material used
to make up the "container."
Fiberglass pools are simply molded housings set into a
pool excavation, otherwise known as "the giant hole in your
backyard." Sand is applied to the
concrete housing in order to allow the fiberglass mold to settle and shift
while remaining fairly closely packed to the actual earth. Once you've chosen a fiberglass mold style,
there's no possibility of shifting or revising it; you're stuck with what
you've got.
Fiberglass is one of the most popular materials for a
number of reasons. For one, it's very
easy to mold into a variety of shapes.
There are factories that do nothing but dream up different pool shapes
and mold fiberglass pools to fit them.
On the "minus side", all of this factory design work carries
with it a certain overhead, and fiberglass pools can be more difficult to
install for this reason.
The difficulty of designing fiberglass pools also means
that although you have a great number of options for how your pool will be
shapes and how it will behave, you don't have any freedom to customize within
those options. If none of the factory
standard fiberglass pools appeal to you, you don't have any way to design and
build a fiberglass pool that you do like (without spending a great deal of
money to retain a factory and a dedicated team of pool engineers of your own,
that is.)
Fiberglass also has the advantage of being
flexible. That doesn't sound like a huge
advantage in pool design, but remember what we said about our basic principle:
pool maintenance is about managing the war between the water and its container.
Fundamentally, all pools are holes in the ground--and
the ground can and will shift over time.
The added flexibility of fiberglass pools means that the pool body is
more resistant to cracks and warping caused by changes in the earth surrounding
the pool. On the minus side, if your
fiberglass pool does crack, it can be very difficult to repair the crack in a
way that won't cause you additional headaches down the years.
There are other advantages to fiberglass pools, in
particular safety advantages. Fiberglass
pool surfaces are smooth, making it more difficult for kids or other swimmers
to get scraped or injured by brushing against rough concrete. It's also easy to install fiberglass pools,
especially when compared to the undertaking that is putting a concrete pool in
your backyard--a process that can involve weeks of waiting for concrete to dry
and a seriously low margin for error if anything goes awry during the
construction process.
Concrete pools are the most classic swimming pool
option, but bring with them a host of serious disadvantages.
Once you have your hole in the ground, the process of
building a concrete pool starts with the steel framework. Crossbars of rebar steel are inserted into
the ground to provide the pool with a "cage" of support that's
resistant to earth movements.
After this, gunite or other sprayable concrete mixtures
are applied to the steel framework, allowed to dry, and then recoated in order
to smooth the eventual pool as much as possible. Different finishes can then be applied to the
pool, depending on price. Tiles, paint,
plaster, and pebbles are the most popular finishes, but different options are
also available once the basic concrete is put in.
One major advantage of concrete pools is their
customizability. As we've said, the
number of different fiberglass pools available to you is limited by the
pre-fabricated options on the market.
The number of different concrete pools available to you is limited by
nothing other than your budget, your imagination, and the technical competence
of the contractors you choose to install your pool--in other words, you have
more choice in how your pool will look and behave.
Another major advantage of concrete pools is their
resistance to hot temperatures.
Fiberglass pools are good at stretching to resist changes in the earth
itself, but can be damaged by extreme, prolonged heat of the type most often
found in southern or equatorial regions--in other words, the kind of climate
where you'd most often want a swimming pool to begin with. Concrete pools can expand to some extent in
order to resist the heat, giving your pool a longer lifetime in extreme
temperatures.
However, you have a bit more to worry about when it
comes to changes in the soil itself.
This is the major disadvantage of concrete pools: the difficulty of
doing anything if worst comes to worst and your pool does crack or break under
the strain of above-average movement in the earth. Most of the time, concrete pools are a good,
safe, flexible option. But in some
extreme situations they're not as good at holding up to natural stresses as
fiberglass.
As far as other disadvantages go, there's construction
time to consider. Concrete pools take
substantially longer to install and longer still to become usable--expect a
minimum of about three weeks. This
ultimately leaves you with a more stable and customizable pool, but requires
substantially more planning in order to take advantage of a pool before a hot
summer begins, and also causes more damage to your yard and landscaping while
the pool is lying there half-finished.
If you have small children or pets, you'll also have to be very careful
to keep them out of the pool area while it's under construction. This can turn into a nuisance very quickly.
Vinyl pools are one of the cheapest and simplest
options for in-ground pool installation.
Vinyl pools start like any other pool: a massive hole in your
backyard. The excavation is packed with
sand and the walls of the pool are created by placing pre-fabricated
"panels" into the earth.
The vinyl liner is placed in on top of this and
attached to the top of the pool walls, sealing the places where the panels join
(obvious weak points in the war between water and container.) The contractor will cut holes to allow for
the placement of skimmers, drains, and other plumbing/drainage features, and
then the space between the vinyl lining and the pool walls is stuffed with
"backfill" in order to ensure that the lining won't shift too much.
Vinyl have the distinct advantage of being very good
for cold-weather climates, since they make it very easy to winterize your pool
by simply draining the water. Concrete
and fiberglass pools are designed to hold water constantly, and they can suffer
some major problems if allowed to drain for too long. As we'll see in our chapter on winterizing, a
lot of extra work is needed to allow these pools to remain full over the cold
months without letting the water freeze and damage the plumbing. Vinyl pools avoid these problems by simply
letting you drain the whole thing easily for the winter.
But despite their basic simplicity, vinyl pools bring
with them a host of maintenance issues.
The vinyl covering is very sensitive to scratches, holes, and other such
damage, which requires you to place some extra safety guidelines on kids or
pets who use the pool, and eliminates certain kinds of sharp metal toys from
use in a vinyl pool altogether. The
vinyl covering will also need to be replaced from time to time due to age and
wear.
If you're lucky, this will happen only once or twice
over a multi-decade pool lifetime; if you're unlucky you can expect to shell
this out every year or two. The need to
replace the vinyl lining of a pool adds an ongoing construction expense (to the
tune of a few thousand dollars) and some measure of headache to the whole
situation. A failure to do this leads to
serious leaks which can damage the underlying rock/soil behind the vinyl
lining. If the leaks are serious enough
it can actually cause damage to your entire house foundation.
Above-ground pools carry with them a host of problems,
but have one overpowering advantage: you don't need to excavate your yard in
order to install one. Above-ground pools
can usually be installed by using a pre-fab kit, assembled in a backyard, and
allowed to stand for several months without significant maintenance
issues. Above-ground pools are also
portable, which is in and of itself a reason to choose them if you don't own
your own home or don't have a stable career which allows you to remain in one
place for the foreseeable future.
Above-ground pools do require two significant pieces of
maintenance. For one, you need to have a
level yard. In many suburban areas, this
won't be a problem since the land is already fairly level. If your yard geography is a little bit more
unorthodox, however, you're going to need to get your yard leveled in order to
install an above-ground pool, which can be a considerable expense.
The other significant piece of maintenance is
essentially the same as any pool would require: weekly chemical treatments
performed to ensure water quality, appropriate cleaning and scrubbing, and
careful vigilance.
Think of above-ground pools as "training
pools": they'll get you in the habit of caring for a pool on a regular
basis without requiring you to make costly land modifications or without
requiring you to dive into the murky waters of foundation maintenance and
drainage optimization. Just build,
install, swim, and enjoy.
In general, here's a good rubric for making your
decision:
- If
safety is your primary concern, OR if you live in an area known for weak
soil or tectonic activity, go with fiberglass.
- If
customizability is your primary concern, OR if you live in an area known
for extreme summertime heat, go with concrete.
- If
cost is your primary concern, OR if you live in an area with continually
low/freezing temperatures, go with vinyl.
- If
you've never owned a pool before, you're planning to move soon, or you
simply don't want to make a major financial commitment or house
modification, go with above-ground--but keep your options open for the
future.
No comments:
Post a Comment