Swimming Pool
At the last home a swimming pool was a must. Twenty-five K later it had been excavated, plastered, decked, fenced in and filled with well over 20,000 gallons of Cowtown water. Did we get 25k worth of fun out of the pool. Nope. Mostly, it just sat there, looked pretty and added big bucks to the electric and water bills.
Nine years after leaving that home for this one, the urge to dump more money into building a swimming pool is rearing its ugly head. This time a 25K pool has translated into more like a 40 or 50 thousand dollar hole in the ground.
I ask myself if I really want to spend that kind of dough on a pool. There are alternatives.
A. Above ground plastic pool. Ugly.
B. Redneck pool as seen in the photo. Right up my alley. Got the pickup truck. There's a tarp of two laying around the house. Cheap! Neighbors will love me even more than they love me now.
C. Continue to use the Elks Lodge pool. They serve lunch: Five buck burger and fries, 2 buck 16 ounce draft beer. Freaking deal, people. And the pool is usually populated with only a handful of folks who look like they would never dream of peeing in the pool.
Apart from start-up costs, there's on-going expenses to maintain a pool in Cowtown. Electricity: About $130 a month more than what it is. Chemicals: Not sure what they would run but it ain't nothing but money, honey. If the nest egg isn't used to pay for the pool then there will be monthly loan costs....likely to be around 3 or 4 hundred a month.
All told, an installed pool will take about 500 bucks a month out of the household budget. An obligation till death do us part.
Worth it?
3 comments:
Several years ago were going to put a pool in. Of course it would be just your normal rectangle or kidney shaped plunge. I had ours designed out like a donut or like a moat, I guess you'd say. With jets on the bottom that were directed in one way, so you could sit on a float and very lightly be pushed around the circle. Only chest deep. Island in the middle for a bbq, little draw bridge to get across, pebble decking. Surprisingly it wasn't an mind blowing price for all that we were going to do. Plus the actual pool wasn't that big, but still pricey enough.... probably around 45 - 50 g's . Now it would be way more I'm sure. We really didn't want that monthly up keep and expenses after pondering for quite some time, so we just redid the yard and go to a friends house that has a pool. Much cheaper.
Even though it can get warm here (but not this year) in your area there is much more cause for it during the winter months.
I have a question.....just never thought about it. What do you do to winterize a pool. Does it freeze? Do you drain it?
I'm not writing or thinking right.
Of course it "wouldn't" be just your normal....
there is much more cause for it in the "summer" months
I'm sure there's more but you can figure it out, right?
Love the chairs in the pool, u´re not allowed to have that anywhere! ;-)
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