Anyone in a cold climate with an inground pool?

[flygirl]

Like Canada, upper Midwest where it gets below zero in the winter?

What type do you have (fiberglass, concrete or vinyl liner)?
How big is your pool (dimensions)?

Are there challenges besides the shorter swim season?

What would you change about your pool if anything?

can you share roughly what you paid and how much you pay for each year?

[origami]

We have one - upper midwest. It's vinyl liner. I'm not sure how big it is in feet. Maybe 30ft long? I know it's 25,000 gallons. No real challenges aside from the obvious - having to maintain it, short season like you mentioned. Our kids are pre-teens so they're good about following safety rules and they love having a pool. The most annoying thing is that it takes hours to heat up. Several hours once the temps drop overnight. So if I think my kids will swim I have to turn the heater on really early. Then if it rains, or they don't swim we wasted all that energy. My kids are wimps about the temp though.

If I could change something it would probably be the depth. We have a 7' deep end, which the kids like b/c they can jump in. but i think it'd be more useful if they could play volleyball/basketball through the whole thing. They make it work I guess b/c there's a slope they can stand on in the deep end. I wouldn't want it so shallow that swimming laps was hard -- DH & I do that. The pool also has 2 seats cut out in the wall of the deep end that I think are supposed to have heated jets behind them. But the jets don't work and the way they're shaped they collect dirt and are hard to clean. ETA: If I were redoing this pool from scratch it would not have coping of rounded PVC pipe. I don't like the way it looks. I'm not sure if I'd switch to gunite or fiberglass though. I don't care that it has a liner. I just wish the way it connected to pavers or concrete looked nicer.

We didn't install the pool so I have no idea what that cost. I know the covers were expensive too but we didn't buy those either. We pay ~ $350/400 to open/close it assuming nothing is broken. This year a pipe leaked so that was an extra $500. Monthly we spend $100-200 on chemicals. More in the beginning of the season b/c we had to open it late and there was algae. Less in the middle/end once it's just adding chlorine. We also bought a robot vacuum which is an absolute must-buy IMO. It makes cleaning it so much easier. Inflatables are cheap and practically get holes coming out of the box. We probably spend ~ $50 on toys each season.

[heygrey]

I live in Canada and have several friends with in-ground pools (and appreciate very much that they invite us over to swim!) Of the 6 we frequent, 2 have liners and 4 are concrete. I think all, but 1 bought their house with a pool so they were working with what they had. One friend built a new house with pool last year and it's concrete.

All of them pay to heat it so it extends the swim season. We get at least May-September, sometimes a little longer if we have a particularly warm spring or fall.

It costs... a lot. I don't have a clue what the actual numbers are, but it's definitely not cheap. We have hot, dry summers so having a pool is really nice and they do get a lot of use. If we were prone to more rain or cooler weather it probably wouldn't be worth it.

[sparty04]

I'm in Michigan and have a 18x36 vinyl liner. I think the shallow end is 3.5ft and deep 8 feet. We paid about 55-60k when it was all said and done in 2020 (not including landscaping). Pricing really depends on how much concrete you want- concrete is expensive. We have a heater and usually have it open mid May-mid Oct. The only thing I would change is having a separate area for the steps (ours are in the corner) because I like to sit on them but don't like getting splashed.

My parents have neighbors that are from the UP that keep their pool open March- end Nov. They literally chisel ice off the cover to open it.

Many of my neighbors have fiberglass pools and seem happy with them, but for a variety of reasons we didn't consider that kind. You are limited to certain sizes/shapes/etc.

ETA: our maintenance costs are very low. We keep the pool chemicals balanced and have had good luck keeping everything in check. It's obviously more expensive to get everything balanced with a new pool/fresh water, but I don't think we have spent more than $200-300 on chemicals the past two years.

[krystee]

Ours isn’t in-ground, but it’s an above-ground pool trenched into the ground so it feels in-ground because it’s even with a ground-level deck. It was installed when we bought the house so I don’t know that cost. It’s about $350 to open and $350 to close, but we have paid a lot for a salt system, a new liner, a safety fence, and a repair to the heater. Then chemicals are maybe $100/month. Our electric bills with the pool pump are nuts. In summer, we pay $340/month (I know a chunk of that is our A/C, but our last house without a pool was nowhere close to that.) We keep it open mid-May through most of September, but we barely used it this May due to cool, rainy temps. September remains to be seen!

I love that we have it, but I don’t think I would have installed one of it wasn’t already here. We joke that when you add up every single thing we’ve spent on the pool and divide it up every time we’ve used the pool, it’s about $80 per day we went swimming! Obviously that will decrease over time since we won’t have big repairs or fence installations regularly, but for these first few years, it was a lot.