New (potential) indoor pool build. Looking for input!

[Potato]

Hi all! Been lurking awhile and soaking up as much info as I can! Here is a little bit about the potential project. We would love any and all input as we feel that fellow pool owners would be the best source of info and input.

My wife and I have a piece of land up in Lake Almanor California that we purchased years ago that we are finally in the process of designing a garage/guest house and main house. The rough location of the house is on a slight upslope on the lot with the ‘face’ of the house facing away from the hill. While with the architect/engineer I jokingly mentioned since we have to dig into the hill for a foundation/basement, we might as well dig deeper and do a pool in the basement. The engineer grinned, I grinned, wife…not so much. She is slowly getting on board with the idea, with time I think she will join ‘team pool’.

We are DIY’rs by heart, I’m a fan of overwhelming projects and we are planning on doing all but the concrete/foundation work on building the garage/guest house, main house, and pool although this project combo is close to the largest undertaking we've done. Digging a giant hole has always been on my bucket list, and digging for a pool should take care of that!

Here’s and overview of what we are thinking. Any input/opinions would be great!

[*]Fiberglass pool, more than likely from Viking as we are just a couple hours away from them.
[*]The pool size is probably going to be limited to the 12’ x 26’ range. Between the weight of the house above, the snow load, and the span of the ceiling above the pool, the huge limiting factor (hopefully not the killer of the idea, tbd by engineer) is beam/joist/footing sizes.
[*]The pool room would be in its own envelope isolated from the house with a non permeable barrier. Rough numbers are coming out around 10,000-12,000 cubic feet of air space that would need to be dehumidified and conditioned.
[*]Pool temperature around 82, room temp around 84.
[*]Heat pump for main heat, supplemented by propane for colder months. There is no chance at solar, the house/lot is surrounded by pine trees and is heavily shaded.
[*]As automated as possible, we live about an hour and half away, so always getting up there may not be possible all the time. One of the big plans is to rent the house out weekly during the summer to vacationers. So being able to remotely monitor how the pool is doing would be needed.

Questions / input we are hoping for:

[*]We are leaning towards running it as a salt water pool, but a bit concerned about corrosion. Would running a uv system combined with salt water allow us to reduce the levels of salt/chlorine in the pool in turn hopefully reduce the speed of corrosion?
[*]For the pool chemical gurus, what does the lack of sunlight do (or not do) in indoor situations?
[*]From research it looks like the rule is always have the room 2 degrees warmer than the pool in order to keep condensation relatively under control. When the house is being used the plan is to run the pool at 82, and room at 84. Now if there’s no vacation renters, or we are not up there and its mid winter and snowing is there any reason the pool/room temperatures can’t be dropped to, say, pool 50 room 52?
[*]Some type of cover seems to be a requirement for indoor pools. Any chance a liquid cover would work in this situation since wind seems to be a problem causer… or is it still snake oil?
[*]Any opinions on automatic floor cleaners? Leaves and such should be limited being inside, but not being close all the time to it is the concern.

Any and all input welcome! Thanks for everyones’s time!

 

[kimkats]

Where is my jaw drop emoji? What an undertaking! I would LOVE to see the lot where this might be going!

I am going to reach out to a couple of indoor people to get their input for this project.

It all sounds neat!!

Kim

 

[Potato]

Hi Kim! Here's a couple rough renderings of the main house, it's going to have to be fattened up to get the pool to fit comfortably in the basement, along with some windows and doors so its not a dark cave! I somehow don't have any good pics of the lot, mostly pictures for notes (location of rocks, dead trees and the like) but I took a screen shot from the driveway camera which is pretty much the direction the house would be facing.

 

[PoolguyinCT]

Ijust a tip - Check with health department as they may regulate pools on rental properties. There are several caveats, to distinguish between private “rental” & commercial pool regulatory requirements.

 

[kimkats]

Be still my heart! What a pretty shot of the lot and that house................WOW! Love the share and windows.

Pooly has a good point. Check with insurance as well!

Kim

 

[Rollercoastr]

Hey Potato - welcome to TFP and thanks for sharing your plans. What a cool project!

My indoor pool is similar in dimensions: 13' x 23', but it's oddly deep with a max of 8' My house layout, and therefore my challenges are quite different, but we indoor pool folks need to stick together! (apparently most people expect things to fall into their pools from trees and birds....???)

I missed the chance to provide design input on my pool room by 44 years. I'm closing in on 2 years of ownership now however, and many of the design challenges or "quirks" that first bothered me have turned out to be less of an issue or no issue at all.

An exception, and one that I'm reminded of each time I use the pool is the proximity of the nearest restroom: the journey requires swimmers to dry off, leave the pool room, cross a wood floor and use the half-bath. Showers are even worse, across carpet in the master bedroom to the master bath. If a shower nook and restroom were closer, I'd feel better about regularly expelling kids for pee-breaks and asking lotion-covered adults to rinse before entering the pool.

My pool is in the center of my house. It can be closed off by two sets of bi-folding French doors, but I never close them. I don't have a dehumidification system at all. That was a red flag for me, my realtor, the home inspector and even the pool inspector. The house was designed to vent humid air through a high-capacity fan above the pool. Replacement air enters from outside into the lower-level equipment room where it feeds fresh air to the water heaters and pool heater. It's crude, but it works until ambient temps hit single digits. (Michigan) At that point I'm not only expelling large amounts of warm air, but the cool replacement air flows across the floors and hits swimmers in the face.

I like to swim in the range of 86-89º. That's in winter though, and I don't have a practical way to super-heat the pool room.

When I first bought the house, I thought I wanted salt. Then I joined TFP and learned more about saltwater pools from my friends here. The chlorine demand of my pool is so low that it just isn't worth it for me. It's so easy and so cheap to maintain this pool that even if I could get a SWG installed for half the price of normal, I still wouldn't bother. Your situation of being away from the pool is different, but even so, judicious use of pucks or an automatic (Stenner) chlorine pump might be options as well? I use pucks for vacation periods, and even so I still occasionally have to add CYA to maintain desired levels. Before making a decision on installing a SWG, there's plenty of info here on TFP about them. The experts love theirs and don't suffer from corrosion issues.

When I'm not swimming and the pool is warm, I keep a solar cover on it. That brings brings the moisture production to about zero. I have a bottle of liquid cover. I bought it last year and still have a lot left. I can't say I'm very impressed. Maybe it helps, so I'll use this bottle up eventually, but I doubt I'll buy another.

My heater is having issues, so as I type this ambient temps are in the 20's, the house averages 68 in evenings and 62 at night. The pool temp has bottomed-out at 64º. I took the cover off a few weeks ago because it's ugly. With the pool at that temp and uncovered, the air in the house is a little too dry - I awake with chapped lips.

I like gadgets, so I wanted a robot cleaner, but there's just not enough debris in an indoor pool to justify it. There's a big dead spider in the deep end right now, but I'll retrieve him with the net (and hope he was a bachelor).

 

[swimcmp]

An automatic cover is a possible solution for you rather than a solar cover. The auto cover will help with controlling humidity when you are not there. You are probably going to want some sort of dry air system also to insure maintaining low humidity levels.

 

[Potato]

Sorry for not getting back sooner, thanks for the input so far! I've made some calls regarding insurance, from what I gathering so far a special homeowners policy combined with "Slice" (a pay per day rented insurance designed for AirBnB type situations quoted at $7.50/per rental day), AirBnB's insurance policy, along with the liability umbrella I have, that gets 4 different overlapping insurance policies for hopefully a fairly safe situation.

Rollercoatr, good point about the bathroom/shower. We were originally thinking just a half bath down there but it does make a bunch of sense to put a shower in!

Whats the consensus of letting the pool temp / room temp drop in the winter? As in if the house isn't used for a couple months due to the weather is it ok to let the pool drop down in temps as long as the 2* differentiation between water and air is kept?

Thanks again everyone for the input!

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Design the pool with a good sized UV system (ex., 3-bulb UltraUV System from Paramount). Don’t get suckered into ozone, it’s not worth it. If you wanted to avoid chlorine altogether you could attempt to run the pool as a Baquacil pool (biguanide/peroxide). Baq is a lot more expensive than chlorine and requires a fairly expensive test kit (don’t use strips) to get the peroxide and biguanide levels correct. It can also be difficult and expensive to fix biological issues like white mold or pink slime if they crop up. But, the upside is no chlorine or chlorinated disinfection byproduct or trihalomethane compounds to deal with. I’m not advocating you use Baquacil but it is an option if you like to spend lots of money. A chlorinated swimming pool will work indoors but you have to keep an eye on CCs (combined chlorine) because they can build up over time and require periodic draining and refilling of the pool. Bromine is another option for indoor pools but some people don’t like brominated water.

Definitely consider an auto cover to help with humidity and I would find some active dehumidification method otherwise you have to fight to keep the room atmosphere comfortable. Have your architect/designer find an HVAC company with experience building for indoor pools, it seems there’s very few out there qualified to do the work.

 

[Rollercoastr]

Rollercoastr, good point about the bathroom/shower. We were originally thinking just a half bath down there but it does make a bunch of sense to put a shower in!

Or just use the public pool model, and just tile a corner of the pool room and add a shower head. The more accessible, the more likely it is to get used?

Whats the consensus of letting the pool temp / room temp drop in the winter? As in if the house isn't used for a couple months due to the weather is it ok to let the pool drop down in temps as long as the 2* differentiation between water and air is kept?

It's all about the cover! More often than not, there's a 10º delta between my house temp and pool temp. In the winter, the pool can be close to 90º as the room air temps drop to the mid-60's at night. In the summer, the pool can be 70º as the sun heats the room to 80 or more. When the pool is cold, it can stay uncovered. I like to look into the water, so it's un-covered as I type this. That also helps it "breathe", but I haven't struggled with CC's regardless. I don't see much swimmer load: I think 5 people is the most I've had in my pool. I like the idea of a UV system, but for that money I could buy a lot of Baqua or bromine, so while chlorine is working, I'll stick with it.