Shopping List for a 1st time Pool Factory SWG ABP?

[Newdude]

Is it safe to presume that you or another very skilled woodworker built them and they weren't store bought?

Yeah. I think the guy before me was a shop teacher.

HomeDepot has 3, 4, 5 or 6 step stair stringers precut, and that's the hard part. After those it's screwing the planks on and bolting a leg at each stringer.

 

[Mdragger88]

Yea. We're looking at the wedding cake stairs too. My noncreative mind just didn't realize that I could just use a small stool. Haha. I clearly am thinking too hard about all this and don't have enough coffee to see this simple solution. Does your stairs move when it's in there, or do you have to weight them down?

This is the steps that I have

Majestic 8000 Pool Steps

The Majestic #8000 Pool Steps with one PVC handrail and deck support is sturdy and spacious for use with above ground pools.

www.watsons.com

Note- I didn’t pay that for price for them - I asked for an upgrade to them instead of getting the stupid permasalt system.
They come with a ballast tube that the installer just poured sand directly into before I could stop him.
It was not nearly heavy enough to keep them from floating & it was algae city pretty quickly.
I dumped that out & put sealed bags of sand in it & also needed to tie 4 sealed sand filled bleach jugs underneath to weigh it down enough.

btw, this is extactly how i'm envisioning my pool, but I see that you splurged for the all resin, so now I do feel like I want it as well....

My pool is a cheap steel walled pool with resin uprights & top rails.
If I replace it when it dies I will get a saltwater Aurora a truly full resin pool. They came out less than a year after I purchased my pool.
I had trouble finding an independent installer that could accomplish the big dig into the slope so I bought this one at family leisure (formerly watsons) & they installed it.
I had originally planned to purchase a saltwater Lx from the pool factory.

 

[VinnyinNJ]

Haha. Trust me, I'm cheap too. My husband totally hates that I've gone down this rabbit hole. And him finding out that I found this community to help me get the answer.... Haha. He's going to get a shock when I finally check out my shopping cart. Interesting about the inspections....They said as long as I had a pool compliant fence (48") around it, I'm good to go.... even if the fence is around the whole property. But if it doesn't pass, guess we'll just have to pull more overtime to get that deck in ASAP. Although, one of the pool installers I spoke to emphasized the importance of putting the fence, pool and deck on 3 separate permit applications, so that one doesn't hold up the other.
I'll definitely splurge on that solar cover, I'm just nervous about tugging that thing on and off without the deck. But it'll be huge learning curve.

Our "swimming" consists of floating in the pool and possibly an adult beverage in hand! No little kids and no actual swimming so we open the pool up partially and leave the cover in the pool and hanging on the top rail and it kind of stays put. But the times there are people coming over and we open the pool fully it isn't that big a deal pulling the cover off and we just put a tarp down and lay it on the ground. Keep in your mind that our pool is 52" high so everything is being done at shoulder height, it will be much easier at waist height. Another thing that people do is buy/build a holder for the cover, we thought about it and decided not to because of we came up with the partial opening of the pool.

As far as inspections, I never looked into what happens if I had a 5/6 foot fence enclosing the backyard. I can say that I needed the self closing locking ladder system (which we hate but it is what it is) even though a child could not open the front gate as we keep it locked and the back gate could be opened but a steel cable wrapped around the fence post quite a few times would have to be undone and it wouldn't be a quick entry; OK if a toddler just happened to have a robust wire cutter then it would be relatively easy but I would give this scenario a 99.99999% chance of not happening!

When my wife said she wanted a pool 20+ years ago for the kids I was in panic mode because I grew up with one and it was a horror! My dad would have us put up and take it down every year. My memories of it are putting it up around July 4th (because it was warm enough now) and taking it down Labor Day. And there were too many rules. I was actually pleasantly surprised on how easy it was to take care of and other than a few times the pool got nasty such as winter cover splitting or some other reason it really is simple to take care of. There are costs associated with pool ownership and there is some work but I would say it is worth it; we did consider an AG pool before purchasing the 2nd pool we have now but the cost was too much for us. So I went from a oh no! owner to one OK with an IG pool ...

This community is great! I really struggled last year with salt, I may still be this year! But they kept helping me even though I couldn't get my salt under control. The one thing to remember is the formula we use works and don't go to a pool store because it's faster there to get an answer. Come here and wait for an answer. It's very simple to just use liquid chlorine when need be and the few chemicals you'll need to run the pool.

 

[phonedave]

WAITTTT! Hard pause. Can the pool last 15-20 years semi-inground? This changes things. We haven't figured out if this is our forever home... but we were worried if the pool was only going to last 5-10 years. We didn't want the pool to hold up inspections or whatnot, and if we build the deck around the pool, no one is going to buy a house with a deck with a giant hole in the middle. haha. If the pool is going to last longer than 10 year, we might just end up getting the 5000 instead, we were nervous about the rust or the resellability of the house should that pool rust or whatnot. To be honest, I feel like a lot of the reviews here do have that 5-10 year lifespan which gets me a but wary about going about this project, especially putting it inground. But we seriously can't envision the pool 100% above ground.

Also, if the groundwater something the pool installation people will talk about? I've really been just speaking to them over the phone and they just ask "How big? Circle or Oval? How deep?" then go "$X" TBH, is $3100 - $3500 a reasonable price for install, before backfill? Or should I keep looking?

I really think the life span of any pool (and many other things as well) is a total Crud shoot. Or more to the point, the spread on the curve that falls within 95% confidence levels is quite wide.

Pools may or may not be a selling point. Somebody may love the idea of one, others hate them. The harder you make it to remove, the less likely somebody who hates it is going to buy your house. But you are the one you can decide how much of a factor that is.

Ground water is run off from rain as well as water that is in the ground. In my situation my ground gets VERY wet (fill that overlays a sandy clay layer). If I were to bury my pool and did not put in some sort of subsurface drainage system against the wall, then I would have saturated earth up against my pool about 250 days out of the year. There are many ways to build such a system, and a drainage contractor is separate from a pool installer.

 

[phonedave]

Will look into the filters for my township! We're definitely going to look into a solar blanket. But did you get a heater? I've been told to test it for a season prior to committing to it, but wanted to get an census from the neighbors. I'm getting a pool compliant fence around the whole property. But we're struggling to find a stairs to get into the pool, especially if it's going to be dig into the ground. Most stairs are set for the 48"-54". We might just have to learn how to pole vault into the pool.

The solar blanked is a game changer. Don't look into it - get one. Really.

I do not have a heater either. The cost to install and then run one for me is just crazy.

So if your pool is dug into the ground, the deck will be flush with the top, so just get the normal stairs for in the pool. If you are going to be using it without the deck for a while, then you can just get the inside stairs and build a small set of stairs and a small platform until you build your deck.

 

[phonedave]

Haha. Trust me, I'm cheap too. My husband totally hates that I've gone down this rabbit hole. And him finding out that I found this community to help me get the answer.... Haha. He's going to get a shock when I finally check out my shopping cart. Interesting about the inspections....They said as long as I had a pool compliant fence (48") around it, I'm good to go.... even if the fence is around the whole property. But if it doesn't pass, guess we'll just have to pull more overtime to get that deck in ASAP. Although, one of the pool installers I spoke to emphasized the importance of putting the fence, pool and deck on 3 separate permit applications, so that one doesn't hold up the other.
I'll definitely splurge on that solar cover, I'm just nervous about tugging that thing on and off without the deck. But it'll be huge learning curve.

For the most part, you need a way to prevent children from getting into your pool. The biggest issue with putting a fence around the entire property and no fence around the pool is that most houses have a back door. In this case, children in the house can open the back door and get into the pool unsupervised. They do make alarms for doors that will make this setup compliant (or if you do not have a door on the house that leads into the fenced in area, then you are good to go as well.

I have a fence around my entire back yard, with an auto closing access gate. But I also have two back doors that lead into the back yard. So I also have an auto closing gate at the base of the stairs that lead to my pool deck.

 

[phonedave]

I'll definitely splurge on that solar cover, I'm just nervous about tugging that thing on and off without the deck. But it'll be huge learning curve.

You can cut it into 3 or 4 pieces. A little more time consuming to put on or take off, but each piece is a lot easier to manage. It will still work just fine.

 

[phonedave]

But the times there are people coming over and we open the pool fully it isn't that big a deal pulling the cover off and we just put a tarp down and lay it on the ground. Keep in your mind that our pool is 52" high so everything is being done at shoulder height, it will be much easier at waist height. Another thing that people do is buy/build a holder for the cover, we thought about it and decided not to because of we came up with the partial opening of the pool.

I have had various incantations of solar cover removal and storage items. From hanging it on the edge, to PVC pipe racks, to 30' aluminum reels that spanned my pool.

I have a new pool now. I do not plan on attaching anything to it - no bolting into the top rails or legs. My plan for now is to cut my solar cover into 4 strips, roll them up, and store them in the corner of the pool deck when not in use. I'm noodling around some ideas using rope, grommets, and other things to make putting them back in place easier (maybe). I will have to actually build it to see if it works.

 

[VinnyinNJ]

I have had various incantations of solar cover removal and storage items. From hanging it on the edge, to PVC pipe racks, to 30' aluminum reels that spanned my pool.

I have a new pool now. I do not plan on attaching anything to it - no bolting into the top rails or legs. My plan for now is to cut my solar cover into 4 strips, roll them up, and store them in the corner of the pool deck when not in use. I'm noodling around some ideas using rope, grommets, and other things to make putting them back in place easier (maybe). I will have to actually build it to see if it works.

We keep thinking about cutting it in half but now that we don't uncover it totally most times it's not too bad. I've been concerned that the solar cover pieces will move separately and become a mess. I was going to build a PVC solar cover holder but so far nixed that idea. We used it as a "tent" once where it started raining with no thunder or lightning, it worked pretty well for that!

 

[Newdude]

I've been concerned that the solar cover pieces will move separately and become a mess

They do surprisingly well except for insane wind days. I cut my old cover into strips to save as bubble wrap *before* I realized I could use a piece for my hot tub.

So the wider than the strips hot tub had 2 pieces. But they stayed put even with the jets running.