Questions to Ask Yourself When Buying a Pool
You only get to get a pool once or twice, maybe three times in our lives if we’re lucky. And so we want to make sure that it’s perfect. But how do we do that? Well, what we have to do is we’ve got to isolate what are the most important things to us and how we get there is we’ve got to ask the right questions.
So, in today’s video, what I want to talk about are; are some great questions to ask yourself when thinking about getting a swimming pool.
What is your pool’s theme?
So, let’s start with the overarching theme. What is the theme of the house? What is the theme of the backyard? And you have to think about this.
If your house is an Italian theme, you want to carry that Italian theme throughout your backyard. If you do, that is going to impact the shape of the pool. That is going to impact the types of plants you have in the pool. It’s going to impact the spaces.
Let’s say that we’ve got a traditional contemporary house, but we want to carry into the backyard a more, let’s say, tropical pool. Well, that is going to say a lot of things to your fellow pool designer.
If we’re building a tropical pool, what do you not see? You don’t see straight lines, right? You see a lot of curves you see a lot of natural rocks. You see waterfalls. You may see some tropical plants. That is why when asking what you want in a pool, start with the theme.
The theme is going to tell us so much more. In the ultimate scheme of things, tell your designer the theme of what you want your backyard to look like, you know, if it’s matching your contemporary house, if it’s matching your Italian house, those elements are going to help the designer incorporate what you want.
So let’s talk about that tropical pool theme. What are the things that will make it look like that tropical pool? Well, I’m going to talk about one very specific feature. It is the rocks in the waterfalls. Now what you don’t want is to carry all the rocks on the beam of the pool.
What’s the beam of the pool?
It’s like the rim of the cup, OK? That means if you place all of your rocks on the beam, they’re going to sit on the top of that cup. What you may want to consider doing are notched rocks. Now, what this is, is a cradle for the rocks to sit halfway into the water.
Why does that look cool on a more natural inground pool?
Because it’s going to break up a lot of those straight lines and give you that more natural feel. When you’re tying into that overall theme, it’s going to give the designer so many ideas on the things that we can end up doing.
Let’s talk about how we’re going to use your pool.
How will you use your pool?
So, another great question that you should ask yourself is; How do you see yourself and your family using your pool? You know, do you have three kids that love basketball? That means you may want to put a basketball hoop in the pool. Do you like to entertain a lot? What time of the day do you entertain?
For example, if you entertain a lot in the evening, you’re going to want to incorporate some crazy, awesome lighting in the pool. You’re going to want to do some fireballs, maybe some tiki torches within the pool. That will impact some of the things that you want to do, maybe even a fire table if you like to sit in the pool, have a flame and water effect going on.
That is the cool part. There’s so much flexibility in pools today. There are so many features that you can get. It’s no longer just a hole in the ground with water. You can get all these amazing features. And that is why the theme is so important because it’s not just the shape of the pool. It’s not one or two features. It is everything tied together down to the landscaping.
But asking that question, how do you see you and your family using the pool is going to impact the use, whether we’re putting that basketball hoop then you may want to put a larger shallow end.
Now you start to see how it’s impacting the overall build. Another great question. And I don’t think these questions are asked often enough because it’s a little bit on the practicality side of things.
How long will you live in the house?
Maybe you are in one of those cases where you’re in a house that you maybe do want to live in for the next three or five years, but maybe not beyond that. Well, then you need to ask yourself that question. If I’m going to stay in this house for three to five years, what do I want to get out of my pool?
Why? Because kids are growing up. You’ve got to capture some of that time. And maybe you want to look at more of a sports pool, which is going to have two shallow ends on each end. And then deeper in the middle, you may not necessarily need a whole lot of features. You may want to put a basketball hoop at the end, or it’s going to be just a place to cool down.
When we do simple pools like this or even smaller pools like this, we call these splash pools or spools, which is just a different way of saying a small pool. That’s kind of what a spool is, a small pool.
Realistically, the great part about the small pool, it’s a place to jump in and cool down, right? It doesn’t need to have all the bells and whistles, and you would be surprised at how small we can get a pool into a backyard.
How much space do you have?
Is it a main element of the backyard? Oftentimes it is the main element in the backyard. You’ve got to think about all the other elements that you do want to have in the backyard. Do you want to have a fire pit? Do you want to have a barbecue? How close is that to the sliding glass door?
That’s where our designers will come in.
What they’ll do is they’ll take reality into play. How much room do we need for a patio furniture table? How much room do we need for a fire pit? How much room do we need for a barbecue? Because you just can’t pack them all in at once. Now we’re going to take all of these elements and tie them into where they should be around the pool.
So, the questions you need to ask when buying or building a pool are:
- What do you want the theme of your backyard to be?
- What are you going to be using your pool for?
- How do you see your family using the pool?
- How long are you going to live in the house?
- What size do we want that pool to be in?
- What other features do we want to put in that backyard?
If you start to answer just some of those basic questions it will make it easy so that when your designer comes in they can create exactly what you are looking for.