Swimming Pool underwater Viewing Windows?

[Ocean Railroader]

I'm right now looking at houses with a new or old swimming pool. If the house has a swimming pool that is in good shape I plan to operate it as a regular swimming pool. But if I happen to get a house that has a very old and in a lot of cases abandoned swimming pool that needs to have sections of it's walls replaced. I plan to dig out the most badly damaged part of the pool and build a new cement wall expect that the cement wall will have a set of viewing windows that will look into a living room that is made out of cement that is built next to the swimming pool. Such as when I renovate the old pool I would have a addition pored out of cement at the same time that would have a foot thick cement wall dividing the pool from the living room and the swimming pool with the windows looking in from the shallow and the deep ends of the pool looking into the room. Afterwords I would have some type of green house thing put over the swimming pool and the new room to make it indoors.

There is also another version of this idea and I have seen in several salutations where it's possible. This idea would involve taking a swimming pool that is ten to 15 feet away from a house with a basement that goes below the mean pool level. Such as in some cases you have a house that has a basement that is near a swimming pool and when your in the house's basement you are sitting four to ten feet below the top level of the swimming pool outside. This idea would involve widening the swimming pool and digging it out to the home's basement and building ether a sires of acrylic viewing windows or a glass wall to hold back the raging waters of the pool to link the two of them up.

If anyone thinks this is imposable it's not out of the question in that I know several people who have made their own DIY super sized fish tanks built that rival many people pools in size in volume and water capacity such as this 50,000

Also there is a 10,000 gallon cinder block fish tank to on monster fish keepers. http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forum ... 00-gallons

As for why I would do something like this is that I do like swimming pools but my growing fish need a new home and a swimming pool sits empty 80% to 90% of the time.


Would anyone here have any idea if any swimming pools existing here if they would have viewing windows on them or how much the idea would cost?

Here is a photo of my swimming pool to fish tank conversion idea.

 

[Isaac-1]

It seems like someone here did build a pool with an underground bathroom / changing room next to it, perhaps connected to their basement with a small viewing window into the pool at the base of the stairs. This was a year or two ago

 

[cbink]

I would think it would be really difficult to retrofit something like this. The ones I've seen I believe have all been built with that intent in mind (the house as well as the pool).
As a ballpark figure I can't imagine it costing less than $250k due to the significant engineering that would be involved.

 

[Patrick_B]

I would think it would be really difficult to retrofit something like this. The ones I've seen I believe have all been built with that intent in mind (the house as well as the pool).
As a ballpark figure I can't imagine it costing less than $250k due to the significant engineering that would be involved.

I agree, this needs to be something engineered in from the start. I think retrofit is just too impractical. That said, if money is no object just about anything is possible.

I will say welcome to the forum, and sorry to rain on your parade straight away. Here is a recent member joining us from Argentina who did put windows in in his pool though, so you can check it out.

greetings-from-argentina-t71183.html

I've seen one on the Cool Pools show on TV where someone did this in a very elaborate fashion. That one is somewhere on youtube.

 

[cbink]

I've seen one on the Cool Pools show on TV where someone did this in a very elaborate fashion. That one is somewhere on youtube.

I saw that one too and would be very surprised if that wasn't a million dollar project.
Wasn't it a wine room or something that looked into the pool? Maybe that was another one. I've seen a few like that.

 

[Ocean Railroader]

There was also another idea I had in that people like to use cinder blocks to build some home made pools here. But on this other website they like to use cinder blocks and support beams along with sheets of glass and acrylic to make viewing windows for 1000 gallon plus tanks. http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forum ... chlid-tank I might consider tearing down a old wall to a swimming pool and replacing it with a cinder block add on with viewing walls.

Another option I have been thinking off is simply having someone come in with a back hoe and bring in concrete forms along with viewing windows and build the swimming pool fish tank hybrid from the ground up.


Here is a link to a 50,000 gallon fish tank that was built out of a set of sold cement walls with a five foot tall glass wall in front. This tank which is in Canada was built by a man and his friends and was not built by a professional fish tank company. This 50,000 gallon tank contains tropical fish and is far larger then most swimming pools on this website. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWHSbu6kLwk The tank also has swimming pool pumps and a large natural gas fired swimming pool heater to keep it's water's in the 80's.

 

[Ocean Railroader]

As for a update on this swimming pool project as if now it looks like it would be cheaper for me to get a 2400 to 7500 gallon fish tank then to try to convert a swimming pool to a fish tank.

But I'm still open to this idea of turning a swimming pool to a fish tank if I buy a house with a swimming pool and the pool needs to be torn out due to decay.

 

[gwegan]

If you are trying to convert a pool to a fish tank thats is one thing. using as a pool thats another.

If you use block you are going to want a liner. Generally you want a gunite pool with a rebar cage for that much water. You will have to convince your local building official that its safe to have your window and all that water and that requires an engineer.

You would also need to have a circulation system and properly designed electrical and bonding systems.