wxguy23, one thing to keep in mind is that many of the active people on these forums all have gunite or concrete pools, which allows for more freedom in depths that you dont get with a vinyl lined steel wall in ground pool. Those types of pools come at a bigger price as well. Especially if you live in an area the pool season is not the full year long.
I have a very strong opinion on this topic, so I hope I do not come off too much as my opinion is the only one that is right.
People will congregate in any pool, whether a sport pool or a diving pool. People want to be able to hold a conversation if they are not actively swimming or playing a game. No matter your decision, your daughter will be very happy with having a pool. And any friends she brings over will be happy with being in a pool.
Ask yourself what are you going to do in your pool. Here are things that people are likely to say.
-Play Volleyball
-Play Basketball
-Swim laps
-Tread Water
-Float (maybe on a Noodle) and allow your feet to dangle and be weightless
-Diving Board dives and flips
-Cannonballs
-Jumping into the pool
-Diving in to the pool from the side of the pool
-Lay on a raft
-Put stuff on the bottom of the pool and dive for it
-Just sit in the water
-Just stand in the water
-Do Front or Back flips in the water
-Hang out and talk
-Try to swim the length of the pool underwater
-Dive in and try to stay underwater the whole length of the pool (and back maybe)
-Sit on the edge of the pool and dangle your feet in the water
Out of all of these things, the only ones that require the sport style configuration are to Play Volleyball and to Play Basketball. While these are great activities, how often do you plan to do these things. If you have fewer people that will swim regularly (ie a small family) then most of the time these team sports aren't going to happen. So for me, while fun, designing a pool based upon an activity that will rarely be done seems kind of silly. Now if you had a family of 6 or 8 people, then maybe more emphasis should be put into this feature.
As far as the shallow end of 3.5 feet versus 3 feet, here are the activities that are better when the shallow end is a bit deeper (like 6 inches or 12 inches).
Stand in the water
Swim Laps
You might say jumping in, but I'm not sure that an extra 6 inches of water will really make this activity better or safer.
For kids the extra 6 inches might make doing flips in the water easier/possible.
Here is where I am going to weigh in on my opinion. If you don’t value volleyball or basketball all that much (and I don’t) then the best things in a pool require some amount of depth. Having your feet dangle, diving in off of the side, cannonballs, retrieving things off the bottom, treading water, those things all require some depth. As someone who is over six foot tall, and is not skinny, I would suggest that having an area that is 6 foot minimum depth is essential in a pool to allow for those things. So if you need 6 foot depth, that is too deep for a proper sport pool, so at that point, you might as go with a traditional shallow end deep end pool. Because I like to just dive in off the side of the pool (no fancy dives) and enjoy diving down deep, I would suggest going with the traditional 8 foot depth diving well pool, even if you don’t have a diving board, which I do not. But if you want an extra couple feet of shallow 3 foot end, then only go down to 7 foot.
When buying a vinyl pool, the best bang for your buck is almost always in an oval pool. The different between a pool that is 32 feet long, 36 feet long or 40 feet long is simply a matter of a bit more excavation, and adding in an extra piece of side wall on the pool. It then causes your concrete deck to be a bit longer.
For most vinyl builders, the true sweet spot is 18x36 or 18x40. If you look at all of the price options you will see what I am referring to.
As for making the pool a bit fancier, the jets in the pool deck while fancy, to me seem a bit out of place in a pool that is not super extravagant. Also, how many jets do you have to have to make the jets worthwhile. If you builder charges you $1K per jet, you might need 4-6 of them to look right, and you can do a lot for that amount of money. For me, you have to be careful or to use a car analogy, the jets can seem like installing a GPS navigation system into a Yugo, just a feature that is out of place. For the costs of a jet, to me a better bang for your buck in a vinyl pool is a cuddle cove, sun shelf, deep end swim out, of bench. A cheap way to create a sun shelf in your pool is to turn the top shelf in your stairs into a sun shelf and have vinyl over steel stairs rather than the fiberglass white stair inserts. You can see an example
HERE.
Another good place to put your money is into the decking around the pool. Make sure that you have enough area for people to layout around the pool. Very few things bother me more than seeing someone spend $40K or more on a pool, and en up with the concrete area around the pool being so small that they cannot fit chairs, a patio table and a few chaise lounges without having to walk in the grass.
