Thanks all for the friendly welcome !
@Ike, no indoor pools aren't that common, but I think part of the reason is a misconception that many people have that they are so hard to maintain, that you would get all kinds of hunidity and mold problems in the house and so. Several people warned us when they heard of our plans, but with proper systems it works well. We've leared that we need to cover the pool when it's not in use. The alternative would be to keep a really low water temperature which wouldn't be our way of using a pool. But once we started covering it we've had no problems at all with humidity. We have a ventilation system and three small de-humidifiers and that works fine. The climate in the pool room is very pleasant and we've never had any trouble with the building. This pool project was started already before we owned the building, but then for urdoor use. The previous owner had built the pool shell, but without fitting pumps, filter, connections and so. His idea was to build a large patio around the pool. Unfortunately he got a severe medical problem and passed away. When we bought the property we decided to build an indoor pool by building a large room, suitable for parties and similar, and with the pool inside it. Now we have a pool that we can use year round and we're very pleased with the outcome. There are some things that we still need to fix, but in general everything works well.
@Kim: Yes I'll try to add more info about our pool, but some of that I don't know right off. As I mentioed above we bought the property with the pool partially made and several of the items, like filter, pump, heater and so were already there, even though they were not installed. Therefore I'm not certain of the brands on some of our equipment.
Yes kids can splash a LOT to say the least. And we've got a whole bunch of kids. Four of our own plus that since more than a year ago we've got my sisters five kids living with us. She and her husband had a bad car crash (a drunk driver hit them) and they have spent months in different hospitals in order to recover from their injuries. In the meantime we'v taken care of their kids and with nine kids in the house it gets quite lively... Soon after we'd completed the pool we'd a birthday party for one of the kids and noticed that things got very wet. They did their canonballs as you mentioned, they had water fights, the made waves in the pool close to tsunami size... The idea was to have the first part of their party as a regular BD party, then change into swimwear and hit the pool. But many of them pushed each other in before they even got to change so we'd all these kids going in and out of the pool, many of them with their clothes on, and the amount of water that was lost was just incredibele. I think they lowered the pool level by about an inch - which is an awful lot of water ! But they'd great fun and no harm was done. But based on that experience we added a few more floor drains, plus that we coated the ceiling with a type of water repellant paint, outdoor grade. Earlier we'd done that to the walls around the pool (the walls have tiles up to about four ft above the pool, wood above there. We thought the ceiling was high enough to be safe from splashing, but the kids proved us wrong.
One of the things that we want to improve on the pool is the cover. At the moment we have a standard plastic cover that we pull by hand, but we'd love to find some automatic pool cover so that we can open and close the pool by just hitting a switch. That would make it much easier, especially if you're by yourself (myself I quite often go swimming late at night before going to bed, I need a number of laps of exercise). The present cover is very easy to handle if you've got someone to help you but a bit tricky single-handed.
Back with more later...
Linn
We're glad you found us. Make yourself at home and let us know if you have any questions.
