Moving to Arizona, Wife wants a pool, Where do I start

[joefromchicago]

I just found this great forum a couple of weeks ago and decided to start asking some questions.
We will be retiring, moving to Robson Ranch (Eloy, Arizona) and the wife wants a pool.
We should moving around this time next year.

Any recommendations for pool builders?
Salt water of chlorine?
What type of heater for the pool, we will be in Arizona year round and would like to use the pool as much as possible.

This website is great and all the information is appreciated.

Joe

 

[pooldv]

Welcome to TFP!

I would definitely want a pool in AZ!

Saltwater makes it easy to chlorinate your pool, no hauling bleach/liquid chlorine
Solar heat is a great option to heat most pools, especially in AZ
For even more swimming season you could add a heat pump to help the solar

For year round water access we added a standalone hot tub for the winter months and it is really nice.

 

[wjr75]

Buy a house that already has one. May save a lot of coin. I bought our house during the great recession and got a 100K pool for free

 

[cowboycasey]

Welcome to TFP, the best and cheapest option is to buy a house with one already built believe it or not it is hard to sell a house with a pool, over 50% of the population can't or won't get a house with a pool... what that means is no matter how much a pool costs, the house will only sell for the amount of the house, the pool is almost always free or very little, my neighbor is an estimator and add's 3000 dollars for a pool, no matter how much it costs to install...

 

[pooldv]

Good point! And you don't have to wait months for it to be built, manage the process and all that jazz.

 

[Richard320]

Hi, Joe!

In Arizona, I think solar is a must. Supplement it with a heater of some sort if you must, but definitely go solar.

Saltwater is chlorine. It's just generated onsite to eliminate jugs and shipping and middlemen. The Arizona sun can be brutal on chlorine, so go salt and save yourself a lot of jug lugging.

For the rest... since you have time... use the search box for words like Arizona, Phoenix, Eloy. See if there's anyone local. They'll be able to tip you off to pool builders and specific things they wish they'd done differently. Send 'em a PM.

 

[cbrach411]

I'm in Arizona and from my point of view I would build a pool again rather then purchase with one. We got to pick exactly how we wanted it and exactly where it was. The information on only adding 3000 is completely inaccurate. The number is actually 10-15k added to value. I'm not sure if solar benefits hot tubs so that might be beneficial however for just a standard pool no spa I don't see the need for one. We have been swimming for weeks and will continue until October. Our pool cost was 24k so I don't mind losing a little bit of money to have it exactly how I want it. Obviously it wouldn't make sense to put a 70k pool in a house only worth 250,000.

 

[cowboycasey]

You may be completely correct for your area, that is from OK around me ?

I am using my phone so please excuse any spelling errors and short response.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

In AZ, pools are very common. I'm in Tucson and Eloy is north west of us so you can expect your temps to be a little hotter as you are closer to the valley than we are (our elevation is about 800ft higher). In Eloy, you WANT a pool.

You might have a hard time finding a pool builder willing to build out where you are as Eloy is kind of stuck in the middle between Phoenix and Tucson. You can PM me and I'll give you the name of a Tucson PB but I'm not sure he'll build up your way. However, he will likely know who does build up there. The downside is, you might only get one or two bids for a pool so price-shopping is limited.

As for solar, there's another group here in Tucson that does lots of different solar options. Look up Engineered Solar. That do standard water panels and coils on roofs BUT they have a very neat option of installing solar electric arrays (PV or photovoltaics) that run a standard heat pump. It avoids all the headaches associated with pumping water up to your rooftop (water leaks, higher pump speeds, etc) by using free electricity to generate heat. That's an option I'm considering on my own pool (when I cash my winning lottery ticket someday...).

 

[joefromchicago]

Thanks everyone for all the ideas

 

[sheree202]

I love your title....you sound like an awesome husband! I would first look into houses with pools. That being said, we are much happier having bought our dream house and now adding the perfect pool that we designed. You'll love this forum...so much knowledge here for building and maintaining a pool.