The Thought: My wife is a teacher and is off all summer with our two kids. A few years ago on a hot mid-July day my wife mentioned that it would be nice to have a pool. Now she has a lot of spur of the moment thoughts of this, that, or then next thing that would be nice. Most don’t come to fruition and are quickly forgotten about, but this one was different. She kept talking about it and of course our kids were not going to let this go, so we started looking into different options.
First up, above ground pool. We went to a couple pool companies and looked at a few options. Let’s do it we said. Before committing to anything I pulled out our HOA covenants and low and behold above ground pool are not allowed. Our HOA is small, and I know there are enough people against pools to know I won’t get a variance. This was a bummer, however the HOA covenants allowed inground pools. (I still heard through the grape vine people were not happy we were/are doing this. But I work within the rule book, so I pay no mind.) Naturally we talk about an inground pool and decide to investigate further. My initial thought was there is no way we can afford an inground pool but there are a few pool companies around and there’s no harm in looking. After some discussion we came up with an amount that we were willing to spend for a swimming pool.
We setup a weekend visit with a pool contractor about 45 minutes from our home. What we were after was a ballpark cost for a 16’x32’ with and 8’ deep end pool. We arrive and look at his personal pool and talk about what we are looking for roughly 20 minutes but cost never enters the discussion. At this point, not wanting to waste his or my time, I asked for a ballpark number. Needless to say, we left a little discouraged. While our “willing to spend” budget was substantial, we weren’t going to be able to have someone put a pool in for that amount. We back burner the idea, start saving, and look into financing. I’m sure that many people finance pool builds, I’m not knocking those who do, but I just couldn’t talk myself into taking out a loan for a swimming pool.
The Realization: In the meantime, I figure someone has built their own pool and I Youtube “DIY Swimming Pool”. Lots of results surface and in those results, was a series of videos from Pool Warehouse. Might I mention that I’m a DIYer and have been the construction industry all my life and this is…. interesting. I watch the videos and start searching online for swimming pool kits. I found a couple companies and price out what we are looking for and setup a spreadsheet with costs for the pool kit, electrical, plumbing, fencing, pool deck and other miscellaneous costs. After a lot more research and tabbing the costs, I find that our “willing to spend” and my DIY budget weren’t all that far apart.
I pitch the idea to my wife, and she is on board with doing it ourselves (by ourselves I mean myself lol). I will say that after pitching the idea and her agreeing to it I went back and forth in my head on whether I could/wanted to do it or not. Obviously because I’m here sharing this story, I talked myself into it.
The Order: We place our order on Feb. 10th, 2021 and begin the 12-14 week anticipated lead time. You might notice that this is the date the Texas freeze started. Initially I thought it may affect our order with high demand for replacement parts, but it didn’t seem to.
12 weeks would have put delivery in mid-May which would have been perfect. Much to my surprise I get notification that the kit is on its way and schedule for delivery April 27th. Yay, we can get a couple weeks head start. The pool kit arrives and there are four damaged panels, I file a claim and start waiting for up to 15 days for replacement panels. No big deal this essentially puts me at the original delivery date. A couple weeks pass, and I get notification that my replacement parts will arrive on May 14th which they do. Unfortunately, three of the four replacement panel are damaged. I file another claim but this time I cannot get ahold of anyone from the supplier to confirm that they received my claim or that they are working on sending replacement panels. Memorial Day weekend arrives, I still haven’t been able to contact or have any indication that the supplier is going to make this right so I decide I can wait any longer.
