Pool regrets: what owners wish they'd known

Deeper than anyone needed

The regret I hear most is depth. People picture a deep end because the pool they grew up with had one, and then find that nobody swims there. The kids stay where they can stand, the adults stand around in the shallow half with a drink, and the deep end turns into the expensive part of the pool: the most digging, the most water, the slowest to warm up.

For a family pool, 3–4′ 11″ (1.2–1.5 m) across most of the floor does nearly everything. You can swim it, play in it, sit on the steps and stand up to talk. If someone wants to jump in, a gentle slope to around 5′ 11″ (1.8 m) at one end is plenty for cannonballs. Jumping, not diving.

The diving board is the same regret with a louder voice. A board needs a proper diving envelope, typically a deep end of 8′ 2″ (2.5 m) or more with a long, gradual run-out, and that shape eats the useful floor. Your homeowner's insurer will want to know about it, some charge more, and a fair number of boards get unbolted a few summers in. If nobody in the house dives seriously today, say no.

Too big to heat, too dear to run

The second regret is size, and it tends to arrive with the first utility bill. Every extra cubic metre gets filtered, dosed and heated every season for as long as you own the house. Going from 26 × 13 ft (8 × 4 m) to 33 × 16 ft (10 × 5 m) at the same depth is over half as much water again, from a footprint that barely looks bigger on paper.

Owners budget for the build and then meet the running costs one at a time. The pump's electricity, the heater's, chemicals, water to top up, opening in spring and closing in fall. Then the slow renewals: a vinyl liner every decade or so, a gunite pool's plaster after ten to fifteen years, a pump motor or a heater somewhere along the way. None of it is shocking on its own. Together it's a monthly line you'll carry for twenty years.

So size for the Saturday you'll actually have, not the party you throw once a year. Count the people who'll be in the water at the same time on a normal weekend. Ask each builder for an estimated annual running cost next to the build price, and for a variable-speed pump, which moves the same water on a fraction of a single-speed pump's electricity.

The cover nobody planned

An open pool loses most of its heat through the surface, mainly at night and mostly by evaporation. Owners who skip the cover are, in effect, heating the neighborhood: the same pool left uncovered can cost roughly twice as much to keep warm. It also collects more leaves, loses more water and eats more chemicals.

The awkward part is that the best covers are decided at the drawing stage. An automatic cover wants a rectangle or something close to one, a home for the reel (a housing on the deck or a pit beneath it) and power run to it. A freeform kidney will happily take a solar blanket or an anchored safety cover, but it fights an automatic one all the way.

Decide the cover before you decide the shape. If an automatic cover is in the budget, let it square the pool off. If it isn't yet, have the builder leave room for the reel and lay the conduit anyway. That's cheap while the ground is open and miserable once the deck is poured.

I've never heard anyone wish their pool were deeper. I've heard plenty wish it were warmer.

Deck in the wrong places, and no shade

Decks get drawn as an even border, the same width all the way around the water. Then summer comes and everything happens on one side: the loungers, the table, the towels, the kids dripping past on their way to the kitchen. That side is always too narrow. The far side, where nobody goes, is a wide strip of paving you paid for and now sweep.

Put the width where the life is. A lounger is about 6′ 7″ (2 m) long and you want to walk past its foot without stepping over anyone's legs, so the lounging side wants 11′ 6″–13′ 1″ (3.5–4 m) of deck. The sides you only walk along can be 3′ 3″–3′ 11″ (1–1.2 m). Put the wide side in the afternoon sun and nearest the door you'll come out of.

No shade is the regret nobody sees coming, because pools are planned in spring and shade matters in August. Give the deck one shaded spot: a pergola, a sail, or at the very least an umbrella sleeve set into the concrete, a short length of pipe that costs next to nothing during the pour. Trees are the slow answer and the messy one. Keep anything that drops leaves or needles well back from the water.

The equipment pad under the bedroom window

The pump, filter and heater have to live somewhere, and on plenty of drawings they go wherever is closest to the pool. That's how they end up beside the primary bedroom or right up against the neighbor's patio. A pump running at night hums. A heat pump is a fan and a compressor. An old single-speed pump is a drone you hear through a closed window.

Choose the spot on purpose. Keep it within a sensible pipe run, typically 32′ 10″–49′ 3″ (10–15 m), because longer runs cost pump energy for as long as the pool exists. Keep it away from bedrooms, yours and the neighbors'. Leave room around a heat pump for air to move, and a path you can walk down with a bag of salt. Some towns also set a distance from the property line for pool equipment, or a limit on noise at night, so ask.

A screen of planting or a slatted enclosure hides the equipment from the eye. It does much less for the ear. Distance is what makes it quiet.

The wrong spot for the sun

Sun is free heating, and where the pool sits decides how much of it you get. Owners who put the pool where the lawn was flattest, or in the corner that looked tidiest on the site plan, sometimes find the house throws a shadow across the water from mid-afternoon, which is exactly when they get home from work.

Watch the yard before you decide. The shadows that matter are the long ones of spring and early fall, when the swimming season is won or lost, not the short ones of midsummer. Spend a clear afternoon in April or September outside with your phone and take a photo every hour. It tells you more than any drawing. Water that catches the afternoon and evening sun is warmer at the hours you actually swim.

Then check what else the spot brings: the wind, the trees, whether a digger can get to it, and the view from the kitchen. You'll look at the pool far more than you swim in it, and you'll want to see the kids from indoors. A smaller pool in the right place beats a bigger one in the wrong place nearly every time.

The quote was only for the pool

The pool quote is the number people remember, and it's often only part of the project. The barrier the building department requires, the deck, the electrical work to the equipment pad, drainage, lighting, planting, the lawn the trucks drove across: owners commonly report that the finished yard cost a good deal more than the pool. Nobody hid it. Those things just weren't in the pool quote.

Most US jurisdictions require a barrier around a residential pool with a self-closing, self-latching gate, and the details (height, gaps, whether a wall of the house can count) come from your building department. The electrical side has its own rules, typically bonding of the metal around the pool and ground-fault protection, and an inspector checks them. Price all of it before you settle on a size, not after.

Lighting is the cheapest regret to avoid and one of the dearest to fix. Owners skip the pool lights or the path lights to hit a number, then want them the first warm evening they sit outside. While the ground is open, an empty conduit to every place a light might one day go costs very little. Through a finished deck it means cutting concrete. Run the conduit even if you buy no fixtures this year.

Signing before you'd seen it, and signing in a hurry

Nearly every regret above has the same root. The owner signed before they'd seen the pool at its real size, in their own yard, next to their own house. A plan on a builder's tablet with nothing around it isn't the same thing. Mark it out: string and stakes for the water's edge, flour or marking paint for the deck, two chairs where the loungers will go. Leave it for a weekend and live around it.

Or draw it to scale in PoolPlanner's free designer, with the deck, the loungers and the house beside it, and look at it from where you'll really see it. The depth you don't need and the deck you do both show up before any of it costs money, and you can hand the same drawing to every builder so their quotes cover the same pool.

The last regret is time. Spring is when everyone wants a pool and when builders are busiest, and the pressure to sign in April to swim by July is how size, depth and finishes get chosen in one afternoon at a showroom. A typical concrete build takes two to three months once digging starts, and permits, weather and inspections stretch that. Plan over the winter and sign when you're sure. If that makes the first swim next year, the pool will be there for the next thirty.

The regrets, one line each

1. Copying the pool you grew up with

   A deep end and a board made sense in a club pool. In a backyard they cost money to dig, heat and insure, and the family ends up in the shallow half anyway.

2. Sizing for the party once a year

   Size for the ordinary weekend. The extra water is paid for every season, and the lost lawn and deck space are missed every day.

3. Treating the cover as an accessory

   The cover decides the heating bill, and an automatic one decides the shape. Choose it at the drawing stage, not after the deck is poured.

4. Comparing pool quotes instead of yard budgets

   The fence, deck, electrical and planting belong in the number you compare. A pool that fits the budget alone can leave the yard around it unfinished for years.

5. Signing in the spring rush

   Decisions made to catch a summer are the ones people live with longest. Plan in winter, when builders have time to talk, and sign when the drawing is right.