About how much would it cost to put in a pool? (Dallas: foreclosure, house)

[galore]

Originally Posted by momof2dfw

I understand pools have gone up a lot in recent years as the price of concrete has increased DRAMATICALLY!

A typical residential pool requires about 60 cubic yard of shotcrete.
A cubic yard of concrete goes for $88 (http://www.cooperconcrete.com/products.htm). So that's about $5k for the concrete.

I paid $75/cubic yard in 2001. For a whole pool the price increase is $780 in concrete in the past 6 years. Hardly DRAMATIC. Even if the concrete were free in the past, concrete nowadays is still only $5k total for a typical pool therefore dramatic price increases must have other reasons.

[lh_newbie]

do you know what the steel prices were? I know steel prices have increased a lot - so re-bar is more expensive.

[galore]

Rebar is around $600/ton for #6.

The gardenweb forum has a good section for pools/spas. I found one post that details pool costs for a nice residential pool in Boulder City:

And so it begins ....... Owner Builder in LV - Pools & Spas Forum - GardenWeb

Doesn't seem that steel is that much.

The big items are the labor intesive tasks of plastering, plumbing, electric, tile and the pool equipment + gunite.
There are also some big margin profit makers like "safety" and "start-up" in this quote.

[peripie]

Thanks to all!!! I can always count on this site to give great info!

[terryheimler]

We built our pool last summer with PlayMore Pools. THey did an awesome job, much more than we had thought or hoped for. It is what they call an activity pool that goes from 3.5 ft to 5 ft to 3.5 ft. The pool has an attached spa with an awesome stone spillway to the main pool. The heater they use is fantastic on coldest day gets the spa ready in about 25 minutes. We went the extra for a wireless control system and salt water definitely a good move the salt water system rocks. We highly recommend them to anyone thinking about a pool. We never had a pool before so were a little nervous turned out great!

[calmdude]

We got a pool built 3 yrs ago. We also did the fence. Got quotes from 4 vendors for each. Surprisingly, the quotes for the pools were much closer to each other than that for the fences, even though the later cost much less. For a few extra bucks, put in salt water (low maintenance) and remote. Make sure that the pump is not overdesigned (too much HP simply wastes power). For a few hundred $s, if u have kids, put in lights that change colors - it is really cool. We put in a 3ft-5ft-3ft / saltwater / gratto / some concrete for about $38k. Will not tell you who the company was as I personally think that most of them are OK provided they have been in business for a few years. Many (excepting Riverbend) outsource the work to same sub-contractors. Make sure u take time to read the CONTRACT you sign - it is stacked against you. Larger companies will be less likley to modify the contract whereas the smaller ones are more flexible (and a bit cheaper too). Good luck!

[mckinneydeb]

Although I no longer live in a home with a pool, we did have one installed at our previous home. In 2000 after a trip to Tahiti I came home and decided I had to have a pool. I had this idea of creating my own little tropical paradise. I guess I wanted to at least create an illusion of paradise. Anyway, we got several estimates from different companies. Some were mega franchises and some were smaller independent companies. In reality, the price differences really weren't that significant for the pool/spa. It was when you started adding the light packages, upgrade the decking, tiles and such. We went with a franchise and while I personally would never recommend them, the pool did provide many summers of fun. The overall customer service experience was the reason I can not recommend the company. The sales person who came to our home was great, the sales people at the design office were great. It was the service dept that was so difficult to deal with.

It was a play pool, 3.5-5-3.5 deep with the built in sunning/tanning ledge, spa, regular light package, gas heater, although I did upgrade the coping. It was small, I think it was around 15,000gallons? It was an unusual shape to fit our yard and we had to move the gas line in order to actually dig the hole. Total was around $28k. This did not include any landscaping as we did that ourselves. Again that was the summer of 2000. Neighbors put in almost identical pool 2 years later, it was $35k. An acquaintance had a HUGE pool installed with everything you can imagine including a small cabana. It took almost a year to complete which included extensive landscaping. Total pkg: nearly $100K.

If you choose to have one installed, do your research including checking with the BBB for logged complaints. Get a list of recent customers. One friend actually stopped at a house that had one of those "pool installed by" advertising signs and asked the couple how satisfied they were with the process. To be honest, we heard "bad" things about every company we checked into. In the end, we choose one that had the least complaints. I never regretted adding the pool, I really enjoyed it.

[pbarnett]

We used PlayMore Pools- we found them on the web and then did some research on them. They offer some corporate discounts too. I know they offer discounts to all the hospital employees, American and Southwest Airlines and EDS. We are impressed. We'd heard all of the horror stories on pools building ours went so smoothly. Great pool !!!!!

[txmom72]

We just had one installed with spa, heater, multilights, ozone and salt for about 35ish. It is 8 ft deep. Had a friend at the same time went with the huge franchise and they got wayyy less than we did for about the same amount of money.

[Dallashomes]

WELCOME TO DALLAS

THINGS TO TAKE INCONSIDERATION PRIOR TO INSTALLING A POOL
a) Basic cost is approx. $25K - $30K w/o the all the features could be up to $50K
b) Pool installed if you ever resale your house will only receive approx. $5K extra over other homes sold in the area w/o a pool.
c) You need to determine the est. value of the home with pool in some areas of Dallas the appreciation values are not as much if you were to resale your home then you owe more than what the house is worth!
d) There are some GREAT Dallas home foreclosures with pools, total move in quality that have 20% or more equity
e) I agree I hate homes w/o a pool especially here in Dallas