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Salt water vs Chlorine?
Salt water is still chlorine. The machine turns the salt into chlorine. The sun turns the chlorine into salt and so on. However it does have less chlorine than a hard water pool. Because your body is saline based, the salt water is much more gentle on your eyes and skin, especially your eyes. It is nto very salty at all, you can barely taste it.
Concrete vs Fiber (I'm concerned that because it is a brand new lot we are building on and the ground may not be as stable, we may have issues with the pool down the road)
We went with Vinyl. You have to replace the liner slightly more often, but the cost of a new liner is comparatively tiny. If high water pushes up your vinyl liner, you pump the water out form under it and swim. If ground water cracks a concrete pool or floats a fiberglass pool, you call your mortgage broker for a second. Concrete requires the most chemicals for upkeep, fiberglass requires the least. Vinyl is int he middle. Dogs claws (and bicycles) and cut holes in a vinyl liner. They may scratch fiberglass which looks bad but does not hurt anything. They will not hurt concrete. Concrete is way more expensive than vinyl. I think concrete and fiberglass are close. Fiber is a bit more expensive (or was). Concrete and vinyl pools can be any shape, size or configuration you choose. Vinyl does have depth limitations. Fiberglass is very limited in size, shape and depth. They are premade, so you cannot really customize the shape and size, you pick from pre-selected shapes and sizes (unless you are a billionaire). Vinyl will eventually get some wrinkles in the bottom and not look as good, but it looks fine until then. However nothing looks as good as tile IMO. Pool installers will often push concrete becuase it is what they know best. It has been the most common material for ages. Kind of like plumbers pushing copper plumbing because they are afraid of PEX. I think concrete is out of date and will not be around that much longer.
If the ground is unstable because you are on a hill, then you woudl be crazy to put in a pool without geotechnical engineering. Some people end up making their house slide down the hill and then try to blame the builder.
Concrete floor around the pool or pavers?
Concrete base is the cheapest. Stamped concrete is a bit more expensive but looks much nicer. Pavers over concrete cost more. I would not do paver over sand/earth. You will have problems. There are also poured rubberized surfaces, and something called a "california" deck which drains the water back into the pool. It is some sort of plastic beads kind of mushed together. Makes a great walking surface, very expensive. We just used concrete. Stamped concrete was too expensive. Colored concrete costs very little, but we did not bother with that.
What is the best color for the pool? Do dark pools warm up quicker than lighter colored ones? We have 2 kids and they like their pool water to be warm.
Makes no difference. A solar cover will help capture the heat from the sun. A 210,000 BTU gas heater will help it stay warm a lot more.
What kind of heating system is the best? My parents have a solar system where the water goes up on the roof, gets heated by the sun and down into the pool it goes. Are there any alternatives and what are pros and cons?
My sister had a home made system like that. Simply black hose zig zagged over the roof and the returned to the pool, a small $25 pump was sufficient to flow the water through slowly enough to heat it on sunny days (no heat on cloudy days). Sometimes they had to turn it off, the pool got too warm. Be careful about the weight on your roof, but it should not be a problem it is pretty spread out. If that causes failure than so will snow or wind.
We have a 210,000 BTu gas heater. When it is cold, it costs about $75 to heat up the pool and takes three days and it costs about $5 a day to keep it warm if you keep it covered (about five to ten times that if you leave the cover off). As it gets 10 degrees colder each month, the cost of keeping it warm roughly doubles. Surprisingly, the cost of heating it up only changes a little.
Any other pros and cons are there to consider? and any questions I should be asking as we are meeting with the pool companies to get the quotes?
What type of bottom do you want? Flat bottom, sport bottom, dive pool? Dive pools with a board may jack up your insurance, or you may have to find new insurance. We got sport bottom and we like it. It is deep enough in the middle to cover most of an adult (5'8" I think), but shallow enough around the edges to allow little kids to stand up. It is gradual enough we can play volleyball and piggy back wars without falling too often. It is deep enough for a slide, but way too shallow for diving.
Get sand filtration. Slightly more work, but by far the best results for the dollar. Cartidge filters are mongo costlyto maintain, but not as much work. Get a pool dolphin (or equivalent) this is a robot that cleans your pool for you. It make pool ownership not hellish. Costs about $800 on sale. You will have to replace the salt/chlorine generator cartridge every three to five years. The pool stores will charge you $800, you can get one on the internet for $350.
If you must winterize, just pay a pro to do it. There are too many ways you can mess up if you DIY, and while you might save $300 vs. pro winterizing, you can easily cost yourself thousands if you mess up. Use a pool store that is well established and long lived. The one that opened last year or two years ago is more likely to be gone next year.
Pool stores will try to sell oyu all kinds of chemicals you do not need. That is where they make their money. One thing we do is we use non-iodized 98.5% pure water softener salt. Pool store salt is 98.8% pure and costs 10 times more.
Pool companies will push you towards whatever they normally sell. They do NOT give you neutral advice in your best interest. They say and pretend to do so, but if they are a fiberglass installer, they will push you that way and tell you the others are bad. Do your own research and take everything with a grain of salt. Nothing its neutral.
Pools cost a lot!. Ours was about $35,000 not including the greenhouse thing. It increases the value of your home $0. It makes far more sense to buy a home with a pool already installed. That way, you pay $0. $0 is better than $35,000 for most people unless you are dumb like us.
We have a community pool. We still maintained our membership most years for the social aspects of it, but it is really nice to be able to come home change and jump in the pool with the kids for an hour or two. Complete privacy, no one to judge your farmer tan or belly. No hours swim all night if you wish. No rules, you can jump, splash even pee in the pool if you want to for some weird reason. Swimsuits are optional. It is an expensive luxury, but it is really nice. During summers we typically had kids in our pool every day. Sometimes pretty much all day (different groups of kids at different times). We had as many as 30 - 40 kids in the pool at times.
generally kids just want to splash and play and cool off. they are not looking to swim laps like an Olympian. IF you want to be able to swim laps, you need a long pool. Ours is 40' long and that is not nearly enough. Two or three strokes and turn, two or three strokes and turn. If you want laps, go at least 60 feet long or get one of those endless pools.
Slides are really cool, but also expensive. Ours was about $3000.
We have an Americover cover. It is neat, but you do not even want to know how expensive it was. You still cannot swim all year round in Michigan with it, but we swim through October, heat it up for thanksgiving and sometimes Christmas break.
Things break and you have to replace and fix them. It is not just buying the pool and then some chemicals and water.
teach your dog to love the pool. Everyone will love swimming even more if the dog takes a flying leap off the deck once in a while.
I hope I did not already say all this in your other thread.
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