<p>your house?</p>
<p>How much did it cost? What did you replace it with? Are you glad you did it? Anybody do this in the SF bay area?</p>
<p>Pools add value in certain areas–Vegas, Arizona, parts of SoCal, Fla, etc. In the rest they are at best breakeven or a negative. I’d talk to some local realtors. No value to them in Seattle.</p>
<p>I think it can go either way. If you are looking down the road at selling a house and how the pool might effect values, you just never know that there might be a seller out there looking for a house with a pool. But chances are, people won’t be looking for a pool.</p>
<p>When we put our pool in, we did so with the knowledge that we were doing it for pure enjoyment, and not an investment. In fact, I’ve also wondered what we would do with the pool if/when we try to sell our house.</p>
<p>The pool isn’t getting used very much because our kids have grown up. After the latest storm, after looking at the cleanup, I’m considering getting rid of it.</p>
<p>Maybe put some deck over it?</p>
<p>Agree with barrons. Especially with the cost of energy going through the roof, in some areas heating a pool could cost a fortune. Some folks I know even got rid of their hot tub for that exact reason.</p>
<p>If you put the pool in yourself, the pool adds value but not as much as you spent. Where I live here in Florida, just about every house has a pool. To NOT have a pool is almost a defect; it means the new owner will have to put the pool in himself and therefore suck up part of his investment as a loss. I suppose there are people who do not want a pool in the buyers market, but they are outnumbered by people who want a pool. When you are in a buyers market (like we are right now), it’s crucial to expand your potential market, not limit it.</p>
<p>I feel ya, dstark (post #4). We lived in a house with a pool in Fla. for 13 years. During that time, we got hit with 4 hurricanes that turned the pool into a fetid swamp each time. Never again. Sold the house a year and a half ago.</p>
<p>We did think about taking out the pool and substituting a nice spa. You might want to consider that. Much less maintenance and expense with a spa. </p>
<p>We just moved into a house (again in Fla.) with a gunite pool that was backfilled with dirt and topped off with concrete about two years ago because it had developed an underground leak that couldn’t be located and fixed. (We think it was put in too close to the shoreline and the structure cracked because of an inadequate seawall.) The pool has always been enclosed in a separate building. We’re actually staying in the pool house temporarily while we do renovations/remodeling on the main house. Eventually we’ll use the pool room for our offices and a guest room. In our neighborhood, the value of a pool is irrelevant (the neighbors on one side have one, neighbors on the other side don’t).</p>
<p>If you do fill yours in, you might want to consider putting in a permanant structure over it–perhaps a gazebo, hothouse, exercise room, addition to the house, a nice deck with a fire pit or barbeque area… whatever. How about a handball court? 
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<p>I agree with barrons about talking to local realtors about a pool’s value in your area.</p>
<p>My wife wants a volleyball court. :)</p>
<p>To complicate matters, one side of my pool is also a retaining wall. It extends 6 ft. above the pool surface. It has to stay. So, I would probably have to fill the pool in somehow, not really move it.</p>
<p>I used to love having a pool. Now, what a pain in the …</p>
<p>“We just moved into a house (again in Fla.) with a gunite pool that was backfilled with dirt and topped off with concrete about two years ago because it had developed an underground leak that couldn’t be located and fixed.”</p>
<p>Maybe, I can do this too?</p>
<p>We have an inground gunite pool that we put in when building the house. We did this knowing it might not help resale, but probably wouldn’t hurt–in NC. </p>
<p>I thought with the kids gone it wouldn’t be used, however I have found with the kids gone I use it much more as does my h. When the kids were at home, it was a play area and later a teenage hangout. Now it is my lap pool and my husband’s place to lounge on a float with a beer and cigar after mowing the yard ;).</p>
<p>I think you might want to talk to landscapers, landscape architects, and pool contractors. The landscape architects would probably have some good ideas about what to do about the retaining wall–either how to make use of it or how to disguise it. The pool contractors probably have experience taking them out as well as putting them in. </p>
<p>We thought about the possibility of salvaging the current (former) pool. But, uh… no thank you. Too much bother and we can swim elsewhere as much as we desire without the work. </p>
<p>Volleyball sounds good.</p>
<p>A couple in our old neighborhood ripped out a tennis court to put in a pool and then never used it. That was shortly before the divorce. We always wondered if she was the tennis player as we knew he preferred deep-sea fishing. ;)</p>
<p>Mkm56, that sounds familiar. Hubby liked to sit in the spa end with a glass of wine and read the paper at the end of the day. But I don’t remember either of our kids using it once they hit high school. Me? I only used it to cool off after hot summer days spent gardening. Oh, and our cats loved to drink out of it.</p>
<p>Mudder’s_Mudder, I enjoyed reading your posts.</p>
<p>My cat likes to drink from the pool too. :)</p>
<p>I was just thinking today how much I’ve grown to dislike our pool. Kids grown, husband travels a lot and I know I shouldn’t swim alone. . . so I don’t, or only very occasionally in the shallow end 
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<p>Kind of a waste. Maybe there is some way to use it more. . . I’m in Minnesota and we HAVE had some pretty hot summers lately.</p>
<p>It’s often said in Oregon, you deduct 10 grand from your asking price if you’re selling a house with a pool.</p>
<p>If we’d stayed in Irvine, CA, we seriously considered putting in an in-ground pool with a plastic liner (less expensive than a gunnite pool), with the thought that we might fill it in when the boys grew up and I got sick of maintaining it. Pools without kids don’t ever seem to get used much. From everything I’ve ever heard, both here and in California, a pool never adds its construction costs to the value of a home.</p>
<p>dstark, if you’re in the bay area, isn’t your pool closed for the winter? Shouldn’t be much cleanup unless you have one of those disposable covers.</p>
<p>Our pool’s been closed since mid-September (NJ) with one of those tight covers that an elephant can stand on, I just replaced the blessed thing this past year. So with these winter storms a few branches blow onto the elephant cover…no big cleanup, they just blow off since it’s so tight.</p>
<p>We live 2 miles from the beach…it was dumb to put this in in the first place. I keep it because it’s pretty, and I do all the landscaping (from scratch) myself. I go around every morning in the summer and save all the bugs and critters that flew in overnight…at least someone/thing uses it, not my family (we go to the beach). I’ve been tempted to rent a backhoe and fill the darn thing in though.</p>
<p>Yeah, we have a pool that came with the house and nobody uses anymore. However, it is expensive to fill in. You need to bring in equipment to tamp the dirt down, or it will eventually sink itself. My parents’ neighbors didn’t bring in equipment, as the couldn’t get it in the yard, and they would have to take down the cement block fence to get it in. One night, in the middle of the night, the newly landscaped backyard and deck got sucked into a sinkhole. Then they got to pay to remove and replace the cement block fence as well as tamp down and re landscape the backyard.</p>
<p>UCD: Sucked into a sinkhole, or just the shape of the pool area sunk??? Did they take out the pool and not recompact or just fill in the empty pool?</p>
<p>If one plans to move more than X cubic yards of dirt, special permitting may be required. It is always wise to check the local code before attempting any major backyard work. Of course, nobody will know unless a neighbor rats on you or the project collapses.</p>
<p>“dstark, if you’re in the bay area, isn’t your pool closed for the winter?”</p>
<p>No, my pool is a very irregular shape. It doesn’t necessarily look like it, but it was built into the side of a hill. One reason for my retaining wall. So, I don’t have the pool covered.</p>
<p>Hmmm. I see a lot of people are no longer happy with owning a pool.</p>
<p>Aren’t there significant liability/insurance issues with having a pool?</p>
<p>I don’t know about this personally, because whenever we shopped for a house, “no pool” was at the top of my list of requirements (because I didn’t want to be responsible for children’s safety in a yard with a pool). But there are definitely risks to having a pool on your property. Is this reflected in insurance costs?</p>