What would you do with an inground pool?

When we used our pool, built by previous owners and we haven't opened it since '04, the "start up" chemicals for a pool as big as ours was cost well over $200 and took about 3 days' effort to get it up and going even though it had been covered since the previous Labor Day. Also, the maintenance chemicals were very expensive and we needed to run the pump/filter a minimum of 8 hrs./day. DH figured it took about 2 hrs. work to keep it clean for every hour we used it. That just wasn't worth it.

I will admit that on hot days when we've been hauling hay or otherwise sweating our brains out, it still looks inviting.

I've never priced it out because I don't have a pool in-ground or otherwise but I've always heard a saltwater pool is better for you and easier and cheaper to maintain

Just found this blog post linking to another idea for using your swimming pool:

http://www.rural-revolution.com/2011...ading-ive.html

A reader sent me a link to the website of a family named McClung in Mesa, Arizona. It seems these folks bought a house with an empty and derelict swimming pool in the backyard. Rather than go through the expense of either repairing or dirt-filling the pool, the McClungs got the idea to utilize the existing space and turn it into an urban greenhouse...

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The three divine teachers of man: worldly calamity, bodily ailment, and unmerited enmity, and there is but through God alone a deliverance from them. Maine Farmer's Almanac

Use it as a SHTF bunker..........

Some skilled placement of a concrete roof and stub walls and some good shrubs to hide it and a 1 inch thick steel door to lock it with.


You could stock it with food guns and other things for survival........:banana02:


Maybe a tilapia farm...could be some income from it...with one of the new covers that you can walk on and not be at risk of drowning.....


Tilapia can be done in one season and ready for markett....from spring till fall is all it takes.


You could also make it a pistol range........

I would look to use it for whatever you would like to do that would take advantage of it as it sits......there was a great cost to install it...now determine how to use that to your advantage for income or personal hobbies.


I would definatly not incure any exspence to just remove it...without fully researching any idea to utilize it to benifit you in some way.


Some great ideas soo far depending on what you would like to do with it.

I personally like the closed loop ideas................ the fish making fertilizer for the plants and plants filtering the water for the fish........sustainable living at its best.

My friend that lives down the road had her hubby bring dirt from their farm & fill it in. It is now a beautiful flower bed she made with pathways of steeping stones she edged in & a little plastic pond at the end with rock all around the pond. Her turned out beautiful!
She had a cement like sidewalk all the way around it too so that works well to set flower pots, benches, etc. & makes a nice walkway.

It was hard for me at first too..

But it is mainly algea you have to deal with. I learned there's a product called phosfree that removes all the phosphates from the water, no food for algea left, and I use a small fraction of the amount of chemicals I used to use. Sometimes my pool runs out of chlorine altogether for weeks. I don't "close" my pool in winter, I just don't swim in it until it warms back up.. About the end of next month.

The salt water pool uses electricity to break down salt into chlorine, which from my understanding combines back to salt and is almost a closed loop, no chlorine to buy. I may go with that someday but for now I'm pretty good.