Who Needs a Pool?

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★★★★
Without a pool cover, more than half of the water in your pool can evaporate each year (7,000 gallons for an 18x36' pool). Estimates are that water lost is about twice what irrigating the equivalent area of lawn would require in most areas (even with a pool cover, pool use was still nearly 1,000 gallons more per year). A tremendous amount of energy can go into heating the pool, as well as powering the filtration pumps.

Money Saved: ★★★★★
Just running a 1.5 hp filtration pump for 12 hours a day can cost you $1400 per year! If you heat your pool, you probably already know how expensive that is. Then there's the water, chemicals, and maintenance . . .

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★★☆☆
While it would admittedly be nice once in awhile to be able to just jump in the backyard pool for a lazy swim, I think the extra time it takes to run down to the neighborhood pool is probably much less than the pool maintenance time that would be required to take care of our own pool. Never mind the "working" hours lost in paying for the extra expenses too. It's nice being able to let kids play in the backyard knowing there's nothing much more dangerous than a couple of chickens (we'll leave the homemade seesaw unmentioned, shall we?)

What We’re Doing
For little kids, a small pool or tub like the horse trough or recycle bin pictured is just as much fun if not more fun than a big pool. For bigger kids, the exercise they get walking to the community pool will do them good. Running through the sprinkler is a great form of water play and watering the lawn at the same time! When we were looking for a house, those with pools were automatically crossed off the list (although it seems like you could use one for water storage? You would have to build a nice deck cover over it though . . .)

A Little Humor
Q. Why did the teacher jump into the water?
A. She wanted to test the water!

Q. Why wasn't Susan afraid when she saw a shark while she was swimming in the water?
A. Because it was a man-eating shark!

Q: Why do you keep doing the backstroke?
A: I've just had lunch and don't want to swim on a full stomach.

Q: Did you hear about the slow swimmer?
A: He could only do the crawl.