Chris' New Pool Room Reaches Completion

Endless Pools Original Series pools easily installs above ground in existing locations … or not. Chris A. decided that his family needed a new room to house their partially in-ground Endless Pools® installation. It was a longer road that he now finds to have been well worth the effort.

The overall home addition took "a good year or so," Chris recalls. Groundbreaking took place in October 2017. The following spring, Chris hired Jeff Garvey, an Independent Service Provider, and the Endless Pools portion of the project "only took Jeff two or three days to finish." Before we dig into the process, let's look at the glorious results.

Here's the Plan…

Chris' family chose to install a 9-foot by 15-foot Endless Pools Performance model underneath their open deck. Then they build a room under the deck to enclose the pool; the room is accessible from their walkout basement. (They also enclosed the deck, adding two new four-season rooms to their home.)

Chris planned the new pool room to have "plenty of sunlight and huge sliding doors that open up about 8 feet out to a patio that we're building in the next couple of weeks."

The pool room is just about complete. What's left is "just incidental touch-up paint and hanging pictures. We're pretty much there." As for the pool, Chris reports, "We're all using it." And that's the most exciting part.

The New Pool Room

"It started out with a concept of having it half-sunk in the ground, and that seems to really work." Partially in-ground pool installations offer several benefits. They're the easiest to get in and out of, and there's less excavation than for a fully in-ground pool. A partially in-ground pool installation also creates bench seating on the coping, which is the pool's perimeter shelf.

In collaboration with his contractor, Chris chose "brick coping – thick bullnose pavers. He cut them in half, so they're rounded facing the pool and rounded around the edges. As you walk by, you're not hurting yourself. We had it sealed, which gives it a nice, dark, wet look."

For year-round use, "the room is completely temperature controlled." For entertaining, "we have surround-sound speakers in the room, we have a TV hanging on the wall, and the sound system goes out to the patio that we'll have. If we have a game on, you'll still be able to see it from the back patio."

It was all designed for easy access to quality time, he says. "We walk downstairs into our basement, then there's a sliding glass door that opens out to the pool. We made a nice room out of it."

A Pool for the Whole Family

All five members of Chris' family enjoy their Endless Pools model. He enjoys the swim current for triathlon training. "I was traveling 15 to 20 minutes to go swimming," Chris recalls. The convenience of having your own lane on demand is a perk that drives many competitive swimmers to get an Endless Pool. "It's like a dream," he says now.

The Endless Pools Original model also gets use for aquatic therapy and rehabilitation; it's partly why they chose our Underwater Treadmill. "My wife had back surgery. Her doctor actually recommended that the pool would be a good therapy for her back." Water's natural buoyancy makes all movements low-impact, so "she's able to walk with the treadmill, not having to worry about the strain on her knees.

"My daughters are really enjoying the pool. They're making it a routine to go in for a quick swim before bedtime," he says. He happily observed that the pool caused them to miss home during their recent spring break. "We've been away the last two weeks, and they're eager to get back into it."

Chris' son also enjoys the pool. "He's eight years old. He's on the autism spectrum; he's verbal. He loves it." Many parents of kids on the spectrum find that aquatic therapy delivers learning, behavioral, and psychological benefits. A private pool – one without the crowds and echoing of most public indoor pools – can have a calming effect that makes other forms of therapy easier.

For Chris' son, "we attach a boogie board, and he plays on that. He loves getting in it. It's probably the easiest way to get him to learn to swim and more comfortable in the water. Having that for him was a selling point."

He's also part of the reason that Chris opted against a basement installation, which can be among the easiest. "Time will tell if he needs to live with us, so the plan for our basement is to make it into a little apartment – a bedroom, a bathroom, with a kitchenette. We thought it might be better having it underneath the deck, adding some square footage to our house."

Lessons Learned

"It's been a good while for the project, we're coming down to the end here," Chris says with relief. "And that's totally not on Endless Pools. It's us running into different contractors and delays."

Besides weather delays (standard for the Mid-Atlantic), Chris had his first contractor back out of the project early on. The next contractor discovered that the deck above the pool room had been constructed by "a gentleman who didn't follow some safety codes," as Chris politely puts it; that had to be fixed too.

One regret of Chris' is that he completely assembled the pool first instead of just doing the framing. "If we were going to do it again, we probably would've just put the shell up and not put the liner and the water in. Simply because during construction time, we couldn't use the pool. There was sawdust and wood chips floating around in the pool, so we had to clean it out."

He also regrets having to change contractors. "When you work with one person, you get the whole goal in mind. When you're switching contractors for this or that, it's hard to explain the vision three or four times."

With those hiccups in the past, Chris' family can look ahead to their new patio. From the warm water of their Endless Pools installation, they'll be able to swim, play, and improve their health, all with a front-row view of their home's next phase of development.