An Endless Pools® Retreat for Two (or More)

Sara & Terry swim side by side in a new pool house for their Dual Propulsion pool.

How was Terry’s morning? "I went swimming," he says with gusto. "I'm great!" He and his wife, Sara, installed an Endless Pools® Dual Propulsion model in a brand-new pool house that they designed. "It's a healing place for us," she says, and it only takes one look at the space to understand what she means.

"We designed it so that we could use it together, and so that I could swim with others," she says.

Terry calls their Dual Propulsion pool "an amazing product. I'm in it every day."

Sara says, "It's important to my mental as well as physical well-being." She recalls years before they installed this pool. "When my children were little and I was in a particularly unpleasant mood, my husband would come home and say, 'Mommy didn't get a swim today!'" With their new Endless Pools setup in their pool house, he doesn’t need to say that anymore!

The Workout Pool for Two … or More

"I've been a competitive swimmer," Sara says, "I've been a triathlon and swim instructor for 22 years. I've never really stopped training. I love it. I swim at least three times a week. I invite Masters swimmers to swim with me."

She says that the Endless Pools Original current, the one featured (twice) in her Dual Propulsion pool, is "great for people who are not strong swimmers, as well as people like me who are very strong swimmers. It's extremely versatile.

"After I work out, I do somersaults and flips and handstands. I just play in it! I do some stretches, like lunges, bobbing up and down, and sculling."

They customized their pool to a 54-inch depth. "I wanted a deeper pool," she explains. "It's more fun and allows more upright exercising. My husband is over six feet, and I'm five foot, seven and a half."

"I have a little different regimen from her," notes Terry. "I do a lot of walking in it. I'm recovering from a spinal cord injury. This is part of my regimen: to be in this pool every day. Just 30 minutes – It's over, and I get out, and I feel great."

Their 14-foot by 14-foot Dual Propulsion pool gives them room to work out together. As Sara tells it, "when Terry starts swinging those [foam] dumbbells around, I have to tell him to stay on his side of the pool. But the current," she adds excitedly, "he puts his on, and I put mine on, and it works really well."

"It's just a great exercise," Terry enthuses, "and has so many uses. It's great for ankle strength, gluteal strength, a lot of upper body. It’s wonderful."

Since he started using the pool, Terry says with a chuckle, "My wife says that I'm much better looking than I used to be."

A Therapy Pool

Aquatic exercise is so versatile that, Terry says, "I'm still learning all the possibilities. Like standing on my toes – I can go in the pool and work on standing on my toes, where on dry land I can't do that. My goal is to learn to walk" without the aid of the hiking stick that he uses now.

Terry, a retired doctor, finds, “You just can’t say enough about the potential of this pool for people.”

Sara graciously invites two friends with “neurological issues. I work with them.” Swimming can provide the benefits of total-body exercise for people who find it too painful to work out on dry land.

One of those friends already “can see progress. She’s 74 and used to be a pretty strong swimmer and outdoorsperson, but her neurological disorder has made it more difficult for her, so she’s re-finding balance and she’s regaining confidence in the water.”

Designing the Pool House

“We designed it to be a place of peace,” Sara recounts. “There’s minimal echoing sound. To Endless Pools’ credit, the motors are relatively quiet, so it’s a refuge as well as a recreation and exercise space.”

While many customers opt for a simple installation, Sara and Terry went all out on their pool house. “It’s got radiant-heated floors,” she notes, “so the floors are 75 degrees every time you get out. We designed this with the vaulted ceiling and French doors at the end and the skylights with a lot of sun coming through. We have dehumidification and a separate hot tub.

“It’s really like a spa space. That makes it very comfortable for people that are less agile and mobile or, in the case of my husband, a little less steady on his feet. Of course, we have a ramp up to the front door, so no one has to climb any steps.”

The most unique feature of their Endless Pools house is “complete rainwater collection, so the entire pool is filled with rainwater. We built it with a metal roof and downspouts” that funnel the rainwater to “two massive tanks in the basement.” Sara notes that the tanks “have a 50-micron and a five-micron manual filter, and they also both have UV light filters, and then there’s a third UV light filter before the water enters the pool.”

With the floating filter that they added to the Dual Propulsion pool, they have six different filters in addition to the standard Endless Pools filtration. Ours is a mineral-based filter designed for fresher, low-chlorine water. According to Terry, “The chemistry of the pool is amazingly stable once you get it balanced, which is nice.”

Creating a Sanctuary

“It’s a totally private space,” Sara says proudly of their new pool house. “It’s strictly our private space for friends.

“My contractor made niches in the corner of the building that create an interesting profile on the outside of the building. These niches are what mitigate the sound echoing inside.” She also appreciates the low volume of the Endless Pools motors; “It’s very peaceful and quiet,” Sara observes, “because of the quality of your mechanics.” The combination “makes it feel very serene inside.

“At one end, it’s near the street, so there are no windows.” The other sides have windows, and there are skylights, so “It doesn’t feel like you’re entering a basement or cave.”

Before they created their Endless Pools sanctuary, she recalls, “We had to travel, an hour’s worth of driving round trip to get to where we could swim.” They now have at-home convenience to swim and do aquatic exercise, both as a couple and with the small community of friends that they share it with.