Does anyone here have an outdoor swimming pool?!

PIL have one and the answer is a lot!

They needed a new liner the other year and that was £5k. Filling it is probably a £1k in water alone. Hundred for chemicals a year which you need to apply regularly. If the chemical balance goes out you might need to get a pro in to fix it, which will be several £100 for repeated visits etc.

They use it maybe 3-4 times a year!

They don't use the heater any more as that just burnt £50 notes in front of their eyes.

but how much does an outdoor pool cost to run?

In 2022, if you have to ask...

Chap over the road from me had one. Nice house. They couldn't sell it.

Drain it and turn it into a skate park?

Our friends have one and on one visit the kids were bombing and splashing around.
He looked at me and said "that's £5 of chemicals gone".
They leak ,cost a fortune to run and are never really that warm.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/aug/29/homes-cool-swimming-pool

Prob even more expensive but I'd love a house with a swimming pond

I think you’d want solar panels to heat it with the cost of gas and electricity now.....

If it’s anything like a hot tub (we’ve got a foam walled portable sort of one) you’ll constantly be faffing about with chlorine. It’s a right pain - we only run it for a couple of months in the summer but it’s yet another ‘man job’ for me. I think I’m putting it away before our fixed rate energy deal runs out in September and our bills double.

My folks have a large one fully heated with a dedicated heat pump via solar pv

It gets filled at start of season and maintained with chemicals.

Minimal cost .

They however are in a part of France where such things are common.

They are also a chamber de hotes.

We have one. We installed it ourselves after buying the fibreglass pool from Poland. We don't have a heater or counter current system as it is essentially a big cool off tub, so the electricity bill is only for the pump and the LED lights built into the pool. I use chlorine tablets which cost around 60 euros for a box and a box lasts about 2 months. I just put one in the skimmer and put the next one in when the last one has dissolved. We are lucky that we have a well in our garden so we can fill the pool ground water and also top it up as our pool doesn't have an overflow drainage system. We have a sliding roof for it which keeps the water temperature higher and stops all the garden crap getting in the pool, too. So in answer to your question , not that much in terms of money but quite a bit in terms of time.

Friends Who have some say it costs about 50 euros a month in chemicals when in use.
Liner depending on size is 3 to 5k but Will last 15 years.
They never changed thé water in nearly 10 years.
And we are south of France too.
Dont think i would get one in the uk.

They're actually pretty easy to look after, much easier than a hot tub due to the much larger water volume and lower temperature.

You don't ever empty the water, so water costs shouldn't be high (especially in the UK!).

Ours gets shut down over the winter. When peeling the cover off in the Spring, it generally resembles Darwin's "warm, little pond" from which the first life may have developed. Couple of days of filtering, algae and chlorine treatment and it's sparkling again.

Ours is currently heated by burning dinosaurs, which is utterly ludicrous. We are planning to move to either a dedicated ASHP (about €1k) or moving the whole chalet over to a GSHP.

As others have said. Time consuming and expensive but if you’ve kids could be worth it. Note though it is also a dangerous feature do take care with young kids.

Expensive is of course a relative term and different people have different priorities. So whilst it is a luxury item and high cost that might not be an issue for you. You could likely run it in the summer for less than the monthly lease cost for a Tesla but probably not in the Autumn/winter as heating will be a lot then plus you Will get a lot of evaporation if the water is much warmer than air and so will need a lot of water.

Do you like swimming? It’s much more convenient than a leisure centre but also much more expensive.

It will need baby sitting in the summer to keep your chlorine at the right level. You can pay sometime to look after it but that will add to the cost.

You could get some wet suits if you want to save on the heating bill.

As it’s a luxury item Labour costs on swimming pools are double normal. E.g. gas boiler service circa 90 residential but 200 for a pool heater.

Get a quote to fill it in. As it’s such a big hole it will take a long time to settle so you probably can’t do too much useful with the ground - I’m no structural engineer though.
Be careful if you do use it though as once you’ve got it up and running you might find you like it and want to keep it!

The other point is they aren’t very eco friendly (if that bothers you)- needs regular chlorine, the manufacture of which I can’t imagine is great for the environment given its impact on organic matter, fresh water to replace evaporation/cleaning the filter and energy to heat it which will be very high.

Thanks for the replies. Wife and kids love swimming so they would want to use it, they aren't too bothered about water being warm or not. I know heating would be a big cost but wasn't sure about chemicals and how easy to maintain. It's just had a new liner apparently.

This is it
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/123511298#/?channel=RES_BUY

That’s quite a lot of house for the money.
Is Westbury the equivalent of Shepton Mallet or Yeovil ? 😉😀

This is ours, pump uses up excess solar power, chemicals cost about €20 a year, sun heats it but in Southern Cataluña, that's a given.

It's definitely nicer than Yeovile!

A family member has an indoor pool. About 10 years ago it was costing him £15k a year to run it. Had a super duper filtration system that didn’t use chlorine I think as it never stung or smelt like a swimming bath.

Does your missus have any friends you’d like to see in a bikini?

From my experience Cold water is usually only fun on a hot day. Dunno how old your kids are but mine are quite young and get cold pretty quickly in colder water. Not that they don’t enjoy being in the water! Looks like you have ASHP which Might be for the pool and solar so heating costs might be reduced.

Look at the pump, it will tell you the consumption- might be circa 1kw; the pool looks relatively small so probably not more powerful but it could be.

You could always ask the seller about running costs no guarantee they’ll know /be helpful but might give you an idea. If you get a copy of their energy bills for the year then that might give you some idea, ideally need to know how much and when in the year they used it too.

Chemical usage will depend on temperature of the water and usage (how many dirty bodies or other organic matter e.g. pollen/ leaves/ neighbours cats etc), how much you cover it (UV or sun light breaks down the chlorine).

Does your missus have any friends you’d like to see in a bikini?

I love this reply.

My brother in law has one and he lives on the Gold Coast in Australia - even there the costs to heat it up to a pleasant temperature are eye wateringly-preposterous.

During my early teens, I spent many happy hours using my neighbours pool, as did most of the kids in our street. The pool was a lovely temperature pretty much all year.
One day we found out why the pool was so well heated- my friends dad had bypassed the gas meter and was heating it for free!
Unfortunately we found this out because of a gas leak that was discovered by a cleaner who was working in the house. She called the gas company, who surprisingly didn’t like what they saw!
Pool was cold and not as popular after that.

Wife and kids love swimming

Is it actually big enough to properly swim in though? I'd have thought most of them you'd have done a length after just a few strokes.

I’m assuming it’s a chlorine pool rather than salt water. Chemicals can be expensive. Mine is sal****er, and even then I spend £30 a month keeping it balanced. That’s in Australia though.

I’m terms of effort, consider it like looking after another lawn. It took me 6 months to get the hang of it though. My pool spent a lot of time being green or so full of chemicals that it was unusable for those first months.

If you like the house then give the pool a shot. If you don’t get on with it then figure a few ££ to fill it in.

My mate down in Andalucia has just moved house to place with no pool, their other place had one, I asked why no pool.
Answer was, ‘they’re a very expensive garden ornament’.

Doesn't cost us much at all but the kids love it and it's great to jump in after a ride.

You'll want a cold pool to cool off in after sitting in that conservatory in the summer.

And the pitch of that roof, is there that much snow in Wiltshire? Sloping ceiling hell in those upstairs rooms.

We looked at a house with one when we were buying our current house. It was heated by a gas boiler that apparently cost about £1500/year to run. Wasn't big enough to do even short lengths in so would have needed one of those jet thingumajigs to be useful.

We almost thought it was justifiable as it was about the same as two gym/spa memberships at a nice gym.

Definitely not now gas prices have more than doubled!

I'd have an indoor one though if I won the lottery. Easier to keep warm and useable 365 days a year.

I'd prefer a garden meself.......

I should add the kids tend to pull on a cheap shorty wetsuit for anything other than the hottest days as otherwise they get chilled quite quickly. Might sound a faff but it's not really with a shorty and just being able to turn down the heating a few degrees as a result would save a lot on pool heating bills.

It was heated by a gas boiler that apparently cost about £1500/year to run.

Can't have heated it that much for £1500, even at last years gas prices.

Ive maintained a pool in UK for last 5 years. I use only sodium hypochlorite - i maybe lucky with location and water quality but i stopped using the complex chemical packages some years ago. Looks to be 60-80,000 l pool i’d expect to use a litre or so of hypo a week out of season and 3-5L in season depending on use / temp / etc .I use a reliable oil boiler engineer who takes care of the the maintenance I can’t do - as others have said this can be expensive if maintained by a pool specialist.
I keep it open all year - though not used Oct-April - i find this easier than a reopening a pool after winter. I’ve not refilled the pool for a couple of years beyond topping up in summer.
Heating is the real cost and this year if your on oil or gas you can expect to spend probably £1000 on seeing this through the summer months at 26/27 degrees - if you can live with with cooler water temperature it’ll go much further. Extending the season on current energy costs is likely to be prohibitive.
I use a robot to clean the floor and wall - twice a month out of season - twice a week in. These aren’t cheap but save a lot of labour and lose no water - pools based suction systems will usually run to drain.
I’d ensure you have a pool specialist check the quality and maintenance of the infrastructure - it’s important that expensive components like heat exchanger / filters / boiler and pool integrity / filtration and heating are checked as they are big ticket items to address

Filling it is probably a £1k in water alone.

At £2.50/cubic meter, that's a chuffing big private pool! 25m x 10m?!