When it’s hot outside, you want to get into some water. We’re not talking about doing 50 laps here—we’re talking about simple, cool, wet fun where you can throw a beach ball around, play Marco Polo with your kids, or float quietly on a raft with a cold beverage in your hand as birds sing in the distance and the sun finally begins its descent.
Those are the kinds of things you want to do at home, in your backyard, and not at some noisy and crowded public pool that seems to be straight out of a scene from Caddyshack. That’s why many families are turning to modern backyard pools. Here are a few notes you should mull over before you start shopping for your next swimming hole.
These days, you can get a big pool—one that’s almost 20 feet across, four feet deep, and packaged with a filter pump, filters, a ladder, a ground cloth, and a debris cover for far less than the cost of digging an in-ground pool.
Backyard pools don’t require excavation, heavy machinery, or a team of workers to set up. In fact, many manufacturers claim their pools can be ready for water in less than an hour, because you simply lay out the liner on level ground, assemble the frame, and throw in your garden hose. Filling a backyard pool with water often takes more time than assembling it.
If you want a pool for warm weather but don’t want to leave it set up in your yard during the cold months, check out an inflatable backyard pool. These aren’t kiddie pools on steroids. Inflatable backyard pools come with filter pumps, can easily contain a crowd, and hold more than 2,500 gallons of H2O. Everybody into the pool!