I'm going to share with you facts that nobody told you about above-ground pools. Now I have been a long-time owner of two, separate above-ground pools at my house. I've spent quite a lot of time working on them and learned quite a few things over the years. So I'm going to share with you some helpful things for you before you get your own, above-ground pool.
Why Pay Thousands More Dollars Than You Need To?
First of all, you can find really good used pools online. My first above-ground pool was found in a classified newspaper ad. This was years ago before Facebook marketplace and those things were so common. So I looked in the classified ads in my local newspaper. I found an advertisement, my wife and I drove out and there was this huge above-ground pool. When my son was really little, we ended up cutting a deal with the guy for $600 down and $600, when he delivered it to my house. We got years and years of excellent use from that pool that we paid $1,200 for.
Now, you've got to realize that I did have to buy my own, filtration system eventually. The one that came with the pool was not that good. So, there is going to be other money that you will spend. You can get really good used pools online from people that are just no longer interested in dealing with them.
Time for My Second Pool
The second pool I've had is probably five years or less now. And, I paid only a thousand dollars for this. This was a 24-foot pool. It's a little bit deeper than my first pool at four and a half feet deep. I purchased it from an older couple. The wife told me that she was watching all of her husband's grandchildren all summer long, and she didn't want to have to be responsible, to watch them another summer. So that's why she wanted to get rid of it. That pool system was only used for one season and is in really good shape. I went ahead and made that purchase. So, you see that you can get a decent second-hand pool at an affordable price.
Setting up Your New Above-Ground Pool
You can also get your family and friends to help you set your pool up. Now, setting up the pool is a big job, but you don't have to pay retail pool companies, $5,000 or more for your new pool and maybe a thousand dollars, for somebody to set the pool up. It is a big job, but you can do it yourself and you can definitely save money. You can take a look at my article on how to level the ground for your pool here.
Salt Water System for your Above Ground Pool?
The next thing I want to talk about is that you should never use a salt system for a metal pool. Now that second pool that I bought, the man told me that he had a salt water system, man. And I had only known about a chlorine system with my original pool. And I had my original pool for a good 12 years or so 12, 15 years, something like that. It was well over 10 years. It does get cumbersome after a while, buying chlorine all the time and the chemicals and things like that. So, I was excited about the salt system. I didn't know about it. I heard that they were less maintenance and I just assumed that the pool that he had purchased was designed for a salt system. However, I was sadly mistaken.
So after I got my new pool set up, which is the second pool that I've owned, after I got it set up and I was using the salt water for it for the first season or so everything went great. It was low maintenance. Just throw the bag of salt in and the solar cells would convert the salt to chlorine. So everything was going great and I was thrilled at the amount of money and effort I was saving compared to the chlorine system.
Problems Start to Arise with the Salt System
However, after about the second to third season, I started noticing little bits of rust that were forming on the railings, of my pool above the water level. And eventually, it became a huge problem. You can see some pictures of the railings. The rust on the railings of the pool had become a very big problem to deal with. So the railing replacement on my above-ground pool that I have right now is about $50 apiece. I'll place an order occasionally for two or three railings and a couple of railing caps here that go underneath the railing on top of the posts. The small pieces of metal falling in from the sides into the sides of my pool had become a huge concern for me. I regrettably decided to abandon the saltwater system and go back to the chlorine system to save my pool from destruction.
What is a Resin or Plastic Pool?
Plastic pools that are made for a salt system will work for you. Those are called resin pools, but, here's another thing to keep in mind. If you have a rusting pool that can give way, not only is it going to be costly for you, but it's going to damage your pool and you're going to lose your investment in your pool, but also it could even be dangerous.
The pool lady at my local pool store here in my local town here, she told me a story of a person that did not realize that their pool was rusting away from the salt. They didn't have that big of a backyard and the pool when it gave way, all of the water rushed out of the pool. Some of the pool water ended up coming through their back door, and into their house and caused problems inside their house.
Are You Willing to Put Your Family in Danger?
Think that if your kids were in the pool and all of a sudden the pool just gave way and all of this water just rushed out. They could be in jeopardy of serious harm. That would be a big, big problem. So you want to make sure that your pool is designed for a saltwater system. Unfortunately, not all pool stores, will tell you exactly what you need to know. They're going to sell you a saltwater system and tell you, oh, it'll be fine. And you'll set it up and it'll be fine for a while, but then eventually I promise you, you're going to have problems.
So a resin pool is basically a hard plastic pool, any steel on your pool, if you use a salt water system, any steel is going to eventually begin to corrode. So a resin pool is essentially hard plastic. And so that would be the only thing that would really work with a saltwater system. So be careful about that. It is a serious problem.
I Was Warned and Chose not to Listen to Good Advice
I did not take it seriously, myself. My pool lady at my pool store even kind of warned me about using salt in my above-ground pool, but I was, you know, just so tired of buying chlorine. I was saying, oh, she just wants me to buy more chlorine or something like that. But that is not the case. It is not the case. It is definitely a problem. And the money that I've saved from using a saltwater system for those several years, you know, I've had to pay back by buying all those railings to fix my pool.
Leveling the Ground for a Pool
If you search for how to level the ground for a pool, you're going to find my video there. This is after I took down my first pool and it was in the process of setting up my second pool. I even talk in that video about the saltwater system and how I was excited to get that. Boy! Was that a mistake! Right? But anyway, your ground must be level. And there are all kinds of other videos on YouTube where they scrape out the ground and they get little mini bulldozers to scrape off the ground. We didn't do any of that. What we did when we took down our first pool, was we had an area where we had a dump truck load of sand, dumped in our yard to try to put our original pool, which was like a Walmart pool. So we used that same area. And when we took down their first pool, the grass wasn't grown there. What we did, was we got this board and we put, level on it and pulled it around with the string, pushed down, and added sand to the spots that were maybe not as level as they needed to be. And so you can see in the video, how I described that this is what we did. Of course, I did have a beginning of a good spot to put it already.
You Will Have Problems if Your Pool is Not Level
But if your ground is not level, then you're going to end up with something like this. And I found this picture online here, you can see how there's above ground pool. You can see how there's extra space over here to the left. And on the right-hand side, you can see how the water is up to the edge here. And that's because this ground here where there's above ground pool is placed is not level. So you can end up with something like that. We actually had that just a little bit on our first pool, but it didn't really cause a problem. When my kids were younger, it was actually a little bit less water on that side of the pool, where they could stand up a little easier when they were smaller and younger. It's really not ideal though for your pool water level to not be correct. You definitely want to try to get your ground level for your pool. So these are the things that I have learned from my time as an above-ground pool owner and these are some of the most important things. So I hope you found this helpful. And again, all of my videos for above-ground pools that I've made over the last several years can be found on my YouTube channel.