Why I Think Childhoods Need Swimming Pools

I love my swimming pool. You can pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

I think childhoods need swimming pools, too. That's my opinion, and it doesn't have to be yours.

I didn't grow up with a pool, but my son has. Over the years we've bought two houses that already had pools, and at another house we built a gunite pool from scratch. So I've lived both versions of pool ownership: inheriting somebody else's design and every decision that came with it, and starting with a blank backyard and making every one of those decisions myself.

After all of that, if you give me the choice between the house with the pool and the house without one, I'm probably taking the pool.

Part of that is simply because we live in South Alabama. It gets hot here. Not pleasantly warm. Not "let's sit on the porch" hot. I mean God put us in the oven on bake at 350 for 30 minutes hot. There comes a point in July when being outside without some kind of water nearby starts to feel like poor planning.

But the heat isn't really why I love having a pool.

It's the life that happens around it.

There's nothing better to me than a summer evening when the grill is going, the kids are in the pool, and all the grown folks are sitting around with melting drinks, just enjoying one another's company. Nobody is doing anything particularly remarkable. The kids are jumping in, climbing out, arguing about whose turn it is, and jumping right back in. Somebody is checking the food. Somebody is laughing too loud. Towels are everywhere. The drinks are getting warm faster than anybody can finish them.

It just doesn't get any better than that.

Those are the days I mean when I say childhoods need swimming pools.

Not because a child can't have a wonderful childhood without one. Of course they can. I mean that a pool creates a really easy place for childhood to happen. It gives kids somewhere to go outside and stay outside. Friends come over. Cousins come over. Ordinary Tuesday afternoons turn into something. They swim until they're exhausted, eat everything in the kitchen and sleep like rocks.

We spend so much time talking about how kids need less screen time and more time outside. Put a swimming pool in the backyard and you suddenly have a pretty compelling competitor to the iPad.

And in South Alabama, you actually get to use the thing.

Our swimming season is nothing like it is in places where a pool gets opened for a few months and then covered back up. Depending on the year, you can be swimming well into the fall here. We've had seasons when a Thanksgiving swim felt completely reasonable. Every once in a while, December will surprise you.

That long season changes the math for me. If I lived somewhere that gave me six good weekends a year, maybe I'd feel differently about paying for and maintaining a pool. Here, it can be part of everyday life for most of the year.

Swimming Is a Safety Skill Down Here

There's another reason I think swimming matters, and this one is much less sentimental.

If you grow up in South Alabama, you grow up around water. Pools are only part of it. We have bays, rivers, creeks, boats, the Gulf, friends' pools, hotel pools and vacation rentals with pools. I think water confidence matters for kids who are going to spend their lives around all of that.

I've always thought of learning to swim a little like learning stop, drop and roll. It isn't just recreation. It's safety.

That doesn't mean a child who can swim no longer needs supervision. Far from it. A pool requires adults to take water safety seriously, and young children especially need layers of protection around them. But I wanted my son to be comfortable in the water because water is part of where we live. Having a pool made swimming something he did all the time instead of a skill he practiced a few times every summer.

"Pools Are Too Much Work"

Now we get to the reason some of you are already shaking your heads at me.

Pools are too much work.

I hear this all the time, and I think a lot of our idea of pool ownership comes from the pools we remember from childhood. Somebody's dad was forever standing outside with a test kit, dumping mysterious chemicals into green water and yelling at everyone to stay out until Saturday.

A properly built modern pool really doesn't have to be that dramatic.

That doesn't mean it needs no maintenance. You still have water chemistry to manage, a pump and filtration system to maintain, debris to remove and equipment that will eventually wear out, because apparently anything attached to a house eventually finds a way to ask you for money.

But you also don't have to personally become the pool boy.

South Alabama has no shortage of people who will maintain a pool for you. You can hire everyone from Joe in the white pickup truck, who comes once a week and knows every pool in three neighborhoods, to a larger pool company with scheduled maintenance and repair technicians.

We have ours maintained professionally. I wish I had some grand philosophical reason for that, but the truth is much simpler. The lady who owned our current house before us already had someone maintaining it, and we kept them.

Sometimes good homeownership decisions are just that complicated.

We've had different types of pool systems over the years, and given the choice, I prefer saltwater. A saltwater pool isn't actually chlorine-free, which is a common misconception. The system uses the salt in the water to generate the chlorine that sanitizes the pool. You still have to pay attention to the water and maintain the equipment, but I prefer the way a saltwater pool feels and the overall ownership experience.

The bigger lesson, after owning several pools, is that the equipment and the construction matter enormously. A good pool that was built properly and maintained consistently is a very different thing from buying somebody else's neglected problem.

If You're Buying a House With a Pool

That brings me to the real estate part of this conversation.

If you're buying a house with a pool in South Alabama, don't let sparkling blue water and a pretty set of lounge chairs keep you from doing your homework.

Have the pool inspected.

I'd want somebody who knows pools looking at the structure, the equipment, the pump, the filter, the plumbing, the decking and whatever sanitation system is being used. If it's a vinyl-liner pool, I want to know the age and condition of the liner. If it's gunite, I want to know about the surface and whether it's been resurfaced. If it's saltwater, I want to know the age and condition of the salt system. If it has a heater, automation, lights or water features, I want to know whether those things actually work.

I'd also ask who has been maintaining the pool and whether the seller has service or repair records. A pool isn't so different from the HVAC system in that respect. "It works" is useful information. Understanding what you're actually buying is much better information.

Buying Somebody Else's Pool vs. Building Your Own

There's also a big difference between buying an existing pool and building your own.

When you build one, you get to think about how you'll actually use the space. You choose the location, the shape, the depth, where the steps go, whether you want a tanning ledge, where people are going to sit, and how the pool relates to the house and the rest of the backyard.

When you buy a house with an existing pool, you're buying somebody else's answers to all of those questions.

Sometimes their answers are brilliant.

Sometimes you spend years wondering why in the world anybody would have put that there.

But buying an existing pool has one tremendous advantage: it's already there. No construction site in the backyard, no waiting, no dirt everywhere and no making hundreds of decisions. You can move in, put on a swimsuit and use it.

If you're considering a house with a pool, I wouldn't automatically treat it as a liability or a giant maintenance nightmare. I'd look at it the same way I look at any major feature of a house. Understand it. Inspect it. Know what maintaining it will cost. Make sure it fits the way you actually live.

Be Realistic About the Costs

Pools cost money. Electricity runs the equipment. Chemicals cost money. Professional maintenance costs money if you choose to use it. Pumps eventually fail. Salt cells don't last forever. Vinyl liners eventually need replacing. Gunite pools eventually need resurfacing. There will be years when the pool barely asks anything of you, and years when it decides it would like a substantial portion of your checking account.

That's homeownership.

The question isn't whether the pool costs money. Of course it does.

The question is whether what you get in return is worth it to you.

For me, it is.

I'd spend the money again for the birthday parties, the friends piled into the backyard, the summer evenings, the exhausted kids, the cousins, the random swims, the hours spent outside and all the memories my son has made without ever realizing we were "making memories."

That's the thing about childhood. Most of the really good parts don't announce themselves as important while they're happening.

It's just another hot afternoon.

Another wet towel.

Another kid asking if somebody can come over.

Another night when the grill is going and the grown folks are talking while the kids are still in the water, even though you told them 20 minutes ago it was time to get out.

Then suddenly they're older, and those ordinary days are the ones you remember.

So if you're buying a house with a pool in South Alabama, do your research. Have it inspected. Understand what you're buying and what it will take to maintain it. Me and my team are always happy to help you sort through it.

Then be prepared for the possibility that it turns out to be the best investment in a fun childhood you ever made, sitting right there in your backyard.

As for mine?

You can pry it out of my cold, dead hands.