Swimming Pools

[AliG]

2 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

I put two gas boilers in for an outside pool ( uncovered!!! ) and the guy said he would just “live with the £5-6k gas bill p/a………..”

 Outdoor pools are a nightmare to heat, most people only use them a few months a year.

 

For me though the issue would be keeping leaves and stuff out of it, this would be almost impossible in our garden.

 

What started me on it was the plans for, I think Mark Wright's new house with a pool and massive outside seating area etc. That looks great on a plan, less good in our weather for half the year.

[Nickfromwales]

Just now, AliG said:

 Outdoor pools are a nightmare to heat, most people only use them a few months a year.

 

For me though the issue would be keeping leaves and stuff out of it, this would be almost impossible in our garden.

 

What started me on it was the plans for, I think Mark Wright's new house with a pool and massive outside seating area etc. That looks great on a plan, less good in our weather for half the year.

Yup. 
These folks pay ‘staff’ to manage the stuff they can’t be bothered with, like sucking up crap from the pool bottom. 
This guy would regularly be using the pool in the arse end of the summer through to September and beyond. Big party throwers, and lots of creams laying around to ‘cure various issues with the nether regions’s’ ??

[jimmy23]

@AliG

 

Sorry to dig up an old thread. I wonder if you could help me with below please.

 

We are considering buying a property which comes with an outdoor pool which has a polycarbamate enclosure. It's about 30 years old.

I was wondering if you could share some of the ongoing costs  possible.

 

1. Cost of installing a automated disinfection system? installation cost of ongoing costs 

2. Roughly how much am I looking to spend on chemicals per year?

3. It's a 11m x 6m pool with a deep end, I was thinking an ASHP and solar panels + battery to run the heat pump and the filter pumps could be the cheapest solution in long term, do you have any info regarding this solution at all?

 

I'm pretty capable of doing maintenance and repairs myself as I come from an engineering background, just need to get an idea for costs for raw materials and services outside my capabilities.

 

Never dealt with these issues in past so just worried if I'm about to get involved with..

 

Thanks

 

 

[SteamyTea]

Long time since I was in the health and leisure industry, and we did not sell pools.

Ask for 25% of the house asking price because it has a pool.

Then fill it in.

Cost about a fiver to go to a bigger, cleaner and much safer council run one.

[Mr Punter]

I know a couple of people who have bought houses with pools.  One had an outside one and filled it in as it was a hazard and would have put off future buyers.  The other had an indoor pool in the basement and he meticulously refurbished it while refurbing the rest of the house.  The finish and quality of the pool was excellent but when it came to selling the house it stuck on the market for ages.

[AliG]

Outdoor pools are way more expensive to run than indoor pools. I am not sure if the pool is totally enclosed by polycarbonate which would make a big difference.

 

More heating clearly, but also they keep filling up with fresh water from rain so presumably need more chemicals. They also need more cleaning.

 

The basic filtering system cost is included in the pool. For a 30 year old pool you would presumably be looking at replacing the whole system. I am guessing around 15k.

 

Cost of chemicals etc is negligible for my pool. £200ish. If the pool is open to the elements and refills from rain then I would guess you use a lot more of these.

 

For my pool my guess is that the filter pump uses 2000kWh a year and the dehumidifier another 2500kWh.

 

I run these partly at night on Octopus and partly during the day from my PV. Thus they probably cost me around £500 a year.

 

Filtering costs are likely to increase with pool volume. Mine is around 40,000 litres. Yours could be closer to 100,000. So you could be looking at 5000kWh a year for the filter. If it is outside, I assume there is no dehumidifying.

 

It is hard to break down heating costs as effectively I am heating a large percentage of my house and I cannot turn everything else off except when we go on holiday.

 

My guess is that my pool uses 15000kWh a year to heat, maybe it is a bit lower. This is inside a well insulated triple glazed room. If i changed the calculation to show a room made of of 100 sq metres of 2.0 u-value polycarbonate the cost to heat it would triple! This is why many older pool installs are massively costly to run. To save on building them they are put inside the cheapest possible enclosures with virtually no insulation. 

 

This is why outdoor pools tend to be heated only from say May to September. The you might be looking at 2000kWh a month for heating. An ASHP would probably use around 500kWh a month as the time of year and low temperature would generate a high COP. Again you could also only runt he filter in summer, but this requires closing up the pool for winter and reopening it in the spring.

 

In summary I would guess that an outdoor pool this size might cost £350 a month to run in the summer. So you would be able to use it around 5 months a year for £2000. This would maybe require £25000 investment in ASHP and new filtration equipment.

 

If you wanted to heat and run it all year you are looking at vastly higher costs, £7000 a year at a very very rough guess, maybe even substantially more as I have to really adjusted for the size if the pool enclosure and the much larger pool than I have. TBH I thing an outdoor pool is a waste of time, you are likely to only use it a few times a year despite large capital and running costs.

 

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Cost about a fiver to go to a bigger, cleaner and much safer council run one.

 

Certainly cheaper to go to a council/gym pool etc. But no way is it cleaner.

[AliG]

20 minutes ago, Mr Punter said:

I know a couple of people who have bought houses with pools.  One had an outside one and filled it in as it was a hazard and would have put off future buyers.  The other had an indoor pool in the basement and he meticulously refurbished it while refurbing the rest of the house.  The finish and quality of the pool was excellent but when it came to selling the house it stuck on the market for ages.

This is certainly what I used to hear years ago, we have no plans to ever sell and I can show very reasonable running costs if anyone is interested.

 

Out of interest, what kind of value of house are we talking about? Sometimes I see pools in sub £1m houses. It is something really that you might see in a £3m and up house and if put in a much smaller, cheaper house the possible costs would definitely put people off.

 

 

[CharlieKLP]

On 18/07/2021 at 18:53, AliG said:

 Outdoor pools are a nightmare to heat, most people only use them a few months a year.

 

For me though the issue would be keeping leaves and stuff out of it, this would be almost impossible in our garden.

 

What started me on it was the plans for, I think Mark Wright's new house with a pool and massive outside seating area etc. That looks great on a plan, less good in our weather for half the year.

 

I recently saw this, I just think it’s beautiful and I don’t know why they aren’t everywhere.

 

 

[AliG]

My numbers are based on the polycarbonate enclosure providing similar protection to that dome.

 

You are probably talking £20-30k fitted depending on the size of the pool.

 

Without some kind of covering/enclosure you could probably double the heating costs again.

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, CharlieKLP said:

I recently saw this, I just think it’s beautiful and I don’t know why they aren’t everywhere.

 

Um.

At least Sainsburys had the decency to jazz it up at Christmas.

Before and After

 

 

[SteamyTea]

15 minutes ago, AliG said:

£7000 a year at a very very rough guess,

My parents cost £2,500 to heat, in 1984.

That is when I learnt the value of school physics and latent heat of evaporation.

[AliG]

8 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

That is when I learnt the value of school physics and latent heat of evaporation.

Yes, mine is covered and inside with heat recovery. Thus evaporation losses are very low. Without this, basically your warm water evaporates then is replaced by cold water and you have to heat it again. My understanding is that a cover alone reduces heating costs by around 1/3.

 

Hence my comment though that without an enclosure I would roughly double the heating costs, so you might be talking £10k a year in running costs. I would need to know the size of the enclosure and u-value of this plus the pool body to calculate costs better. My guesstimate is in line with online pool costs calculators I have just checked in the USA. They suggested around 800kWh a day for an uncovered pool from May to September and 500kWh a day with a cover.

 

 

[AliG]

Clearly the recent gas price increase is not favourable for pool heating. I am up from around £500 to £1200 a year.

 

I have offset this somewhat by moving to Intelligent Octopus and changing the time the filter runs to start at 1130pm and end at 4pm. Thus it runs almost all the time on either low overnight electricity or PV. Since doing this the average price of my electricity is actually lower than it was before the latest price increase.

 

So I am probably looking at around £2300 a year including servicing at current inflated energy prices. Edited it up from £2000 to account for less PV in winter.

[CharlieKLP]

16 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Um.

At least Sainsburys had the decency to jazz it up at Christmas.

Before and After

 

 

 

Oh my, The Bude Tunnel - true pinnacle of modern architecture, the envy of the masters of old. 

 

[jimmy23]

49 minutes ago, AliG said:

Outdoor pools are way more expensive to run than indoor pools. I am not sure if the pool is totally enclosed by polycarbonate which would make a big difference.

 

More heating clearly, but also they keep filling up with fresh water from rain so presumably need more chemicals. They also need more cleaning.

 

The basic filtering system cost is included in the pool. For a 30 year old pool you would presumably be looking at replacing the whole system. I am guessing around 15k.

 

Cost of chemicals etc is negligible for my pool. £200ish. If the pool is open to the elements and refills from rain then I would guess you use a lot more of these.

 

For my pool my guess is that the filter pump uses 2000kWh a year and the dehumidifier another 2500kWh.

 

I run these partly at night on Octopus and partly during the day from my PV. Thus they probably cost me around £500 a year.

 

Filtering costs are likely to increase with pool volume. Mine is around 40,000 litres. Yours could be closer to 100,000. So you could be looking at 5000kWh a year for the filter. If it is outside, I assume there is no dehumidifying.

 

It is hard to break down heating costs as effectively I am heating a large percentage of my house and I cannot turn everything else off except when we go on holiday.

 

My guess is that my pool uses 15000kWh a year to heat, maybe it is a bit lower. This is inside a well insulated triple glazed room. If i changed the calculation to show a room made of of 100 sq metres of 2.0 u-value polycarbonate the cost to heat it would triple! This is why many older pool installs are massively costly to run. To save on building them they are put inside the cheapest possible enclosures with virtually no insulation. 

 

This is why outdoor pools tend to be heated only from say May to September. The you might be looking at 2000kWh a month for heating. An ASHP would probably use around 500kWh a month as the time of year and low temperature would generate a high COP. Again you could also only runt he filter in summer, but this requires closing up the pool for winter and reopening it in the spring.

 

In summary I would guess that an outdoor pool this size might cost £350 a month to run in the summer. So you would be able to use it around 5 months a year for £2000. This would maybe require £25000 investment in ASHP and new filtration equipment.

 

If you wanted to heat and run it all year you are looking at vastly higher costs, £7000 a year at a very very rough guess, maybe even substantially more as I have to really adjusted for the size if the pool enclosure and the much larger pool than I have. TBH I thing an outdoor pool is a waste of time, you are likely to only use it a few times a year despite large capital and running costs.

 

 

Certainly cheaper to go to a council/gym pool etc. But no way is it cleaner.

Thanks very much.  wow those number definitely  not going to work for us, either we walk away or buy cheap and fill it in I suppose.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, jimmy23 said:

or buy cheap

Probably the quickest thing to devalue a house.

[jimmy23]

51 minutes ago, AliG said:

This is certainly what I used to hear years ago, we have no plans to ever sell and I can show very reasonable running costs if anyone is interested.

 

Out of interest, what kind of value of house are we talking about? Sometimes I see pools in sub £1m houses. It is something really that you might see in a £3m and up house and if put in a much smaller, cheaper house the possible costs would definitely put people off.

 

 

 

Not even close to those numbers, it's a 700k property. 

[SteamyTea]

Just now, jimmy23 said:

it's a 700k property. 

A £550k one now.

[Mr Punter]

16 hours ago, AliG said:

Out of interest, what kind of value of house are we talking about?

 

The outside pool was in the grounds of a Georgian villa.  The indoor one was in the bottom floor of a 4 storey house in Brighton.  Each worth around £2M.

[jayc89]

I guess location is a big factor. Around here I've seen houses with pools for sale in the 500k region. You can't get a flat for that money in some locations!

[Nickfromwales]

I did start to investigate what a pair of 7.5kW solar thermal arrays would do for the client I mentioned above ( uncovered outdoor used prob 9 months of the year  ) but I think a load of solar PV into a HP, plus overnight top-up on a cheap rate ToU tariff would be the most maintenance free, universal and efficient solution. They were burning through £6k of gas a year 6 years or more ago for the pool and a relatively modest house ( with huge grounds ).

[AliG]

16 hours ago, Mr Punter said:

 

The outside pool was in the grounds of a Georgian villa.  The indoor one was in the bottom floor of a 4 storey house in Brighton.  Each worth around £2M.

That's getting into the area I would expect. Depends a bit on prevailing prices.

 

Another way to think about it is probably that you need to be into the top 0.5-1% of houses in the area by price. There are around 200,000 pools in the UK, which is less than 1% of houses. Of course this wold still vary a bit depending on the absolute values also. For context around 3% of houses in Edinburgh are worth over £1m which is similar to the South East outside London.