A FRIEND calls it "false May" -- a real warm snap that arrives early in the spring. Naturally, the thoughts of any fairly normal person faced with the sudden onset of summer turn to only one thing: a swimming pool.
There are a lot of pools out there -- about 3 1/2 million in-ground pools and about 2 1/2 million above-ground pools across the country, according to Jack Cergol of the National Spa and Pool Institute of Alexandria, Va. Most are concentrated in hotter parts of the country, he said, such as Florida, California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas, where they can be used almost year-round. In the mid-Atlantic, he said, pool owners usually get six to seven months' use out of their pools.
If you don't have a pool but have been thinking about installing one, now is the time to start thinking about what kind you want.
Above-ground pools tend to be less expensive and less elaborate, and can even be, with a little help from family or friends, a do-it-yourself project.
When Ron's children were small, he bought them a 3-foot-deep by 15-foot-diameter above-ground pool and installed it in the back yard. But he didn't trust the ladder used to climb in and out, so he built a small deck at one end of the pool. That worked fine until the kids got bigger and outgrew the pool.
He got a larger pool, 4 feet deep by 18 feet in diameter. But the deck was only 3 feet high. To install the bigger pool, he had to either rebuild the deck or lower the pool. He decided to lower the pool -- no big deal, just dig a hole 1 foot deep by 18 feet around, right?
It might not sound like much, but it is a lot of dirt. He likes having the pool lowered, but he says he wouldn't do it again.
There is a trick to making the installation last, and not following this simple guideline is a mistake a lot of people make. Basically, the pool has to rest on undisturbed soil. That means the foundation has to be leveled properly. You can't fill in low areas; you have to dig out the high areas until the space is level.
Here's the procedure:
First, lay out the space in your yard where you want to install the pool. Starting at the lowest point, excavate the area until it is all level with that point, and about 6 inches wider than the pool will be. Note: Tilling the area first will make the excavating much easier. Drag a long, straight 2-by-4 across the surface to make it flat and level.
