In the swim

How to build a swimming pool this summer for under £1,000.

By Matthew Faulkner

Morning dips, leisurely lengths, reading on the lilo, evening cocktails… Everyone needs a swimming pool every now and then.

But even if you have the space for one, the installation costs can be punishing and the costs of heating the thing crippling. To add insult to injury, a swimming pool doesn’t even add much to the value of your house; a measly seven per cent according to commentators (much less than a tennis court, apparently).

Small wonder that what starts out as a good idea all too often ends up in the Maybe One Day file – and we opt instead for a fortnight abroad, where we can enjoy someone else’s pool with none of the downsides.

That’s what I thought last year – but then it started to eat away at me. ‘How hard can it be?’ I thought and, not being someone easily deterred, I set to it. What could possibly go wrong?

With wife and children indulgently rolling their eyes, I took the metaphorical plunge and contacted our local Man with Digger. We broke ground where once there had been a vegetable patch – three raised beds which over the years had produced scarcely so much as a potato salad and a few bowls of borscht. Even if the whole project were to fail, the veg would not be missed.

Half a day later, we had a hole in the ground. Not enormous, but long enough for a few good strokes, and the rest was left to me. Next, the heavy lifting of posts and railway sleepers to build up the sides.

A rough application of Pythagoras’s theorem ensured all the corners were right angles, more or less – easy enough – but keeping it level was more of a challenge. Without fancy lasers or even a long spirit level, water spilling off one edge was a constant possibility – and an infinity pool was not part of the plan.

Enter the water-filled transparent hose as a spirit level; a rudimentary device but accurate pretty much to the millimetre. A few bags of Postcrete and a quantity of bolts later and it was done: square and level.

Keeping the water in the pool was something of a leap of faith. While you can buy a proper ‘bag liner’ for £800 or so, this went against the spirit of the enterprise. I went for a large, heavy-duty tarpaulin, the sort of thing you might use to cover a caravan, capped with a course of decking.

An assortment of carpet offcuts from the tip – some far too nice to be buried in the Dorset clay – provided essential protection against roots and stones.

And now for the tech bit. All pools need a plughole. The installation of a single pipe and valve did require a bit of head-scratching – once it was covered up, there would be no going back.

The local pool company sold me the necessary pipework for £50 or so, wishing me well and pushing their full-service brochures on me. I ignored these, totting up my savings while asking myself yet again whether all this was a good idea.

The cognoscenti will note with alarm the lack of filter and pump. True, without them there will be bugs galore checking in and not checking out. But the upsides are compelling: a few minutes every day with sieve in hand will revive your hunter-gatherer instincts and reacquaint you with joys you last experienced when pond-dipping at school.

Should neither of these qualify as attractions, don’t be deterred: pumps and filters are not prohibitively expensive – but installing them will definitely affect the bottom line and add days to your build.

And what about algae, scourge of pools and ponds from time immemorial? They are organisms that thrive on sunshine and still water. Left to their own devices, algae can turn water from clear to dark green in months, if not weeks.

Until the Floatron was invented, that is. Using solar power, this amazing gadget floats around ionising the water in a way that’s lethal to algae and its photosynthetic cousins.

Don’t ask me exactly how it works but, with half a can of chlorine thrown in every now and then, our water remained crystal clear for the whole of 2022. Genius!

I don’t expect our new pool has added even one per cent to the value of our property, but we love it. It is not a flashy affair; it is a bit chilly once the summer heat wanes. You can do only six full strokes per length and you may meet a bug or two mid-stroke.

But we have a pool. Construction costs were under £1,000, and it costs nothing to heat and next to nothing to maintain. Now for the tennis court…