Does anyone have a lap pool in the backyard? I want to see a picture. How much did it cost you?
Don’t have our own lap pool, but the “rule of thumb” is approximately $50/sf of pool area for an inground installation, assuming relatively “normal” site conditions.
YMMV.
For everyone else crunching the numbers, that works out to about $25k per 25 yard lane.
I’m interested too. Thinking 25y, three lanes, 4 feet deep. That’s 1800 sq feet (8 foot wide lanes) plus whatever extra for the pool deck. 7200 cubic feet of water or 53860 gallons.
^^Pretty sure that type of pool was on Mythbusters. (Love the show, but ‘saw it on mythbusters’ qualifier is usually not a good thing.)
More like this:
http://matrixgolfandlandscape.com/img/pools/Lap-pools/lap-pool-1.jpg
There are a lot of neat designs:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=personal+lap+pool&FORM=HDRSC2
I’m interested too. Thinking 25y, three lanes, 4 feet deep. That’s 1800 sq feet (8 foot wide lanes) plus whatever extra for the pool deck. 7200 cubic feet of water or 53860 gallons.
Why not dream big?
If I was going to put a lap pool in my back yard, I would want it to be 25m long, 2m deep, at least 7.5m wide, with a center lane, with true gutters, competition lane lines, with the water kept at 78F. Maybe there could be a hydraulic floor that would raise up if I wanted to have a pool party.
Done, digging now!
Does anyone have a lap pool in the backyard? I want to see a picture. How much did it cost you?
Ya, but swimming in your own BY would prob rapidly become more boring than swimming at your local YMCA or fitness center, since you will NEVER see any other swimmers unless you invite them over to swim. You may not care at all about seeing other swimmers but I love to watch really good swimmers in action, and really every guy/girl can learn from watching those faster than him/herself. On Christmas Eve morning, I swam with 6 college swimmers and circled with 2 of them. We did 30 x 100 SCM leaving on the 1:40 and that was the fastest 3000 meters I’ve done all year. On Saturday afternoon, same thing except they were doing 300s. And then today, on a rainy Monday, a former U. of Mich All-American got in the lane next to me, so i had to speed up as much as possible. She had a really smooth freestyle and backstroke, and it turned out she swam the 200 IM in the '04 Oly Trials. In sum, for me it is these types of impromptu workout partners that i would miss greatly if i built my own pool.
I agree, I much prefer swimming in a group…but,
Back in the day we had a pretty good back stroker from Barriere (small town of 2000 people 60km north of us) her dad was shift electrician at the mill and got a bit tired of driving his daughter into town for swim practice after 12 hour night shifts (snow, trucks, bad roads) His solution was him and his buddies built a two lane heated year round pool on their property.
End result was full ride to U of C, canadian record in the 200 back and 17th I think in Athens.
Never saw the pool and the dad, for sure was not a swimmer. Legend has it this was done on “buddy work” IE pizza and beer 
Edit, that pool helped her get a SC worlds bronze back in 1999
Erin Gammel:
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/erin-gammel-retires-from-swimming-1.668782
Maurice
I agree, I much prefer swimming in a group…but,
Back in the day we had a pretty good back stroker from Barriere (small town of 2000 people 60km north of us) her dad was shift electrician at the mill and got a bit tired of driving his daughter into town for swim practice after 12 hour night shifts (snow, trucks, bad roads) His solution was him and his buddies built a two lane heated year round pool on their property.
End result was full ride to U of C, canadian record in the 200 back and 17th I think in Athens.
Never saw the pool and the dad, for sure was not a swimmer. Legend has it this was done on “buddy work” IE pizza and beer edit, that pool helped her get a SC worlds bronze back in 1999
Erin Gammel:
http://www.cbc.ca/...om-swimming-1.668782
Maurice
Well, there are always the exceptions to any rule of thumb, plus she was obv extremely motivated, which is more than we can say about “most” tri swimmers, although i’m sure there are a few who would train just as hard in their BY pool. Just saying the OP needs to think about what he might miss before he spends $XX,000 building his own pool.
Also, come to think of it, since you’re in Canada, Erin couldn’t have swum outside more than at most half the year??? Surely Dad did not include a heating system???
Covered and heated (water was heated), I believe just a tent though. IE the whole point was to drive less in the winter.
Maurice
Covered and heated (water was heated), I believe just a tent though. IE the whole point was to drive less in the winter. Maurice
Well, the heating cost must have been pretty substantial, even up to just 70 degrees would prob cost at least $1000/month, but, OTOH, I can see how you’d want to minimize driving in those Canadian winters. I think it might’ve been cheaper to arrange for her to stay at another swimmer’s house down near their workout pool, and just pay them for her room and board. Assuming the typical club schedule, she could come home mid-day on Sat and go back down Sun night. I know a girl here locally who did that in HS.
Hi, one item to consider when using a lap pool:
–depending on width of the pool, you may be encountering a lot of ‘waves’ bouncing off the sides of the pool
This can create chop. I noticed this when swimming at a friend’s 1.5 lane wide lap pool.
It could be something to think about when discussing it with your pool contractor.
Good luck and have fun!
Mark
Do you plan on living in this pool and swimming there for the rest of your life? How long would it take for you to recoup the costs of installing your own pool? Plus pools typically have a negative effect on the value of homes…
**You may not care at all about seeing other swimmers but I love to watch really good swimmers in action, and really every guy/girl can learn from watching those faster than him/herself. **
I used to be this guy. Then, it became apparent that the number of people faster than 2:00/ 100 and number of time I got to see these people were few and far between. Now, the greatest swimming moments happen when I walk onto the deck and find I have the entire pool all to myself (well, that, and the bikini models doing their version of swimming in the next lane over- but that’s a different story). I’d probably swim more if I never had to fight the water walkers for lane space, at a time when I was already awake. I’d love to have the BY pool and, perhaps, invite a tri-club over once a week to get my competition fix.
Crazy man and murderer John DuPont built an indoor 6 lane 50m pool on his estate, Foxcatcher. A USA Swimming team, part of Team Foxcatcher, used the pool, as did the USA Pentathlon team.
I swam a meet at the pool back in late May or early June, 1989. The home team was in the midst of their famous “24 hour practice,” as part of their summer kickoff weekend. The 24 hour workout, coached by Richard Schoulberg, was 6 x (3 hour practice or meet events + 1 hour recovery/eat/doze/ice the shoulders/contemplate suicide). The swimmers swam their races as expected: completely wasted and burnt-out. They almost looked to be sleeping while they raced. They got out after each race, stumbled over to their team area, and fell asleep immediately, sometimes without even drying off or taking of swim caps.
I’m interested too. Thinking 25y, three lanes, 4 feet deep. That’s 1800 sq feet (8 foot wide lanes) plus whatever extra for the pool deck. 7200 cubic feet of water or 53860 gallons.
I think you would be better off doing 3.5 feet deep that goes to 5 feet in the middle of the pool. But one thing, and I think you get this just pointing it out: if you do this do it right. A shallow, short, one lane “lap” pool is useless. What Conrad Stotlz (while pretty awesome to do it by himself!) built is useless. I wouldn’t accept money to have that in my backyard.
**You may not care at all about seeing other swimmers but I love to watch really good swimmers in action, and really every guy/girl can learn from watching those faster than him/herself. **
I used to be this guy. Then, it became apparent that the number of people faster than 2:00/ 100 and number of time I got to see these people were few and far between. Now, the greatest swimming moments happen when I walk onto the deck and find I have the entire pool all to myself (well, that, and the bikini models doing their version of swimming in the next lane over- but that’s a different story). I’d probably swim more if I never had to fight the water walkers for lane space, at a time when I was already awake. I’d love to have the BY pool and, perhaps, invite a tri-club over once a week to get my competition fix.
Well, perhaps our club pool clienteles are diff b/c, at my club, i would estimate that at least twice a week throughout the year i will see swimmers going under 1:10/100 yd. Oh, and we even have some nice bikini types also:)
I built a 15m lap pool 20 years ago in Phoenix. It was incorporated into a play pool shape so it was usable by the kids. It was a bit short but I really liked it. The pool was about 750 feet in circumference and we did the general contracting. At the time and excluding the deck it cost about $15 a foot (about $11,000). Someone said $50 a foot is the current price - seems a bit high for the Phoenix area. We still have a pool but it is a different house. In Phoenix a pool is great when you have little kids. Now that our kids are grown I would he happy to not have a pool.