Taking the Plunge

When you live in a warm climate, having a swimming pool or not is an important lifestyle decision. So how important is it for you? And what should you go for? A shared pool with a bunch of neighbours who may or may not turn into your best mates; or your very own pool where surely nothing at all can go wrong. Or can it? As always, Ginger Gerald takes a real and honest look at the pros and cons of life abroad with a pool - with amusing and life enriching observations and anecdotes thrown in for good measure. Get your swimmers on and enjoy!

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Today´s episode is called “Taking the Plunge” because we are going to get into the topic of swimming pools. Clever that heh? Taking the Plunge – swimming pools – things have got off to a good start! And I´m not referring to the public pool in your home town, or the lovely set of cascading pools at the Hotel complex you stayed at last time you went on your jollies. No, I´m talking about the one in your own back yard. You know, your very own private pool for just you and your family, and your friends (if you´ve got any) or anyone you choose to invite to come along. 

Did you know that there are 250 thousand private pools in the UK? (I´ve never seen one in Stoke mind). Well in Spain there are 1.1m and in the US 10.4m – so this is a big thing!

Now, for many people, having your own pool at your house is the very definition of poshness! And if you go and broadcast that on a podcast to millions of listeners (millions? Who said millions?) then you are not just posh, but you´re a complete twat! 

Well, if that is what any of you are thinking or how you choose to define private pool owners, then, I have to come clean from the outset, Ginger Gerald is a lucky barstard as I do have a lovely pool at my current home. We use it for maybe 4 - 5 months of the year (plus a traditional plunge on Xmas day which gets a traditional post on FB and Instagram) and I stress about it for about 12 months of the year. It is usually a beautiful blue colour, and a photo of it would not be out of place on the front cover of a glossy Mediterranean Villas Brochure – if they still exist. That is, of course, when it´s not green, or full of soil, sand, leaves, acorns or even olives. 

Now I am aware that me talking about my own private pool might be a bit of a turn off for some of you listeners – I can already hear some of you saying  “that Ginger Gerald was alright – you know, one of us, a normal sort of a guy, but now he´s going on about having his own pool in his back yard – what a complete BEEEP”. 

So I know this is a bit of a dangerous subject for me to be covering – however, for those of you who live overseas, or have done, or maybe will do one day, or just like dreaming about it (which I think sums up my entire target audience on this podcast) then whether you rent or buy a house, the “pool or no pool”, debate is very real and not just for the Rhubarb Gin & Fever Tree tonic Brigade. It´s for normal people – like Ginger Gerald – over a couple of Cañas. 

So let´s get started: I´d like you all to answer this question honestly: if you are, have or will be living overseas in a place where the climate is usually somewhat more suitable for using an outdoor pool than in the UK for example, then how important, on a scale of one to ten, is having the use of your own pool or at least a shared pool? Would you pay just a little bit more than you had budgeted to have one?  Would you forego a bedroom, bathroom or garage to make sure you had use of a pool? Would you live in a two man tent and do your daily ablutions in the woods as long as you had a pool?  

I reckon the average of your answers will be 7 or 8. Many people wouldn´t consider having a property without a pool – so they´d have scored 10. What´s the point, they´d say, in going to live in a Cancún or a Mallorca and not having an outdoor pool. So I have to be honest and tell you that we, as a family, scored 10 for that very question when we defined our search criteria for the first house we rented in Cancún. We wanted, no we “needed” a swimming – there it is, it´s out there!

Now, before I get onto the joys of private pool ownership – let´s explore the pros and cons of the shared or community variety. Well, the very best thing, without a doubt, about sharing a pool is that someone else is responsible for it. If it turns green, or the pump breaks or a neighbour´s kid does a number 2 in it – that´s not your problem (well, not very pleasant if you are in the pool at the time and it’s floating towards you). When there is an issue, there´s someone else to look after it and you can just sit around and moan that it´s out of service for a while – the same as all your sharing pals.  Of course, part of the maintenance fee you pay will be for the pool, but I believe that to be money well spent. 

And another huge benefit, of course, especially if you´re are a newcomer to overseas life, and even moreso if you have kids, of sharing a pool is that it will help you to socialize and make friends. Many a dip together, which is often completely by chance, leads to a few beers together or a full-on BBQ and party! 

One day, the first time I lived in Cancún (I´ve done two stints) me and my mate Ash were kicking a ball about having had a quick dip in our Communal pool (we were probably recovering from a hangover after a night out at the neighbouring nightclub La Boom!) when a couple of lads and their dad asked to join in. Sure we said and the game suddenly got a little more competitive. Well it turned out that the dad was none other than Liverpool and Scotland International legend from the 80´s Steve Nicol! You see, get yourself a communal pool and you too could be mixing with the elite of International Sport.  

Anyway, when we arrived en familia in Cancún we absolutely loved our communal pool. It was exactly the right thing to do when we first got there. The pool was beautifully maintained by my mate Gualberto (you see, I have mates everywhere) and it was used by virtually all the neighbours and their kids. It was a safe place where everyone looked out for each other and where you got to know each other. 

Getting to know each other…..mmm, that leads me to some of the cons I mentioned.  In any shared facility there is always one person who doesn´t think he has to pay for anything. But he (or she or they) is the person who most uses the facility. And, the worst thing is, you know he doesn´t pay – which drives your own cost up. He´s usually the one with the most money, drives around in the latest BMW sports car and treats the maintenance guy like he´s a piece of poo on the bottom of his shoe. Oh, and just to finish the image off, he is somewhat overweight but insists on wearing red speedos. So, I have a conundrum for you: that non paying person is taking a dip just as you head to the communal pool – what do you do?  (a) Go back into your house and wait for him to finish? (b) Confront him and have a huge row in front of all of the neighbours? Or (c) Ignore the issue completely and talk about the weather and the footy? You could take option D of course, D for drown him – always an option – but probably not the best one. 

And then there´s next door whose teenage kids invite their entire school round every weekend and take over the pool, drinking and smoking all over the place and there´s maybe even a bit of “heavy petting” behind the machine room.  Oh and with regaetton at top volume – and their parents are away or don´t give a toss, or probably both. 

And don´t forget the family opposite who have a couple of huge and scary looking guard dogs as they´re hardly ever there – but who are great at escaping and love a quick swim. 

So, lots of considerations before “taking the plunge” and going for a shared pool – it might or might not turn out to be the happy and easy solution you were looking for.

The other option, and the most popular of course, is that you have your very own pool. All of the cons I just highlighted for shared pools just float away like a fully inflated lilo – so surely having your own pool has to be the very best option. What can possibly go wrong when the pool is all yours to use and do with as you like, and when you like?

The answer is everything can go wrong – and at some point it definitely will.

So, imagine (I like these bits!) you turn up for your viewing to rent or buy a house and the private pool will be immaculate. Of course it will, at the end of the day the pool´s a huge selling point for a house and the Estate Agent will always focus on it. Oh and if you want a pool but the house doesn´t have one, and the Estate Agent tells you not to worry, it´s very easy to get planning permission and build one yourself, then barge him out of the way as you sprint out of the house and don´t come back. He´s invariable talking complete nonsense. Nowhere I have ever come across is it easy or quick to get permission and build your own pool. 

Let´s fast forward a bit – you view a house, the pool´s to die for, you agree a price to buy or rent and it´s moving in day. What´s the very first thing you do? Yes, you go to look at your brand new pool! Mmmmmm, somehow it´s not quite how you remembered it from your visit. A little green maybe? And smelly. You can´t see the bottom. The water level is rather low and why the hell are there electric wires coming out of the pool, wrapped around a couple of bricks on the side and two great big holes where the underwater lights used to be? Welcome to Ginger Gerald´s World – I didn´t feel like such a lucky Barstard that day. 

Now, I think I can safely say that most of us know very little about swimming pool maintenance until we have one of our own. And then we watch a couple of 5 minute Youtube videos and, magically, we become pool gurus. We suddenly know more than trained engineers and lifelong pool maintenance professionals. Why oh why would we even consider paying for someone with a lifetime of experience and training, to come and repair our “new to us” pool – that just a few weeks ago was perfect. Award winning even. Well, to be frank, I can´t be doing with their tut tutting and “I think everything is going to need changing” speech – I´ve heard it so many times before. But here´s the dilemma: do I take the plunge (so to speak) and actually trust one of the “experts” who comes to inspect the damage and solve my problem? Or do I not trust them. By “trust” I mean that I need to believe he is telling me the truth the whole truth, I need to be confident that he´s defining what needs to be done and separating that out from what would be a good idea to do – and that he is giving me a cost which is reasonable for the work required. Well, how the hell am I supposed to know whether to trust him or not when I´m absolutely clueless? When he was rabbiting on about pH levels, Salt Water Chlorinators and the benefits of glass versus sand filters – he might as well have been explaining how to land a drone on Mars (I don´t know so much about drones either. Or Mars come to that).   

So what did I do? Well, much to T´s ongoing and partially justified frustration and annoyance, I didn´t trust any of these professionals to start with. I kept getting different people to come and diagnose the various problems and give me quotes for this and that. Occasionally, when I felt the pressure of the situation getting a little high (for example when the family were due out at the weekend and the pool was grey and filthy)  then I would feel I had to go with whatever  solution (and whatever price) I was given. But I hated it and I mumbled and moaned about them non-stop – not that I ever really knew if I was being ripped off or not but the very thought that I might have been being played was enough to drive me mad!

Being a stubborn (and slightly sad) barstard I did read a lot about pools and I did watch a lot (and I mean a lot) of videos explaining how to solve everything that could possibly go wrong with my pool. (I still do between you and me). And after a year or two of being a pool owner I felt I knew how things worked, and was confident not just maintaining the pool (so the basics of checking pH and chlorine, setting the timers, vacuuming, emptying the leaves and debris out of the baskets) but importantly, and ridiculously, I also thought that I could diagnose a problem, define the right solution and do it all on my own with no help from anyone.

It took me a few disasters before I finally accepted my place on a low rung of the ladder of pool experts.

One of my favourites was to spend hours brushing and vacuuming the pool making it look perfect – only to then pump all the crap straight back into it again!

One job I decided I could do was very simple. There´s a sensor which measures the pH level in the water. When the pH reading gets too high it triggers the automated Acid dispenser to turn on to bring the pH back to the level it needs to be. This sensor had stopped working; it was giving the wrong readings, or at times, no reading at all. So all I had to do was to buy another one, making sure it was exactly the same model (which I did online – perfect – saved a few bob too) and then change it. I watched a few vids of course just to ensure nothing could go wrong. Easy peasy I decided. I can still hear myself whistling away, happy as larry, and safe in the knowledge that my new-found expertise was saving me a fortune in service bills. “Ginger Gerald – you are the swimming pool guru you lucky and very knowledgeable barstard” I shouted to myself while beating my chest! Well, I forgot to close the water tap before I removed the sensor so the pool water shot out of the hole  where the sensor had been, at huge pressure, and soaked all the electronics for the entire pool management system which were located, very logically and handily, directly above the sensor. The result of my handywork: I was left with a one thousand Euro bill to replace the entire motherboard. I did consider sueing Youtube until I realized that they did tell me to close the water tap first – but I skipped that bit. That was not Ginger Gerald´s best day.   

Mind you it´s not just me who messes up – in one of our rented houses, pool maintenance was included in our rent (maybe the owner had heard how rubbish I was and didn´t want his pool destroying) anyway, the poor maintenance guy was busy with his net picking out the leaves in the middle of a storm when a lightening bolt struck his metal pole and sent him flying into the nearby Cactus plant. I´m delighted to say he survived both the shock and the needles in his backside but he was not in a good way for weeks. A word of warning – put your metal pole away when there´s a storm around.

It took me 5 years of pool ownership to finally trust a Swimming Pool Professional. The chap who comes now works for a little, local shop, he´s a new dad and I think he´s great – but I still watch him like a hawk to see what he is doing and why and pepper him with questions to make sure I can do it myself next time!

So, let´s have a quick recap of your options when it comes to “Taking the Plunge”. Firstly, are you a “we must have a pool” sort of a person or family or not? If you are, then what do you go for? The communal version – no work or responsibility but your neighbours (or their dogs) may get on your nerves (or cramp your style depending what you have in mind for the pool). Or do you go for your very own pool? And if you do have your own, do you get someone in who really knows about pools and let them get on with all the maintenance work? Or do you become (or pretend to be in my case) a pool expert from day 1, you save a bunch of money but you risk some very major and expensive mistakes? 

First world problems you may say, and you may well be right, but pools overseas are a must for me and a great topic for conversation!