On the few occasions I buy water at a convenience store, I don’t think twice about downing the bottle I just paid two dollars for. Maybe you pay more or maybe you pay less, but I’m guessing the price doesn’t make you hesitate either. Even so, you could’ve gotten the same sixteen ounces for free out of your kitchen tap. That kind of thinking danced in my head last week when I reviewed a contractor’s bid for a new swimming pool in our backyard. I mean, it’s basically a divot filled with water. How much could it possibly cost?
Like fancy cars and country clubs, I’ve just been reminded a pool earns the label of “luxury item”. It’s a something you may want but definitely a something you don’t need. The cost is just one of the reasons people flock to public pools instead of having one of their own. But even public pools aren’t free. Maintenance. Insurance. Labor (lifeguards). The water itself. The list goes on and on; the same costs you’d have with your own pool. Okay, maybe not the lifeguards (unless my wife has visions of Baywatch studs in our backyard) but add it all up and pools are expensive with a capital E.
The contractor was more than happy to stop by our house last week for a look. He loved the proposed location: flat, unobstructed, and right behind the back porch. Then we debated the dimensions. My wife wanted a lap lane for exercise, but just how long should a lap lane be? Forty feet? Fifty feet? Something to host the next Olympic Games? Eventually we settled on fifty. Then we added a “sun shelf” at one end for the grandchildren and a small patio at the other for an umbrella table and chairs.
Here’s where I got annoyed and suspicious (take your pick). The whole time we’re talking, the pool contractor is doing nothing else besides talking. He’s not sketching, he’s not measuring or taking notes, and he has no examples of what we’re looking for. He’s just talking and nodding his head. He did manage to find time to tell us how he likes to take his boat to the Bahamas several times a year (!) And before I could wrap my head around that he shook my hand with a hearty “Okay Dave! I’ll get you a quote by next week!”.
Well, “next week” is this week and I’m staring at a single page with a single number. $89,750 without any bells or whistles. Go ahead and gasp the way I did, as if you’re underwater in your new pool and can’t breathe (heh). A few of you – those who already have pools – are nodding your heads and saying, “Yep, sounds about right, Dave.” But now all I’m thinking about is how I’m helping this guy make his mortgage payments on his boat. The quote is suspiciously vague as well; not even broken down into labor and materials. My pool does come with a net and brush, a session of “pool school”, and an underwater light (“whoo-hoo”). I also get a credit for “no diving board”, even though it doesn’t say for how much.
This experience reminds me of our last house, and a contractor who gave us a bid on a very large all-seasons deck. We talked briefly while he stood on our lawn, gazing over to where the deck would go. Then he held up his hands as if framing a painting. After a few moments of silence he turned to us and simply said, “$200,000”. Seriously? Not only can you instantly estimate the cost of our new deck, but the number comes out to exactly $200k? So I asked this guy for a more detailed quote and he said, “Yeah, no. I am an artist (he pronounced it “ar-teest“). People pay good money for my work”. Yeah, not these people pal.
Our community has a small pool, sized to somewhere between soaking and short laps. Really short laps. My wife will take two or three strokes before having to think about her flip move to head the other way. She’ll burn more calories switching directions than she will the swimming itself. But hey, at least we won’t have to worry about the maintenance and insurance (or the mortgage payments on someone else’s boat). For now at least, our pool will remain a liquid dream.
Life In A Word 