VALRICO - Nine-year-old Brendan Horak glides from one end of the pool to the other while his 2-year-old brother, Ryan, water wings firmly in place, splashes on the steps near his mother, Amber. It's a scene that will be repeated often this summer.
Last July, Amber and Jason Horak joined thousands of other Hillsborough County homeowners in buying an amenity many consider essential to Florida living. They spent about $40,000 on a swimming pool with a hot tub, waterfall and high-tech features like a self-cleaning system, multicolored fiber-optic lights and a remote control operating system.
If experts are correct, the Horaks will recoup less than half of the $40,000 when they eventually sell the house. Generally, they say, a pool adds no more than 10 percent to a house's value, slightly less than an extra bathroom.
But Floridians, who own about 625,000 household pools, don't seem to care. They keep spending money on them.
"Most of our members are busier than ever, and have been for several years," said Wendy Parker, director of marketing for the Florida Swimming Pool Association.
Jason Horak said he wasn't thinking about property values when he put in the pool.
"It was purely a want, not an investment," he said. "We needed something to get us out of the house and spending more time together."
Jennifer and Troy Neal are spending $23,000 for a basic pool and spa - no screen enclosure, no fountains - in the back yard of their Brandon home. They have three children, ages 7, 8 and 10.
"It's entertainment for the kids," Jennifer Neal says.
It gives them something to do in the back yard - other than sweat - during the hot summer months, and keeps them active instead of sitting in front of the TV and eating junk food.
Cocooning instinct
About one-fourth of Hillsborough County's 260,000 homeowners have pools. Construction of pools seems to have roughly kept pace with construction of homes. But today's pools are getting fancier.
The swimming pool industry thinks it benefited from a cocooning instinct that apparently set in among Americans after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Away from home, consumers became more conservative, causing serious slumps in the tourism and restaurant industries. But at home, they began investing in upgrades, from sod to sofas and spas.
Parker, of the swimming pool association, said it became evident by mid 2002.
"It's no longer just building a pool," she said. "It's a backyard environment."
Pool buyers are opting for outdoor kitchens with expensive grills, waterfalls, fountains, artistic lighting, custom shapes and remote controls for the pool equipment.
All of that, of course, adds to the cost.
Ken McKenna, owner of Tampa Bay Pools in Brandon, said the average price of a pool last year was $25,000. But a lagoon-style pool nestled into stone walls with waterfalls, bridges and landscaped islands can top $100,000.
New software programs offer greater flexibility when designing pools. At Tampa Bay Pools, designers re-create a customer's house and back yard to show how the pool will integrate with the existing landscape. With the click of the mouse, they pop in a spa, change the pool shape, and adjust tile colors and paver styles.
Perhaps the most gaga new feature is what David Pelletz, president of Westfield Homes of Tampa, calls an "infinity-edge pool." This is a watery optical illusion in which the side of the pool farthest from the house is concealed, with water constantly flowing over it.
"The water falls into a catch basin, which recycles the water," Pelletz said.
The latest technology also offers nearly maintenance-free pools.
In-floor cleaning systems use jets of water to push debris on the pool floor toward drains, eliminating the need to vacuum. Salt generators make weekly chlorine treatments a thing of the past. Just twice a year, throw a bagful of salt in the water and the generator turns it into chlorine.
Marcite, the most common pool surface, is giving way to new materials like Pebbletek, an Australian stone that comes with a lifetime labor and parts warranty.
"It's been heavenly"
Some experts recommend that homeowners spend no more than 10 percent of the value of their house on the pool, so neither house nor pool overwhelms the other.
In December, a pair of Florida State University professors studied the effects of myriad factors on home values. They concluded that a pool enhances a home's value up to 10 percent in the Southeast, 6 percent in the North and 13 percent in the West and Southwest.
Countywide, a pool adds an average of $14,680 to the value of a home, according to Tim Wilmath, director of valuation in the county property appraiser's office.
The 2,900 pools in the Bloomingdale neighborhood, which has more pools than any other Hillsborough community, contributed $10,500 to $15,000 to the value of their homes, Wilmath said.
Christopher and Debbie Lee paid $159,000 in February 2003 for their 1,788-square-foot pool home in Preston Woods in Bloomingdale. A nearly identical size home on the same street - but without a pool - sold for $10,000 less that same year. The Lees were happy to pay a little extra to get a home with a pool.
"We were going to move to Tampa and we were pricing homes. We found, wow, for the price of a home in Tampa that was basically nothing, you could buy a house with a pool in Valrico," Debbie Lee said.
A pool does make a home easier to sell, said Brandon real estate agent Marcia Rains. About 70 percent of her clients specifically request a pool home, she said.
But for people like the Horaks, the decision to shell out the money for a pool was all about the here and now.
"The whole thing that justified it in my mind was the quality time we'd be having with our kids," said Jason Horak. "It's been heavenly. We love it."
- Staff writer Janet Zink can be reached at 813 661-2441 or jzink@sptimes.com
