Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

Taking the plunge

Floridians shell out big bucks for backyard swimming holes. Even if pools depreciate, fans appreciate the outdoor bonding that they foster.

CARROLLWOOD - Gordon De Mouth and Chris Cherry have developed an afternoon ritual lately.

When Cherry gets home from work, De Mouth briefs him on what the pool workers accomplished that day. The two walk to their patio in Country Run for a look-see.

Their anticipation is heightening. As of this week, their new pool is about 80 percent finished. It will overlook a pond.

"It's going to look tropical, sort of like it's been here all along," De Mouth said.

For $31,000, the two domestic partners are joining thousands of other Hillsborough County homeowners in buying an amenity many consider essential to Florida living.

Yet if experts are correct, De Mouth and Cherry would recoup scarcely half of that $31,000 if they sold the house.

A pool generally adds no more than 10 percent to a house's value, slightly less than an extra bathroom would have added, experts say.

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, an industry group.

"It's worth it for the years of enjoyment we'll get out of it," De Mouth said.

Besides, "we really don't plan on moving," he said. "It's really a moot point as far as our resale value goes."

Gerry Malynowsky, 44, is building a $35,000 pool behind his lakefront home in Odessa to enhance playtime with his young children. Property values didn't enter the picture for him either. "On a scale of one to 10: zero," Malynowsky said. "We never even thought about it as an investment."

"We've been here for 12 years," said Malynowsky, owner of the local Winners Sports Grill chain. "I think we're going to die here."

About one-fourth of Hillsborough County's 260,000 homeowners have pools.

In several sections of Lutz's Cheval neighborhood, more than 97 percent of homes have pools. The bayfront Sweetwater, off Memorial Highway, has 122 homes with pools and six without them.

In both Avila and Van Dyke Farms, 84 percent of homes have pools. In Carrollwood Village, it's 82 percent. In Hunter's Green and Northdale, it's 66 percent.

Construction of pools seems to have 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. Consumers became reluctant to travel or eat out as frequently, causing serious slumps in the tourism and restaurant industries. Instead, people began investing in home upgrades, from sod to sofas and spas.

Parker, of the swimming pool association, said this became evident by mid 2002.

"It's no longer just building a pool," she said. "It's a backyard environment."

Pool buyers are including features such as outdoor kitchens with expensive grills, waterfalls, fountains, artistic lighting, custom shapes and remote controls for the pool equipment.

In-floor cleaning systems eliminate the need to vacuum. Salt generators make weekly chlorine treatments a thing of the past.

"You don't get the eye irritation and skin irritation you can get with the other type of chlorine," said Ken McKenna, owner of Tampa Bay Pools in Brandon. "You don't have to get tablets or liquid at the store."

De Mouth and Cherry are building a custom-designed pool that curves around the corner of their porch. It will have a black finish, an underwater bench, a cinderblock waterfall with planters and a "sun shelf" that enables you to sunbathe in water about 5 inches deep.

Malynowsky's pool will be key-shaped, with a pair of 6-foot-deep swimming lanes comprising the long part. The rest will be a large, 3-foot-deep play area. The pool also will have an 18-foot bench, custom tile, a spa and porous stone pavers intended to shun heat.

"We're fully prepared to start camping out there," Malynowsky said.

Riviera Pools in North Tampa has installed images of dolphins and a pineapple on the bottoms of pools, said Tim Belanger, the company's contractor. For a firefighter, Riviera built a pool fountain out of a fire hydrant.

"A lot of our trends are more toward sight and sound," Belanger said.

Perhaps the most gaga new feature is what David Pelletz, president of Westfield Homes of Tampa, calls an "infinity-edge pool." It's 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.

Belanger and Pelletz agreed that a typical pool, including a screen enclosure, costs about $30,000 nowadays.

Belanger said Riviera recommends that homeowners spend about 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 the home, said Tim Wilmath, senior appraiser in the county property appraiser's office. But that could vary from neighborhood to neighborhood.

For example, Wilmath analyzed south Hillsborough's sprawling Bloomingdale neighborhood, which has nearly 2,900 pools. Those pools contributed $10,500 to $15,000 to the value of their homes.

"If I was doing an appraisal in Bloomingdale, I would use $12,000 to adjust for the presence of a pool," Wilmath said.

Malynowsky, of Odessa, said he was warned about the costs of building and maintaining a pool.

"A lot of my friends said, "Yeah, Gerry, the pool's great for the first three weeks, and after that, you regret the day you bought it.' "

That didn't stop him. He wants his family to "stop being air-conditioning hostages" and start engaging in the kind of spontaneous play that a pool inspires.

"It's more lighthearted and fun," Malynowsky said. "There's more bonding that goes on."

- Staff writer Janet Zink contributed to this report. Bill Coats can be reached at 813 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com