Build Your Own Backyard Swimming Hole

Image Gallery PHOTO: ROBIN THOMAS

Adding Value: Your Land and the Bottom Line

A beautiful, versatile, and valuable addition to any yard.

Considering the variety of artificial swimming pools available today, it's a wonder people still bother digging an old-fashioned swimming hole. Yet even with advances in structural materials and filtration systems, and despite the advent of solar covers, above-ground designs, lap pools, and hot tubs, many folks still prefer a dug pond. Why? It boils down to three basics: value, aesthetics, and pleasure.

Value

Given the right piece of terrain, you're going to get more—dollar for dollar—out of a pond than out of a swimming pool. A bare-bones in-ground swimming pool, 16 by 32 feet, costs $16,000, including neither site preparation nor filtration equipment. Add taxes and landscaping, and the price tag will be closer to $20,000, and that doesn't include ongoing water, chemical, and electrical costs. Depending on your location, a fence may be required, as well as additional liability coverage.

Above-ground pools are cheaper, roughly $2,000 to $3,000 for a 20 foot round pool, which includes neither installation nor filtration equipment. By the time you're finished—and you're never really finished, because re-circulating pools require periodic maintenance, chemicals, water, and electricity—you'll be in for $5,000.

For the same price, its possible to dig a pond roughly 80 feet in diameter—four times the surface area and twice as deep! A natural pond usually needs neither pumps nor chemicals and will add equity to your property. Several real estate appraisers I talked to estimated that an attractive pond is often worth more than its construction costs, although they admitted it's hard to put a figure on it. They also acknowledged that the presence of a pond will often clinch a sale. Unlike an artificial pool, a pond is a unique natural asset which can't be purchased off the shelf and confers status to a property. In fact, the mere presence of a pond site on a piece of land usually adds value.

Real estate appraisers, generally a conservative lot, often give a pond more value than a swimming pool, depending on the quality of the pond, including its size, banks, depth, and the reputation of the builder. When I asked one Vermont appraiser what value he gave to swimming pools, he barked, "Zero! If they're concrete, the walls crack!" He added that he knew three home buyers who recently had their swimming pools filled in. Above-ground pools add little or no value either, and if they include vinyl liners, they have to be replaced every three years. He noted that one of his clients had a half-acre spring-fed pond, well maintained, which provided an attractive view from the house. He appraised it at $5,000.

Aesthetics

That sparkling view from the house is another reason people build ponds. One pond builder I know sums it up in a word: aesthetics. A pond has an astounding ability to enhance visual appeal. The eye is drawn naturally to water, whether it's the mirror surface of a calm day or a liquid kaleidoscope stirred by the wind. The surface of a pond is always changing, reflecting new cloud patterns, sunlight, moonlight, changes in weather, and the arrival of waterfowl. Anyone who has watched a swallow circling over a pond, dipping in and out of the water, knows the simple pleasure of pond gazing.