Many of you have asked me why we removed our swimming pool in the first place. This is certainly a legitimate question, and one that I will attempt to answer.
We purchased the house in the late fall so we had never used the pool, or even seen the pool in use. This obviously was not one of our better decisions, but it was a mistake we made in part because there was not much else for sale at the time that was suitable, and partly because we just screwed up in that regard. The house seemed lovely in every other way, and we just thought we would deal with whatever problems the pool presented, which ultimately we did . We were able to purchase the property at a very competitive price because of the pool being there, so we really didn't loose too much money when considering that the property is now worth more than it was with the old pool.
It turns out that the plaster which had been repainted was in need of resurfacing and was flaking off in pieces all over the place, the coping was loose and could be pulled up by hand at several places, and the skimmer housings were completely rotted out. As if these things were not enough, it was a very hard winter here and the underground piping for the pool pumps and bottom drain were leaking water faster than the hose could fill it back up. In addition, the pool deck and landscaping were chintzy and cluttered, the fence around the pool was ugly and there was no way to properly secure the pool from the back door of the house which raised serious safety concerns.
All of these problems to correct so we could have a swimming pool that we didn't want that bad in the first place. It became a very easy decision to make; the pool would go!