How to choose a fiberglass pool size for your yard

Most people pick a pool from photos and then try to make it fit. On a Northeast Ohio lot that often ends with a pool that is too close to the fence line, a deck with no room for furniture or a design that fails the town's setback rules. Fiberglass makes this worse if you are not careful, because the shell sizes are fixed. You cannot shave two feet off a mold.

So work the other way. Figure out the space the pool is allowed to occupy and the space you need around it, then choose the largest model that fits comfortably inside that area. The result is a better backyard, and often a pool that feels bigger than the one you first had in mind.

Every town sets its own distance between a pool and the property lines. Two Summit County examples show how much they vary:

• Hudson allows pools only to the rear of the main mass of the house, at least 15 feet from side and rear lot lines, and at least 50 feet from the side line on a corner lot.
• The Village of Silver Lake treats pools as a conditional use that goes to its Planning Commission, allows them only in rear yards, and keeps them at least 10 feet from each lot line.

Some towns measure to the water's edge and others to the deck or equipment, so ask how yours measures. Then mark what cannot sit under a pool or deck: septic tanks and leach fields, wells, buried utility lines, easements shown on your plat and big trees whose roots you want to keep. Once those lines are on paper, the buildable area is often smaller than the yard looks from the back porch.

Almost every Ohio town requires a barrier around an inground pool. The International Swimming Pool and Spa Code, the model many local rules borrow from, calls for a barrier at least 48 inches high with openings that will not pass a 4 inch sphere and self-closing, self-latching gates. Hudson requires its fence to be in place before the pool is filled and adds a screening requirement, with the screening no closer than 72 inches to the side of the pool.

The fence takes up space, and so does the room between the fence and the pool edge. If you plan to fence only the pool area rather than the whole yard, sketch where the fence and gates go now. A gate that swings into a lounge chair gets propped open, which defeats the purpose.

Every one of our fiberglass packages includes a 4 foot concrete wrap deck. That is enough to walk around the pool and keep grass out of the water. It is not enough for furniture. A chaise lounge alone is roughly 6 to 7 feet long, and a table with four chairs needs a clear square of 10 feet or more so people can push back from it.

Decide where the sitting areas go: usually one near the house, facing the pool, and one on the sunny side for lounging. Add that patio to your sketch before you add the pool. Extra decking is priced separately, so this is also where you learn how the whole project budget breaks down, beyond the pool itself.

The pump, filter, heater and any automation need a pad, typically near the house or a side fence, with room to service them. The farther the pad is from your electrical panel, the longer the power run, and that run is priced after the site visit. Plan the pad early so it is not squeezed in behind a shrub where no one can reach the filter.

Then there is delivery. A fiberglass shell arrives on a truck in one piece and is usually lifted into place by crane. A 16 foot wide shell needs a clear path for that lift, and the dig needs room for an excavator and a dump truck. Access rarely changes which pool you can have, but on a tight lot it can change the cost and the crane size.

Now pick from the models that fit. Liberty publishes these dimensions for some of the models we install, with a note that sizes can vary by up to 3 percent:

As a rough guide: pools under about 12 by 24 feet suit cooling off, sitting and small kids. The 12 by 26 to 14 by 30 range fits most families, with room for games and a few people at once. Pools in the 16 by 38 to 16 by 40 range give you a real swimming length and enough water for teenagers to spread out. The Virtuous is the deepest of these at 8 feet, but like every Liberty pool it is non-diving.

Yes, and on a tight lot it can matter as much as the length. A rectangle uses its footprint efficiently and lines up neatly with a house wall, a patio or a fence. It also suits an automatic cover, which runs in straight tracks. A freeform or kidney shape of the same outside dimensions has less water, because the curves cut into the corners, but it can tuck around a tree or a curved patio edge more gracefully.

Depth is its own decision. Most of the models above run from about 3 feet 6 inches at the shallow end to somewhere between 5 and 6 feet 8 inches at the deep end. If your household is mostly young kids and adults who like to stand and talk, a shallower profile with a large standing area is more useful than a deep end nobody uses. If you have teenagers who want to swim and play keep-away, a deeper end earns its place.

• Sizing the pool to the whole yard and leaving no room for a patio, so every chair ends up on the grass.
• Forgetting the fence, then finding the gate lands in the middle of the lounge area.
• Putting the pool where it blocks the only route for a mower or a truck to the back of the lot.
• Choosing a large pool for one big summer party, then heating and cleaning it for years for a family of three.
• Choosing a tiny pool to save money, then learning that the dig, crane, fence and permit cost nearly the same as they would for the next size up.

Most of these are easy to avoid once the setbacks, fence and patio are drawn on the plan before the pool is.

Our published packages run from $68,400 for the Dignity 10x20 and Enrichment 9x17 to $103,900 for the Virtuous 16x40, with the Victory 11x22 at $70,600, the Hero 12x26 at $74,900 and the Anthem 14x30 at $90,200. Every package includes the Pentair pump, DE filter, a pool heater and LED lights, the 4 foot wrap deck, startup chemicals and installation. Fencing, extra decking, spoils haul-off, dewatering and the power run to the pad are added based on the site.

Size also changes running costs. The Department of Energy's heater sizing guidance is built on the pool's surface area, so a larger pool needs a larger heater and more energy to hold the same temperature. More gallons also mean more chemicals and a longer pump run to turn the water over. None of that should talk you out of the pool you will use. It is just worth knowing that a pool two sizes too big costs you every season.

Mark the pool outline on the lawn with marking paint or a garden hose, then set out real chairs and a table where the patio will be. Walk the path from the back door to the water. Look at it from the kitchen window. It is surprising how often a pool that looked small on paper feels big on the grass, or the reverse.

After that, we design the pool in 3D on your lot before anything is dug, with the setbacks, fence, deck and equipment pad drawn in. That is when you can compare two models side by side and see which one leaves the yard you want.