Inground pools in Ravenna, Ohio

A Ravenna mailing address does not tell you who issues your permits, and neither does the school district, since Ravenna's schools serve the city and Ravenna Township alike. The City of Ravenna runs its own Building Department and zoning. Outside the city limits, building and electrical permits come from the Portage County Building Department, and zoning comes from your township.

Portage County says so plainly: its building department serves all the townships and villages in the county, while Kent, Ravenna, Streetsboro and Aurora handle their own permits. The county office is in the administration building at 449 S. Meridian Street, a short walk from the courthouse. For pools it issues the electrical permit and requires a licensed electrical contractor. Wells and septic systems go through the Portage County Health Department, which matters if your house is on a septic field and we need to keep the dig clear of it.

We look up the parcel before the first design meeting. It takes five minutes and saves a wrong application.

Inside the city, the pool section of the zoning code is 1278.13. It treats any pool holding more than a foot and a half of water as a structure for permit purposes. In practice that covers every inground pool we build. The main points:

• The pool cannot go in a front or side yard, and it must meet the required yard setback lines for your zoning district.
• It must be completely surrounded by a fence or wall at least 4 feet high.
• The fence cannot have openings, holes or gaps larger than 3 inches in any direction. That is tighter than the 4 inch figure many neighboring towns use, and it rules out some decorative panels.
• Gates and doors in the enclosure need locking devices.
• A garage or other accessory building can form part of the enclosure.
• Construction, plumbing and electrical work fall under the city and county codes, with inspections.

The fence itself needs a separate permit under Chapter 1436, which the city rewrote in 2021. Behind the front corner of the house, fences can be up to 6 feet tall. In a front yard they are limited to 3 feet, or 4 feet for open styles like chain link without slats, wrought iron or open vinyl. Corner lots count as having two front yards, which can squeeze where a pool fence can run on those lots. The finished side of any fence has to face the neighbor.

Two more things show up on the city's zoning page. Development is subject to riparian and wetland setbacks, with a map on the city site. And older homes near downtown may fall inside the Historic District, which has its own review. We check both maps against your lot.

We sampled the USDA soil survey on a grid around town. Canfield silt loam and Canfield mixed with urban fill came up most often, with Geeburg, Remsen and Mahoning soils around the edges and Lorain silty clay loam in the low spots.

Canfield formed in glacial till and has a fragipan, a dense, slow-draining layer a couple of feet down. Water perches on top of it. The USDA puts that perched water table 10 to 21 inches below the surface from November to April in a normal year. Lorain is wetter: very poorly drained, with water at or near the surface from November into June. Geeburg is clayey till with very slow permeability, the kind of soil that sticks to a bucket.

So a March or April excavation in Ravenna often means a pump running in the hole. We plan for it rather than hoping it stays dry, and we set the shell with pressure relief under it so groundwater has somewhere to go besides pushing on the floor. If a late fall start suits you, the ground is usually drier then than it is in April.

Most Ravenna projects are fiberglass. A Liberty shell arrives in one piece, sets in days rather than weeks, and has a gelcoat finish that does not crack or peel when the ground heaves through a Portage County winter. On a city lot with a garage and an alley, a compact model like the Victory 11x22 or Hero 12x26 fits without crowding the yard. Township lots are often deep enough for a 16 foot wide model and a real patio.

Owners who want the water warm into September sometimes choose an ICF concrete pool. The insulated walls hold heat, and the shape can be anything. Latham vinyl liner pools are the third option, useful for an odd footprint.

People ask us what a complete pool costs before they ask anything else, which is fair. Our fiberglass packages start at $68,400 installed and include the shell, Pentair LED lighting, a Pentair variable-speed pump and DE filter, a pool heater, a 4 foot concrete deck around the pool, startup chemicals and hookup at the equipment. What moves the number from there is the site: the code fence, extra patio, hauling the clay away, pumping water from a wet dig, and the electrical run from your panel to the equipment pad. We price those after we see the yard, and we work with lenders if you would rather finance.

Permits here are usually quick because we are dealing with offices a few miles from the shop, and we know what each one wants on a site plan. The wait that matters is the ground. We would rather start in a dry stretch than fight Canfield soil in a wet one. Once the dig is open, a fiberglass pool moves fast, and the fence has to be up and inspected before the pool is used, so we schedule the fence installer while the concrete deck cures.

This is our home town, about 2 miles from the shop. We also build a lot in Rootstown, Kent, Streetsboro, Mantua and Stow, so if you are just over the line in one of those, the same crew is already nearby most weeks.