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Laura Leet saved over $20,000 by making her own pool
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- Laura Leet built a DIY “pond pool” after being shocked by the $25,000 cost of a traditional in-ground pool
- The project, which took about a month, cost less than $2,000 and reused materials from her old pool
- Leet transformed an overgrown part of her property into a personal oasis to share with friends and family
Laura Leet knew it was time to upgrade her old, above-ground pool, which admittedly had “seen better days,” but she wasn’t prepared for the price tag that would come with it.
“We looked into an in-ground pool but were shocked when we were given a quote of $25,000,” she tells PEOPLE.
So, Leet and her husband “kept looking,” and in the process, they started thinking outside the box.
“While researching in-ground pools, we stumbled across the more ‘natural’ style pools that are used in Europe quite often,” the Dayton, Ohio, resident shares. “Those pools use plants and rocks to filter the water. Although we loved the style, we decided to make it just look more ‘natural’ but continue to use chemicals that are used in traditional pools.”
Still, this meant they would have to dig the pool area themselves. After that was complete, they measured the area to order a pond liner.
“For us, the type of liner we chose ultimately came down to cost and aesthetics,” Leet, 54, shares. “Using that liner size and the wall height, we knew we could make a deep end at 6 feet and the shallow end at 3 1/2 feet. We also knew we could dig a hole wider than what the liner dimensions typically would allow.”
“After we dug the hole, we formed steps in the dirt,” she continues. “We then set our skimmer height. We knew we needed to protect the liner from rocks and roots, so we chose to use carpet underneath.”
They then placed the carpet, which they bought themselves, “over the dirt going from the top down the sides of the pond hole and placed a very thick layer of sand on the bottom.”
“We needed to add the liner but had to figure out how to hold the liner in place before we added water, so we dug a trench around the entire perimeter of the hole,” Leet says.
Then it was time to fill it up.
“We soon discovered that the trench we built would fill with water when it rained, so we added corrugated piping in the trench,” she shares. “All water that collected in the trench would now travel to the overflow located under the bridge. The remainder of the work that needed [to be done] was just hooking up the pump and filter that we just reused from our old pool, and we cut a portion of our old deck to use as our dock.”
The whole process cost less than $2,000, and they did everything themselves. It took “about one month from first dig to first bit of water going in the pool pond.” The hardest part of making the “pond pool” was “hand shoveling and getting all the rock out of the hole.”
“We used an excavator for maybe two days, but the rest of the month that it took was all manual,” she shares.
Despite all the work that went into it, Leet says they couldn’t be happier with their decision and she “absolutely loves the location where we built it.”
“Prior to digging, that part of our property was not used and was overgrown with weeds,” she tells PEOPLE. “We turned it into our own personal oasis.”
Now, the most rewarding part, according to Leet, is being able to share the result of their hard work and outside-the-box thinking with her friends and family.
Read the original article on People
