7/3/18 Wow, Big Boy Toys Are Expensive?

    I spent Sunday morning doing the bills and watching Pool Kings.  For those that don't know, it is a show about pool builders who go over the top building dream pools for people who have more money or less brains than I do.  On some episodes or maybe it's even a different pool show, they've mentioned the pools costing $150,000 to $200,000.  These are TV worthy pools, so I assumed they bumped up the price a bit, thinking civilian pools can't possibly be that expensive.
    Not having anything better to do today, we ran over to Cody Pools and met one of the designers.  He was great, mentioned he has been with them since he finished high school and has moved himself up to designing some of the pools for their customers.  He wasted no time in telling us the pricing is all dependent on many things, but generally, a small-ish pool built by them is going to cost in the $60,000 plus region.  Pools with many fancy details, like a hot tub which itself adds $15,000-$20,000 to the overall cost and a slide or grotto can easily push the cost of a pool past the $100,000 mark.  At this point, I had dropped a turd and didn't know how to eject myself from the building, so nothing to do but act like I was looking for that and more.
    I told the guy I really wanted a grotto, a cave to hide and do stuff.  He had a few examples on his You Tube page and he showed us and explained how his software is really easy to add and remove things.  I really liked the shallow area where in a couple of renditions, there always seem to be lounge chairs where the body is partially in the water, but not completely. He said this was the cheapest part and that a 9x12 area only costs something like $350, if I understood correctly.
  We then went outside and he showed us their two examples, the fancier one being closer to $100,000 and the other closer to $60,000.  I really love the idea of ripping out ours, but at the sound of the replacement costs, I am unsure if we can ever manage this.  Wife starts her day by saying no to everything, but even I left saying no way.
    Maybe it took that wake-up call to appreciate what I already have in the ground.  Wife and I had a good discussion and we came up with a new strategy to try and get around our leaky dilemma.  A big help is that new waterproof tape made by the guys that show the boat with a screen door on the bottom being made waterproof with their product.  I am going to try and isolate the skimmer box with a piece of acrylic that fits over the hole, perfectly.  To bond the acrylic to the skimmer plastic, I bought a latex bonding thing from Loctite, then I put some of that waterproof tape which is 4 inches thick all the way around.  If the water still leaks, I will have to assume it is not the skimmer box but one of the return jets that is at the same height as the skimmer box.  This could be exciting to get the water back up to the top of the pool