How Much Does it Cost to Build a Plunge Pool?
Our plunge pool in Kauai.
In our place in Hawaii, we built a 8 foot by 14 foot plunge pool. In the shallow end it’s 3 feet deep. In the “deep” end it’s 4 feet deep.
Building the pool was the only major project we did to the house that involved external contractors and a significant cost. Because of the weather and availability of some contractors, there were significant delays and it was extremely stressful to manage when guests were supposed to check in and there was a giant muddy hole in the side of the house. But I digress!
How much did it cost to build the plunge pool? The pool construction cost was approximately $50,300. The total cost of the project (including the fencing, deck work, CMU block wall, gravel around the pool, pavers) ended up being around $72,000 all in.
The pool company was great to work with and stuck very close to budget. This is the original budget ($46,596). It increased slightly when we decided to make the pool 14ft long instead of 12ft and when we upgraded the plaster finish to “hydrazzo” and few minor incidentals. From our contact, this was how the payment brokedown by milestone:
05% upon acceptance
05% upon permit approval
10% upon commencement
20% upon form and steel installation
15% upon Gunite placement
10% upon coping installation
10% upon tile installation
10% upon equipment installation
10% upon plastering
5% upon start-up
This ended up being about $50,000 in total. If it could do it again, I probably would have made the pool 16ft by 10ft, but that would have increased the cost about $4K more and I was on a budget.
The rest of the project cost about $22,000 and was significantly more complicated to manage. Part of the reason was it was hard to find contractors in Kauai that had any availability so you were at their mercy as to when they could show up. And it would rain a lot and prevent work from being done. Because of these delays, we also had to pause construction when guests were checking in and restart when there were gaps in the schedule.
For the carpentry contractor, we spent $18,400. That included deconstructing the old deck and turning it into stairs. Creating an concrete block base around the pool (two feet high), putting down the gravel around the pool, and installing the douglas fir slat fence.
We spent about $2,000 on the gravel to surround the pool and the lava rock pavers. The gravel was put down by the carpentry contractors. It was likely much cheaper than installing concrete or decking around the pool and also gave the pool a more natural look.
Lastly we spent $1,500 on a contractor that was supposed to install the concrete block base for the fence and then did a bad job and disappeared with the money. The carpentry contractors had to dig up the concrete footings he had poured because they were not deep or wide enough. Oh well, $1,500 down the drain but it could have been worse.
So all in about $72,000 to build the pool. Keep in mind this was 1) About as small a pool as you can possibly make 2) We only fenced around the pool area to keep the costs down, so not around the whole house 3) We have gravel and pavers around the pool, other options will be much more expensive. 4) I went with a “slat” fence that gave a more distinctive look, but came with expensive materials and labor costs.
Lastly, this is Hawaii so things are more expensive. However, I imagine things would cost about the same here in California or in other high cost of living areas.