Justin D. 
You don’t want to regret adding any of these 5 features to your pool. A swimming pool can be one of the most expensive things you'll ever add to your house. And ironically, some of the upgrades you may spend the MOST money on are the exact features you'll regret most.
Hey guys, welcome back to The Pool Nerd. I'm Justin, your resident pool aficionado. Today we're going through five expensive pool features that you may want to think twice before adding to your pool’s build.
The wrong features can create way more maintenance, repairs, and expense than you may think.
We know a thing or two about designing pools. We have a completely free pool designer at ThePoolNerd.com/pool-designer if you want to design your own. It lays out different layouts, images, and all the equipment you may need. You can see what's trending, what's not, and explore different pool designs before you build.
But before you start adding every upgrade that looks good on paper, there are a few features you really need to think through — and number one is probably one of the most tempting.
Products I Use and Recommend
#1 — The Wrong Pool Interior
Number one: choosing the wrong surface for something you're going to touch with bare skin every single day.
When people pick a pool finish, the whole conversation is about looks. What color is it? How much aggregate? Does it sparkle like a resort? Almost nobody asks the question that ended up mattering most to me: what does it feel like?
We've owned rougher surfaces before, and your feet feel it.
Toes get scraped up. Kids come out with raw knees. Sit against the wrong wall and you'll feel it tomorrow. We have gotten out of pools with cut-up feet.
Then we switched to this — and for us, that problem basically disappeared. This is a reinforced membrane interior called Zycore. It's what came inside our Ecopool. It's smooth. It's comfortable. And to my eye, it looks more premium than a traditional vinyl liner — I prefer the finished look to a lot of fiberglass, too. And don't picture some baggy old-school liner — this is a reinforced architectural membrane.
There's a maintenance win too: no rough, porous, cementitious surface means, in my experience, easier cleaning and fewer embedded stains.
I spent years assuming a premium pool meant more exotic plaster. Now I'm not sure plaster is where I'd put the money. If I were building today, I'd price a quality reinforced membrane before spending thousands upgrading a traditional gunite finish.
#2 — Building an Uninsulated Pool
Number two might be the strangest thing the pool industry still does. They'll sell somebody a five-thousand-dollar heater... and then build the thing it's heating with almost no thought about insulation. And that just makes no sense.
Think about everything else we try to keep hot. Your coffee is kept in an insulated tumbler. Your house has insulation in every wall. Your cooler holds ice for three days. But your swimming pool — tens of thousands of gallons of heated water — sits against the cold ground, bleeding heat all night long.
We obsess over how efficiently we make heat, and barely talk about how efficiently the pool keeps it. People spend thousands upgrading to a bigger heater. I'd start by slowing down how fast the pool loses the heat I already paid for.
This is the other big change on our pool — the Ecopool wall system itself is insulated — but this is something you can do on every pool IF you ask. Whichever way you build, insulation is a question more homeowners should be asking at the design stage. It affects your heating bill, how long your swim season lasts, and even how big a heater you need.
But the last three regrets aren't about the pool shell. They're about everything people bolt onto it — starting with the equipment pad.
#3 — The Overcomplicated Equipment Pad
Number three: an overcomplicated equipment pad.
Pool builders love selling equipment. Main pump. Water-feature pump. Booster pump. Heater. Chlorinator. Salt cell. Ozone. Automation panel. In-floor valves. Chemical feeder. And every box on that pad is a box you'll eventually repair or replace. Not to mention maintain.
Now, I'm not against technology — I'm probably more obsessed with pool tech than anyone watching this video. I just want every piece of equipment to earn its spot.
Here's my version of a modern, simple pool. A quality variable-speed pump. A properly sized filter. One simple sanitation system instead of five overlapping chemical gadgets. A good water monitor — I use the Ondilo ICO — so I know what my chemistry is doing instead of guessing. And a robot handling the physical cleaning. If I add one more layer, it's UV — extra protection without putting anything else in your water.
That's it. I'd rather own five pieces of equipment that do their jobs extremely well than twelve pieces I have to babysit. Spend money removing maintenance — not adding features. I'll put the equipment I use and recommend in the description. And you can find all of this and more at ThePoolNerd.com/deals where I post all the equipment I use in my pool.
#4 — Over-the-Top Water Features
Number four: the waterfall and water features.
These look incredible in the rendering. Waterfalls, deck jets, bubblers, sheer descents — I get it. It's one of the easiest ways to make a backyard feel like a resort. But the rendering never shows you what it takes to make that water move: another pump, more plumbing, more valves — more boxes on that pad we just covered, and more things you'll eventually repair or replace.
And here's the kicker almost nobody tells you: moving water changes your water chemistry. When you aggressively aerate pool water, you help carbon dioxide escape — and a side effect is that your pH climbs faster. So if you run a big waterfall all day and can't figure out why you're always adding acid, the thing making your pool look pretty may be part of the reason.
That waterfall isn't free just because the water's already in the pool. You're paying to pump it, you're losing more to evaporation, and you may be making your chemistry harder to manage. And when pH and calcium get away from you, guess where that white, crusty scale loves to show up? Right on the pretty rock you paid extra for.
I'm not saying zero water features. I'd rather do one great water feature than seven — and keep it simple enough that you'll still run it five years from now.
But at least a waterfall is something you can shut off. Number five gets plumbed into the pool shell itself — and it's the feature builders push hardest.
#5 — Built-In In-Floor Cleaning Systems
Number five: permanently building your pool cleaner into your pool.
I get why this sounds amazing. The heads hide in the floor, no robot in sight, no hoses, and the brochure calls it fully automated. It looks high-end.
My problem isn't that in-floor cleaning doesn't work. My problem is that you're permanently plumbing cleaning technology into a pool shell that could be there for thirty years. I don't want my 30-year pool married to a cleaning technology with a 10 year life span.
Pool robots are improving ridiculously fast — motors, filtration, navigation. If my robot breaks, or something better comes out, I replace the robot. If your cleaning system is plumbed into the concrete? You're married to it.
And here's the thing most people miss: a good robot isn't just a moving vacuum. It's a second filter pulling fine debris out of your water, and in my testing that filtration separates the great robots from the gimmicks.
So give me a good filter system and a replaceable robotic cleaner every time. I've tested over thirty of these robots, and I'll link my current Best Robotic Pool Cleaners guide below, because there are a few I'd steer you away from.
My Final Verdict
What's my final verdict on the top 5 pool features you’ll regret?
The theme today isn't 'build a boring pool.' Build the pool you want. But if I'm spending six figures on something I hope to own for decades, I'd rather spend that money making the pool easier and cheaper to own.
A comfortable interior. An insulated shell. A simple pad. One great water feature instead of seven. A replaceable robot instead of plumbed-in cleaners.
Don't optimize the showroom — optimize the next ten years. Spend money removing maintenance, not adding it.
Now, I know some of these are going to be controversial. So drop a comment below: What's the pool feature YOU bought that you'd never buy again?
Everything from today — my top-rated robots, the ICO, and my full guides on high pH and pool scale — is linked below, along with all the top deals I’ve found at ThePoolNerd.com/deals.
Until next time: keep nerding out... and enjoy that pool.
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