MODERN LIVING: The Big Splash

“Any family that can afford to buy a second car can have a swimming pool in its backyard. Pools are just a logical extension of the family television room.” So, last week, said Gordon W. Rudd, president of National Pool Equipment Co., one of the nation’s leading poolmakers (1958 sales: $3,001,778). Once a rich man’s whim (there were only 28,300 pools, including commercial ones, five years ago), swimming pools today make up one of the splashiest sectors of the nation’s leisure market. This year alone, of the 70,000 swimming pools to be built at a cost of $750 million, 46,000 will be private pools, and the total in the nation will rise to more than 250,000.

Biggest market for pools is still in California (70,500 at the end of 1958), but as construction techniques improve, prices dip and banks grow more willing to finance pools as readily as cars, backyard swimming pools are spreading across the rest of the country. Construction in northeast and midwest states (where pools often double as skating rinks in winter) will increase on an average of 70% over last year, and in southwest and mountain states a 61% increase in construction is expected in 1959. A 20-ft. by 40-ft. pool that cost $15,000 before World War II can now be bought for $5,000.

Shaped like a heart, diamond, kidney, cucumber or pretzel, many a pool is still prized as a status symbol. But as prices, which vary with trimmings and construction difficulties, dip below the $3,500 level, families see the backyard swimming pool simply as a new way for family fun and a sure way to increase property values. Explains C. W. Dearborn, assistant vice president of the California Bank of Los Angeles: “Last year people kept telling me, ‘This is the year we normally buy a new car, but they cost too much and they depreciate too fast, so we decided to buy a pool instead.’ ” Like most banks, Dearborn’s makes five-year pool loans at 5½% to 8% interest.

Packaging Pools. As the market for swimming pools has changed, so have the methods of building and selling them. Along with custom jobs by some 2,700 pool contractors throughout the country, swimming pools are packaged and mass-marketed under established national names just as cars and boats are.

Old-line name in the business is Paddock of California, which pioneered gunite (concrete sprayed on steel-mesh frame), the first development to bring pool prices within the reach of middle-income families. Both an equipment maker (filters, pumps) and a pool builder, Paddock was taken over in January by Refinite Corp., a small Midwest poolmaker whose aggressive president, Charles A. Spaulding Jr., has streamlined operations at Paddock. From a loss last year on sales of $7,968,905, Paddock expects to be well in the black in 1959 on sales of more than $10 million.

Following Paddock’s lead in gunite construction are the Anthony Bros., Inc. of South Gate, Calif. (1958 sales: $8,000,000 ). The four brothers this year will market 50 models, including starfish-and boomerang-shaped pools, priced from $2,800, expect sales to top $10 million. For the nation’s largest pool-equipment maker, Swimquip, Inc. of El Monte, Calif., the torrent of 1959 business has come so fast that all materials allocated for the first half were used up in the first quarter. Said President William O. Baker: “This year the business has gone crazy.”

No Limit. The packaged pool is the fastest-growing part of the market. Rudd’s National Pool Equipment Co. of Florence, Ala. is specializing in precast, prestressed concrete-pool packages, complete with diving board and vacuum cleaner, delivered via truck to any backyard in the land for as little as $2,000. From International Swimming Pool Corp. (1958 sales: $12 million) this year has come a line of pools built above ground. Priced from $2,995 to $4,995, the pools consist of a thin, vinyl plastic sheet stretched over a plywood-and-steel frame that is supported by a Redwood exterior. The pools, named after Company President Esther Williams, are movable.

As new developments, such as more rigid plastics and aluminum resistant to chlorine, come on the market, the wave of pool construction is expected to rise rapidly. Says Robert M. Hoffman, publisher of Swimming Pool Age: “In five to ten years pool prices will be reduced to between $1,000 and $1,500, and there will be no limit to who will buy one.”