Swimming Pools

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Restrictions, codes and other regulations

Health and safety codes

Climate, weather and your swimming pool

Consider the wind

Sizing up the landscape

Slope, soil and drainage

Rules-of-thumb for choosing the site

Lots with a challenge

Restrictions, codes and other regulations

Building a swimming pool – like any other addition or alteration to your property – brings a myriad of legal requirements set forth in deed restrictions, zoning laws, and building, health, and safety codes. Take the time to look into all of these before you commit yourself to installing a swimming pool. When you design landscaping for your swimming pool, remember that additions such as fences, decks, and gazebos must conform, too.

Deed restrictions

Somewhere in the deed to your property you may find restrictions that could affect the design and location of your swimming pool and poolside structures. These restrictions may bind you to rules set by a homeowners association, moobaan committee, or provide for a utility easement or right-of-way under, over, or through your property.

Though the rules of a homeowners association can be changed by vote of the members deed restrictions can be changed only by mutual agreement among all parties bound by the restrictions or by court action.

Zoning laws

These city or provincial laws govern land use – yours included. They can determine where you can place your swimming pool, how close to the property lines you can build, and how large you can make your poolside structures.

Zoning laws usually have provisions for the granting of variances if you can show that meeting the precise requirements of the laws would create an “undue hardship,” and that you would not be encroaching on the privacy of your neighbors, a hearing officer or zoning board of appeals can grant you a variance. Application must be made through your local building or planning department.

Building codes

Aimed at protecting you from faulty construction methods, these codes set minimum standards for design, construction, and materials used in building. Some communities have specific codes for swimming pools; others apply the requirements of the regular building code.

Though most local codes are patterned after one of the national codes, communities can modify of add to these standards to satisfy local needs. For example, some communities do not allow vinyl-lined pools; others ban one-piece fiberglass pools. Check with your building department early in the planning stage – your swimming pool options my be fewer than were at first apparent.