Recession woes are everywhere and folks are cutting back on luxury spending, right? Wrong. An economic downturn, while having a negative impact on certain market sectors, is also having the ancillary effect of pumping some businesses in the upward direction. “Pumping,” in fact, may be a very suitable word, since swimming pool sales are brisk not in spite of but in response to fears of recession.

Huh?

Turns out that instead of spending money on expensive trips or big-ticket items that lose value (like cars and trucks), folks are investing in home improvement projects and taking “stay-cations” in their own backyards instead of vacations at exotic resorts. “I’ve been busy for a couple of months,” said Chris Tartamella, owner of Caribbean Pool and Patio in Hammond. “If you want your pool in for Memorial Day, you need to shop early.”

“The temperatures have been a bit low, but things are good,” said Evi Jeansonne, co-owner of Pools and Stuff in Slidell. “Busy season just started.” “Business is definitely picking up,” said Joe Crowton, superintendent of Aquarius Pools in Mandeville. “Everything we do is by word of mouth. All our business is referrals. And the warm weather has helped.”

The irony of waiting until the weather gets warmer to buy a pool is that installers are so busy by then that your pool may not be ready as quickly as you might like. Instead of Memorial Day, for instance, you might be looking at your inaugural dive sometime around the Fourth of July. “If you were to buy a pool today, I couldn’t start for about two months,” Tartamella said.

So get busy, wannabe backyard swimmers. But be thorough and prepared, too. Buying a swimming pool is not like buying a new garment you can drop off at the dry cleaner.

Jeansonne said above-ground pools start around $4,000 and in-grounds hit $30,000 at the low end. And then there’s maintenance.

“They need to come in at least biweekly and get their water tested,” Jeansonne said. “Just like a car, you need to take care of it.” Jeansonne said the monthly cost of maintaining a swimming pool averages around $100, varying with the size of the pool. “If you buy a big pool, you have to have money to maintain it,” she said. And if you don’t? “It’s more expensive to get it nice and clean again – maybe three times as much.” Ouch. An ounce of prevention may be worth about 28,000 gallons.

Jeansonne also said it’s important for potential buyers to do their homework and comparison shopping. Not all pools are created equal, and neither are all swimming pool companies. Most, she said, offer package deals when you purchase a pool – packages that include pumps, a skimmer, a liner, a ladder, etc.   And like the other vendors interviewed for this article, Jeansonne said she makes a sincere effort to educate her customers about what they’re getting into.

“I tell them to shop around, to see what you get with a package from different companies,” she said. “Compare apples to apples.”

“We do things differently from many companies,” Tartamella said. “We let people know right up front what it’s going to take.” But they also make it as easy as possible. “We’ve got some packages that are pretty much push-button,” he said, including automated cleaning systems and timers. “When you dummy-proof your pools, people use them more.”

Neither Aquarius nor Caribbean offer maintenance service, and both companies only install in-ground pools. Crowton said Aquarius, in fact, only works with Gunnite, a sprayed concrete that is considered higher-end. Tartamella’s company will install vinyl or fiberglass pools, but recommends Gunnite as the best material to use.

But in terms of price? “There used to be a huge price discrepancy between vinyl, Gunnite and fiberglass,” Tartamella said. “The gap has kind of closed.” Vinyl pools, he said, start in the $20,000 range, fiberglass is in the lower end of the $30,000 range, and Gunnite pools start in the middle of the $30,000 price range. And while the recession may have stimulated the market for swimming pools, it has also affected the appeal of the lower price range. “We have definitely noticed a shifting from high-end to lower-end vinyl pools,” he said.

At Aquarius Pools, Crowton said the company only works with Gunnite. “All we do are custom, in-ground, Gunnite pools,” he said. “They start around $35,000 and then as much as you want to spend. All we do now is high-end, and all we do is new pool construction and restoration.”

Part of high-end swimming pool work is coordinating the overall look and feel of the swimming pool setting. “We can work with landscape architects,” Tartamella said. “I have one client right now whose pool installation is at $150,000 and still rising. We don’t do cookie-cutter; we do ‘wow.’”

Like Aquarius, Caribbean does not offer pool maintenance service. “The focus of my business is building pools,” he said. “We concentrate on high-end.”

So to the surprise of some, high-end pools – like the $150,000 job Tartamella is doing now – are still a booming business despite the economy. “We had a customer today,” Crowton said, “who instead of going on vacation is going to spend the money in the back yard.” “When there is a recession, we benefit,” Tartamella said. “Instead of taking vacations or buying new cars, people improve their homes.”

Realtors caution that swimming pools may add the “wow” factor to a home, but they really don’t increase the value very much. So don’t install a pool if you think it’s going to boost your appraisal when you’re ready to sell. But when you consider installing a pool, there are certainly positive elements. “It’s a great entertainment value,” Crowton said. “There is intrinsic value to having a pool.”

And in this economy – or in this perceived economic downturn? Is the pool business still a healthy enterprise? “Two months ago we were nervous,” Tartamella said. “It was slow. People are waiting longer to open the pools for the season. But that’s not the focus of our business.”   And, again, Caribbean is now disclosing a two-month lag time from purchase to inception of construction so things are far from bad. “We’ve been pretty fortunate in this area,” Crowton said of Aquarius, which has been in business since 1976. “We’ve been here forever and we’re not going away.”

But before you buy, remember having a pool is a long-term commitment. Shop around, compare – as Jeansonne recommends – apples to apples. And don’t think of a swimming pool as a one-time expense.

“We educate customers so there are no surprises,” Tartamella said. “We don’t make a profit until we finish your pool. That gives people the service we think they deserve.”