When Amy Holland bought her house in Austin, Tex., in 2020, she and her husband knew they wanted to have a pool in their backyard — but not just any pool.
“We don’t have kids, so we didn’t want some giant water slide, all the features,” said Ms. Holland, 46, who works in technology sales. “We really wanted just a ‘cocktail pool’ that we could dip in, have some drinks, have some friends over. We just didn’t want a big pool.”
The solution was a plunge swimming pool.
Traditional backyard pools can be 15 feet wide and 30 foot long, but plunge pools are typically 10 by 20 inches. They are usually about five feet deep and flat-bottomed.
They are also easier to maintain and build. Ms. Holland and her husband designed a pool that would fit comfortably into their sloped backyard, and not interfere with the 100-year-old root system of the live oak.
Allison Messner from Yardzen, a landscape design company in Sausalito, Calif., stated that some homeowners prefer the minimalism of plunge pool designs.
“I think people that are drawn to plunge pools are looking for a smaller footprint pool, because maybe they have more functional areas in their yard, which is also a modern look,” Ms. Messner said. Larger swimming pools don’t allow for much else in the typical backyard, she added, while plunge pools leave space for dining and play areas. They can also “make your yard look and feel like a staycation spot,” Ms. Messner said.
Plunge pool are not a new concept. They are found in nature as deep basins at the bottom of waterfalls. Here erosion creates natural swimming holes. Small circular pools of five feet deep were used by the Romans to bathe. Tiny pools inspired by the Romans’ example dotted British gardens in the 18th century. Photos of plunge pools in tropical resorts or Grecian villas are commonplace in the age of social media.
Backyard pools used to be reserved for the wealthy Americans. But gunite pool, a type concrete pool, was more affordable and became more accessible for homeowners. For a time, the kidney-shaped pool — often eight feet deep at the deep end, with requisite diving board — became a suburban status symbol, especially in Southern California, where neighborhoods were filled with the sounds of splash fights and games of Marco Polo.
Lucas Firmin is a pool builder from Baton Rouge in Louisiana. He said that most pools these days are around five feet deep.
Chapman Bullock is a co-founder at Proper Plunge Pools Austin, Texas. He said that people used traditional pools in a unique way before plunge pools became popular.
“When you sometimes go to a pool party, you’ll see everybody crowded in the shallow end standing together, and there’s a big area of the pool that’s not being used,” he said. “Just having a body of water to cool off in and relax is really what most people are looking for.”
The standard backyard pool isn’t going away but a host of companies have cropped up in recent years making prefabricated plunge pools easily accessible to a growing number of people. These companies fill the gap left by traditional builders due to labor and supply shortages and help to reduce costs and time.
“I think the pandemic definitely drove demand for plunge pools for that very reason,” said Karen Larson, a co-founder of Soake Pools, in Pembroke, N.H. “Maybe even some people that might have been thinking of a large pool may have converted to the idea of a small pool.”
Ms. Larson said that Soake, founded in 2014, has had increased demand for its so-called “pre-cast plunge pools” in recent years. Soake constructs the pool on-site while a local landscaper prepares the space. When the pool’s body is complete, it is transported to the home and placed on-site by a crane. The process takes anywhere from “a few days to a few weeks,” Ms. Larson said.
Plunge Plus, Easton, Mass. and Modpools in British Columbia are two other prefabricated plunge pool companies. Modpools makes its pools from recycled shipping containers that can be shipped to the United States.
With Ken Dineen, a construction worker, and Mr. Bullock, a designer in Austin, Proper Plunge Pools was established last year. Mr. Bullock explained that he created the company to specialize in small pools after trying to convince pool builders to put one in his small backyard years ago. After traditional pool builders refused to build a pool in his backyard, Bullock designed and built one himself.
Proper Pools offers three sizes of pools to Austin residents. Mr. Bullock stated that the company has built 20 pools in the last 12 months.
“A plunge pool, with these small lots in a lot of metropolitan places, allows you to utilize the square footage of your backyard more,” Mr. Bullock said.
Also, plunge pools are less expensive than full-size ones. A nationwide survey of 1,100 agents by Homelight found that a mid-tier or upscale pool would cost between $70,000 and $100,000 in the third quarter 2020. Proper Plunge Pools charges between $40,000 and $60,000 for its smaller models.
“What we’re seeing in Austin is a lot of pool companies won’t even start talking to you unless you’re willing to spend $70,000 to $80,000, and then really at the end of it, you’re going to be spending close to $100,000,” Mr. Bullock said. “It’s a lot of money. At the end of the day, you’re getting something that’s just as high quality, and I think aesthetically looks just as good as a custom-built pool.”
After a plunge pool is built, it is easier to maintain them. They require less chemicals and less water, and they use less energy to heat. “It’s more financially efficient for the homeowner, because the heating bill is significantly less,” said Philip Michael, owner of Cool Water Pool Works in Southampton, N.Y.
People who otherwise would close their pools during the colder months will find it easier to heat up and cool down smaller pools.
Leigh Profit, 42, built a Soake pool in her Harpers Ferry farmhouse. It has been turned into an Airbnb.
“It’s extremely relaxing,” she said. “It can be heated up to as warm as you want — hot tub temperatures. So it feels really therapeutic, too, when you’re just in this calm water and plunged in there.”
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