Fiberglass, for most Ohio backyards. We only install fiberglass, so check our working.
A one-piece, non-porous shell has nothing to reline or resurface, goes in without poured concrete, and winterizes simply. Concrete is still the answer for a fully custom shape, and vinyl for the lowest price on day one. The winter question is really a question about the next twenty years.
What an Ohio winter does to a pool
The cold is the obvious part. The frost line here sits around 32 inches, and we get a long run of freeze and thaw between November and March. The less obvious part is the ground. Central Ohio sits on glacial till, sand and gravel, and clay, and clay holds water. After the spring melt and a wet week, the soil around a pool can stay saturated for a long time, and that water presses on whatever is in the ground.
So the real winter question for any pool is not just whether it tolerates cold. It is what it costs to keep, season after season, in ground that freezes, thaws and stays wet.
Fiberglass
A fiberglass pool is one moulded shell with a non-porous gelcoat surface. There is no liner to wear out and no plaster to redo. Because our installation uses no poured concrete, nothing in the build needs warm weather to cure, which is why we can keep digging well into November.
The one rule: keep it full. Winterizing lowers the water a little and blows out the lines, and the pool stays full all winter. The water is the ballast holding the shell down against the groundwater outside it, and an empty fiberglass pool in wet Ohio ground can float, bulge or crack. Draining below the skimmer also voids the EvoPools structural warranty. The full explanation is in can I empty a fiberglass pool?
Concrete
Concrete, or gunite, is the most customisable pool there is. Any shape, any depth, any size. It is also usually the most expensive to build and to keep. The surface is porous, which means more chemistry, and it is typically resurfaced roughly every ten to fifteen years.
In Ohio the build time matters too. A concrete pool commonly takes eight to twelve weeks to build, in a market where the swimming season runs from about Memorial Day to Labor Day. Sign in spring and a lot of that season can go to construction.
Vinyl liner
Vinyl is usually the cheapest inground pool to install, and for a tight day one budget it is a reasonable choice. The trade is the liner. It wears out, and it is typically replaced every seven to ten years, so vinyl is the cheapest entry and the most frequent recurring bill. Over twenty Ohio winters, that bill comes round more than once.
Where the other two genuinely win
If you want a shape or size no shell comes in, concrete is the honest answer. If the lowest possible price today matters more than the cost over twenty years, vinyl is. For everyone else, fiberglass tends to land between the two on day one and lowest over time. The numbers are in our Ohio cost guide.
Getting more swimming out of a short season
Whatever you choose, the season is the season: about Memorial Day to Labor Day for unheated water in Central Ohio. A heater adds sixty or more swimmable days, early May to the middle of October, and the cheapest type costs about four dollars a day to run in the shoulder season. The working is on our upgrades page.
