Thanks Boby. My computer crashed last winter and I lost all my websites, stored passwords etc. This was one of the sites I had on favorites and then when I reconstructed that list, it got left off. Autonut emailed me today and I remembered the website and then came here and had to ask for my user name and password to log on! uuuuuftah that made me break out into a sweat-way too much work for a Saturday morning! ;-) I have missed you guys too.

Anyhow, to answer your email questions Autonut, our insulated pool is working great. This spring it was about 8-10 degrees warmer than our neighbors so we started swimming early-in April. It stayed above 80 until about 2 weeks ago, when we had a sudden cold snap here-now it is in the low 70's.

Autonut, Aussie pools went out of business after they finished our pool but this web site you sent looks like the same folks (same address-same exact technology-I am positive it is the same guy) with a new name. You should check into their business history etc and see if they have any complaints under this company name and also check under their old name. You can go to the California state contractors board and type in their name. If they are a licensed contractor, they will show up. Since they appear to just be doing DIY kits now, they may not have to be. They were licensed before under the name Aussie Pools or Aussie Pool and Spa. I had heard they were going to move to just selling the DIY kits and get out of the business of building pools. Ours was the last one the completed I believe. We never had any problems with them but we were also fortunate that nothing major went wrong with our pool after they finished it. I think they filed bankruptsy so there would have been no recourse for us. The only problem we have had has been with our salt water generator-it has been replaced 3 times! If I had to do it over again, I would not have bought that. But, the manufacturer has been great and speedy about replacing it each time without hassle, so that is fortunate for us.

Another thing to consider is we are in Northern Cal where it never gets below freezing really, so I cannot speak for how this type of pool would do in a much colder climate. I will say it has never been 20 degrees warmer as they claim on their site. At most it has been 10 degrees. But, 10 degrees is a lot during those early and late season swimming months. It definitely buys us an additonal 6-8 weeks of swimming beyond what our friends with traditional pools get. We cannot speak to the heating cost savings as we dont heat the pool in the winter. Our spa that was built by them with the same technology has worked well. In the winter we use it 3-5 times a week and that probably added about 100 dollars to our gas bill. Because it never drops below 65 in between use, it heats up to 101 really fast and then we turn the heat off and it stays at 101 for up to an hour without the heater on. Well worth the cost for the physical and mental benefits! I dont know how that compares to the cost of running a regular spa in this area. We talked to probably 5 previous customers before we built and we actually got to test swim in 2 pools. Everyone said they got extra heat out of the technology-ranging from 5-10 degrees. All of those pools are in this same Northern Cal area.

I hope this helped.

Drex