Pool or pond?

Even though summer heat has yet to hit Chico, it’s almost too late to be thinking about what you and your family’s plans are for staying cool. “This is the time of year to plan,”

says Chris Rei of Perfection Pools & Spas. “Even mid-April is too late. Some people make a mistake—it doesn’t dawn on them till it’s 105.”

Perfection Pools is one of the main pool players in town—"Serving the North State for over 25 years,"—and it, along with every other pool construction company in the area, is busy tearing up back yards around Butte County, undertaking what Rei described as “the next biggest thing to the construction of your home.”

Of course, with prices starting at $30,000, building a custom pool might not be the choice for most of us. If you drive around Chico in the middle of a middle-of-summer day, you’ll see some of the alternative choices: A rope swing over Big Chico Creek, One-Mile’s Sycamore Pool, or simply a kiddie pool parked in a driveway. In fact, the heat is probably our city’s greatest common denominator. The long hot summer usually begins in the middle of spring and doesn’t end until middle of fall, with the gooey center of July and August having an average high of a dry 94 degrees. It’s something each and every Chicoan has in common, and is forced to consciously deal with, but those smart few who’ve already made the swimming pool investment, tucked away in their cool back yards, are maybe a little more relaxed, more refreshed and even more better than the rest of us.

With that, we’re here to tell you that there are options—within a wide price range—to provide even the brokest Northstater a convenient, backyard place to splash around.

Water my options?
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