Frequently Asked Questions

A great question we’re often asked is, “If I’m going to build a house, how do I go about planning the pool?”
Well, if it’s such that you’ve got a block that when the house is built, you’re going to lose your access, it’s really important to consider putting a pool in first. At Compass, we call that a sleeper pool, so you can certainly come and talk to us about installing a sleeper pool. The other consideration is, if you’re going to have access.

There are lots of exciting things about building a swimming pool, but one of the considerations you need to take into account is what am I dealing with on my block? In many cases, we are out at properties that have things such as easements, that’s areas that you just can’t build over. It really sort of belongs, it’s on your property, but it really belongs to the council.

When thinking about installing your pool, thinking about where it goes may come naturally. This might be, “Oh, okay, that’s the spot I’m definitely going to have my pool installed.” Other properties might have tremendous flexibility, and there can be a little bit of consternation over exactly where that pool is going to go. Pool…

I talk to a lot of people who have anxiety about access to their house. The first thing to let you know is, just about everything is possible. Ideally, we’d turn up at a block, it’d be flat, we’d have no house in that spot and we could drive straight in with all the equipment. Because realistically, when a pool is built, we literally want to turn up with the biggest digging machine, an excavator…

I think that when people build a pool, the first thing you think about is the colour of the pool, the size of the pool, the shape of the pool. But people don’t realize the tile choices for the sun pod, the features around with the glass and the fencing and all of that. I think that your centre showed everything for us and you could plan in everything before you had even broken ground.

So how do you go about buying a pool? Well, that’s such a good question. There are many steps that we would recommend taking when you’re looking to purchase a swimming pool, whether it’s your first or your 31st, if that’s possible.
But what we certainly recommend, is that you come in and visit us at the Compass display centre, Newcastle, which is in Tomago.

What’s the difference between compliant development and a development application? Well, from our point of view in terms of getting your pool approved, not a great deal. It still takes about the same amount of time in order from ordering your Compass swimming pool to us manufacturing it, having all the plans approved and so forth and then turning up at your backyard and installing your pool.

Once we’ve made an appointment with you, we’re going to come out and we’re going to ask you a whole bunch of questions. All that in relation to what you think is really important to your life in owning a pool. This might be your first time, it might be your fourth pool. But what we want to do? We want to get a good understanding of what’s important to you.

So how do I go about getting a DA for my pool? Well, when you work with Compass, most of the time we’re going to be involved in walking through that process with you. What I mean by that is that once we’ve decided on the pool, we’ve worked out exactly where it’s going, and we’ve taken all of the relevant measurements.

We’re often asked how close can I build my pool to a boundary? That’s a really good question and it will differ depending on which council we’re seeking to build that pool under. But it may not just be the distance from the boundary that we have to take into consideration as per council’s requirements.

One really exciting feature about a Compass Pool is that literally we can build them in all types of sites and what I mean by that, we can build a Compass Pool right out of the ground if we need to. In fact, we can even go, and we have, installed them on the rooftop of tops of apartment complexes.
Now that all comes about because Compass builds a pool shell that is totally unique.