It seems Cambridge residents are diving head first into the idea of owning a pool.
According to new data from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporationit’s one of the top ten cities in Ontario when it comes to the number of permits issued for residential pools.
Bill Horning is one of those getting a new pool this year.
“We like to entertain folks at home,” he said. “We don’t go out a lot. It’s just something we’ve always wanted from when we were young.”
Horning has also noticed more pools popping up in his neighbourhood.
“Just up the street, probably a kilometer up Maple [Street]I just put a pool in last year.”
A backyard in Cambridge, Ont. ready for contractors to put in a new pool. (June 6, 2022)
The City of Cambridge said 164 permits were issued in 2020. The following year there were 261 permits, but as 49 were not completed or cancelled, the actual total was 212.
So far, 82 pool permits have already been handed out in 2022.
Steve Vicente is the president of Rosy Recreational, a contractor based in Cambridge.
He calls the boom in the pool construction “chaos.”
“Permits and everything have kind of just tripled and quadrupled,” Vicente said.
He, along with the City of Cambridge, pointed to the pandemic and the restrictions that came with it as one of the reasons pools have become more popular.
Even though most of those restrictions have now been lifted, the demand hasn’t died down.
“With the season and the nature of the business, you can only do so many pools in a year,” said Vicente.
But there are other factors he also has to take into account.
“It’s not just the amount of work, but the product,” said Vicente. “Unfortunately there’s been delays in getting product. As we know, everything has been delayed, so it’s a snowball effect.”