We have a winner!

Congratulations to Regina W. from Snellville, GA the lucky Grand Prize winner of our $10,000 Pool Makeover Sweepstakes.

Thousands of entries were submitted by homeowners nationwide for a chance to get a cool new look for their pool, and Regina was chosen.

Thank you to all who participated!

Pool Game - Dolphins Race or Relay

If there are just two players, this game is a race. With four or more players divide into teams and make it a relay.

Each team has a beach ball that the players must move from one end of the pool to the other by pushing the ball with their noses and forehead. If they touch the ball with their hands or any other part of their body they must go back to where that took place and start again.

When the player reaches the end of the pool the next player will do the same until one team is the winner.

Good swimmers can play by swimming in the deep end of the pool or the length of the pool. For a game with non swimmers, play in the shallow end.

ICC-ES Certified

ICC Certification – Building permits just got easier!

We are the only packaged swimming pool manufacturer to receive ICC-ES Certification of its products. What is ICC-ES? It’s the International Code Council Evaluation Service (ICC-ES), whose purpose is to ensure that building products meet code requirements.

Inspectors’ #1 Choice for Approving Building Codes Are ICC-ES-Certified Products*

Building inspectors and engineers look to the ICC-ES evaluation reports for evidence that the products and systems are code-compliant. Builders can receive a standardized branded swimming pool blueprint coded with an ICC-ES report # — stamped and signed by a licensed engineer!

*Final permit approval is up to the discretion of each individual municipality’s code official

Pool Game - Sharks and Minnows

The game starts out with one person selected as the shark and the rest as the minnows.

Designate one end of the pool as the minnows’ starting point and the other end as the minnows’ goal.

The shark starts in the water at the minnows’ goal, the minnows at their starting point. The minnows must be touching their starting point. The shark then shouts: "Sharks and Minnows, one two three, fishies, fishies swim to me!" after which the minnows may begin to swim to their goal.

The minnows do not need to leave right when the shark calls them over. Minnows can leave their starting point anytime after the shark calls them over. A minnow may return to their starting point at any time during play and be safe from being tagged while touching their starting end.

If the shark manages to tag a minnow, the minnow is out of play and becomes a shark in the next round. After all the minnows have either reached their goal wall or been tagged, the shark(s) swim to the opposite side of the pool from the minnows and the cycle starts again.

The game is played until all of the minnows have been tagged, then the last person tagged becomes the shark who starts the next round.

Here are some optional additions to these rules:

• Instead of tagging, sharks must hold some part of the minnow's body for three whole seconds before they become a shark
• No underwater tag: sharks can only tag minnows when some part of the minnow is above water
• Minnows can call "Early bird!" and start swimming to their goal before the shark has called them across. This can be prevented by the shark calling "No early birds!" at the start of the round.

Pool Game - Marco Polo

Marco Polo is a form of tag played in a swimming pool. It is a simple game that can be played with two or more players.

To play, One player is chosen as "It". That person closes his or her eyes, or is blindfolded, and counts to a certain number (usually 10 or 20). While the “it” person counts, the other players scatter around in the pool.

After counting to the pre-determined number, the “it” player tries to tag the other players, using only the sound of their voices to find them. The player who is "It" shouts out "Marco" and the other players must respond by shouting "Polo", which "It" uses to try to acoustically locate them.

When the “it” player tags another, that player becomes the “it” person and the game starts over again.

During the game, if "It" thinks that someone has climbed out of the pool, he or she can shout "fish out of water", and if anyone is out of the water they become "It". If someone sits on the side of the pool with their legs in the water, "It" can call out "mermaid on the rocks", or "fish out of water" and that player becomes "It".

Pool Game - Colors

A player is picked to be "it".  The player who is "it" then swims to one side of the pool and turns their back to the other swimmers who are lined up in the water on the opposite side of the pool as "it". 

Players choose a color and keep it to themselves (To make it easier you can limit the color choices, like to the colors of the rainbow). "It" begins to call out colors one at a time.  If a player's color is picked then the player tries to make it to the other side of the pool as quietly as they can. 

If "it" hears a player swimming then "it" turns around and tries to tag the player before they swim back to the side of the pool where they started.

If "it" turns around and the players still have a hand on the side of the pool then "it" returns to the side of the pool where they started and starts calling out colors again.

If "it" catches a swimmer then the swimmer becomes the new "it".

Pacific Pools receives a Best of Class Award for 2011

Pacific Pools receives a Swimming Pool Innovations Best of Class Award for 2011 from Poolandspa.com.  The award program recognizes outstanding and superior products, innovation and/or customer service in the pool & spa industry.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The Awards for this year were based on a combination of factors including product inspections and phone interviews, as well as very detailed consumer input through the use of a third-party consumer survey company.  Over 50,000 consumers were polled throughout 2008 to the present.  The 2011 Best Of Class Award Program focused on quality, not necessarily quantity.