Suburbia is flooded in above-ground swimming pools – and that has some neighbors in hot water

Tyler McSparin and his wife were quietly enduring the pandemic at their Kansas City, Missouri home when they heard pounding from their neighbor’s yard. “I thought they were doing some landscaping,” he says. “The next thing we knew was a huge above-ground pool.”

At the beginning of July he shared a photo on Twitter for fear of a repetition of the last scene in the film “Bad Boys 2”, in which the walls of a pool suddenly give way and trigger a tsunami. “My estimate is that it contains about 60,000 pounds of water,” he wrote. “And it goes straight uphill from us. I really hope these braces hold up !!! “

Suburbanites risk a water fight with their local governments, neighbors, and homeowners associations to find a backyard accessory that they may have turned down a summer ago.

United American families with nowhere to go this summer with many community pools, lakes, and beaches closed, have been eagerly embarking on do-it-yourself projects to make their homes and backyards cation-worthy. Pool vendors say they are stunned by the rising demand for above-ground varieties this year.

One of the country’s largest pool retailers, Leslie’s Poolmart Inc., sells around 30 above-ground options in the $ 400 to $ 9,100 range. By May, the company had sold out many models and commissioned some customers with four to six-week reorders as demand tripled, said CEO Michael Egeck.