Why a pool on an apartment terrace costs more than one in a garden

Almost everyone who asks us about a pool has the cost the wrong way round in their head. The mental picture is a villa with a garden and a large body of water in it, versus a modest plunge pool on a top-floor terrace, and the assumption follows automatically: the villa pool is the extravagant one. On our own published rate card, per square metre, it is the cheaper of the two — and not marginally.

The published rates

The budget calculator carries two separate rate arrays for pools, four tiers each.

There is a second pattern worth noticing. For the first three tiers, the apartment rate is exactly the villa rate one tier up: an apartment pool at tier 1 is priced at 2,160 €/m², which is what a villa pool costs at tier 2; an apartment pool at tier 2 is priced at 3,360, the villa tier 3 figure; tier 3 apartment matches tier 4 villa at 5,400. In budget terms, putting the pool on a terrace costs you about the same as upgrading a garden pool by a full specification tier and getting nothing extra for it.

Worked comparisons

Area still dominates, which is the part people get right without realising it.

• A 24 m² pool at the lowest tier: 34,560 euro in a garden, 51,840 euro on a terrace. Difference: 17,280 euro.
• A 12 m² plunge pool at the lowest tier on a terrace: 25,920 euro. The same 12 m² in a garden: 17,280 euro.
• A 30 m² garden pool at the lowest tier: 43,200 euro — still less than that 24 m² terrace pool above.

So a small terrace pool can absolutely come in under a large garden one. What it will not do is come in under the same pool at ground level. And at the top of the card the arithmetic gets unforgiving fast: 8,400 €/m² means a 12 m² terrace pool at tier 4 is a 100,800 euro line in your budget, for a pool you could walk across in four steps.

What the gap is paying for

Here is where we have to be careful, because the rate card gives numbers, not reasons. It publishes one euro-per-square-metre figure per tier and does not break it into components. Nothing below is a costed line on the card, and you should not expect an invoice that itemises it that way.

What plausibly drives the difference is that a terrace pool is not really a pool job with an access problem attached. It is a structural job with a pool in it.

Getting materials up there. A garden pool is served by a truck that parks and unloads. A terrace pool is served by a crane, or by a hoist, or by hand up a staircase, and every one of those is slower, more weather-dependent and more constrained by the street below. In Malta that street is frequently narrow, frequently one-way, and frequently shared with everyone else's deliveries. A crane needs somewhere to stand and a window in which to stand there. In Gozo, every load has crossed on a ferry before it reaches the crane at all.

What the slab will carry. Water is heavy and it does not move. A garden pool transfers its load to the ground. A terrace pool transfers it to a slab that was designed to carry furniture, people and a washing line, and to the columns and beams under that slab, and eventually down through the building. Whether your terrace can take it, and what has to be done if it cannot, is a question for a structural engineer looking at your building's drawings — not something a rate card can answer and not something anyone can tell you from a photograph.

Water sitting above a habitable room. Under a garden pool is soil. Under a terrace pool is somebody's ceiling, and often somebody else's, which changes the standard the waterproofing has to meet and the consequences of getting it wrong. A leak in a garden pool is a water bill. A leak in a terrace pool is a claim.

The permissions layer. Works of this kind sit under the Planning Authority, and on an apartment they also sit under the condominium: a terrace may be your exclusive use while the structure supporting it, and the facade the crane swings past, are common. Neither the scope of the permit nor the position of your condominium is something the rate card knows about.

That is as concrete as we are willing to be in writing. If you want the specific answer for your terrace, the useful next step is a survey, not more reading.

What the card does not tell you

Being clear about the limits of the number is part of using it properly.

• It does not break down. There is no craneage line, no structural line, no waterproofing line. One figure per tier.
• It does not vary by storey. A first-floor terrace and an eighth-floor terrace take the same rate, although in reality they will not take the same effort.
• It does not vary by island. There is no Gozo multiplier, so the ferry is not priced in as such.
• It does not say what separates the tiers. Whether tier 4 buys a different finish, different filtration, a different depth or something else is not established by the card.
• It does not state a minimum size or a minimum charge.
• It does not tell you what is bundled in — plant room, pumps, excavation, certification, application costs. Assume nothing either way and ask.

How to use this when you are budgeting

Most people reading this bought in shell form, which means the pool is competing for money with a kitchen, a bathroom count, apertures and everything else in the same pot. Two practical consequences follow from the rates above.

First, on an apartment, decide the pool question early rather than late. It is the one item in a shell fit-out whose feasibility depends on the building rather than on your budget, and finding out in month five that the slab is the problem is expensive in a way that reshuffling tile choices is not.

Second, if you are still choosing between properties, understand that the pool line in your two budgets is not comparable on size alone. A modest terrace pool and a generous garden pool can land within a few thousand euro of each other. Run both through the calculator with the actual areas before you let the pool influence which property you buy.

The rate is the verified part of this article. Everything about why it is what it is, for your specific terrace, comes from a survey.