Florida's hotter than a habanero for the better part of each year, and while that sucks in many (many, many) ways, it's cool for the pool lovers among us. Tens of thousands of homeowners sport above- or in-ground pools, and for those of you who don't, here's something for you to consider:
An average-size, 20'x10' pool, with a depth of slope from 3 to 6 feet, holds approximately 900 cubic feet of water, or 6,750 gallons (7.5 gallons per cubic foot). And according to our friends at City of Tampa Water Department, it costs far less than you might think to fill it — about $70 if you already have water and sewer services (please tell us you do). Pretty cheap, no? You can't even keep your house cool for so little.
But what if you were to fill the same size pool with other substances? Like, say, you're the adventurous sort, and you want to test your mettle (and your, ahem, sensitive bits) by cannonballing into a pool full of Tabasco? Or perhaps you want to impress your friends and flaunt your success by having 'em all over for a soak in a smooth lake of Courvoisier? For the sickeningly rich, nothing says "I love you" like proposing in a pool brimming with diamonds; and what would your next swingers' party be without a swimmin' hole full of slick KY Jelly?
Tabasco = $324,000 72,000 12-oz. bottles @ $4.50 a bottle
KY Jelly = $1,077,840 216,000 4-oz. tubes @ $4.99 a tube
Courvoisier XO Imperial Cognac = $4,626,142 34,015.75 25.4-oz. bottles @ $136 a bottle
One-carat Diamonds
This was a toughie. We called upon business planner, brother of Creative Loafing accountant Tony Ali, and obvious kick-ass mathematician Muslim B. Ali to break it down for us. Based on his pageful of figures and formulas, it's safe to say that you don't want to know. However, given Ali's assumption that each diamond is perfectly square (and fits next to other perfectly square diamonds, with no spaces between them), he reckons it would take roughly 150,069,930 diamonds to fill a pool of our dimensions. The friendly Vincent, from Diamondbroker.com in Los Altos, Calif., tells us $8,000 is a realistic price to pay for a flawless one-carat stud. Given those two figures, that brings the price tag for filling a pool with diamonds to a hefty $1,200,559,440,000 (yes, that's trillion. Insert low, incredulous whistle here). But, Ali cautions, "A more accurate answer could be found if one knew the actual or average number of dimensioned objects of a diamond shape that would fit into a gallon of water." Damn.
And, by the way, should your greed-filled, perverted ways leave you feeling repentant, you can cleanse your sins — literally — with a few swan dives into a pool full of:
Communion wafers = $414,581.44 56,329 pounds of communion bread from Christianpublications.com @ $7.36 a pound. (Shipping and handling not included.)
—Kelli K
This article appears in Nov 10-16, 2004.