Builders find pool underneath Coburg North home

A demolition crew was left scratching their heads after they uncovered this strange find beneath a Coburg North unit.

Sustainable Homes Melbourne builders found this pool buried beneath a home in Carr St, Coburg North. Picture: supplied

A strange find underneath a Coburg North unit has left a demolition crew stumped.

While recently excavating the Carr St site to make way for a two storey extension, tradies uncovered a full size, open air swimming pool hidden beneath the rubble, builder Simon Clark told the Leader.

While the clients later confessed they knew the secret underground pool, which measures eight by three metres and is believed to date back to the 1960s, was there.

Mr Clark, director of Sustainable Homes Melbourne, said it gave everyone else onsite a massive shock and he said he’d never seen anything like it in his 19 years in the industry.

“The property was subdivided decades ago, it was obviously a larger property in Coburg North and our clients had bought one of the units,” Mr Clark said.

Not one to miss a beat, Mr Clark said he was quick to point out to the owners the opportunities the pool allowed.

The discovery may have pushed out the project’s completion date to April or May next year and added about $30,000 to the cost, but he said the owner could now dream larger and make full use of the underground space.

Mr Clark said the pool was in surprisingly good condition considering it had been buried for a number of years.

There’s opportunity for storage, a potential wine cellar, the owner’s even talking about using it as a theatre room,” he said.

As for how the pool got under the house, Mr Clark said it was possible the previous builder may have cut corners when building the units.

They only placed a thin slab over the pool, he said, and his team found the pool was filled with building waste, rubble and asbestos, and he said there was a danger the surface may have caved in.

“A builder needs to know the history whether they (the homeowner) thinks it’s relevant or not,” Mr Clark said.

“To do it properly you’d remove the pool and backfill it with a specific type of soil that would compact … that’s what should have happened.

“It was half under the house, half under the driveway, there would definitely have been potential, not for the house to fall in, but definitely the driveway.

“We have some guys who often collect some unique types of bottles and glass (found underneath homes), but other than that, certainly the pool takes the cake.”