"In my early years, my father bought a one bedroom house in a canyon on Pacific Coast Highway for $500. Ground lease $10 a month, Considering that I was born in a $7 a month shack in Hollywood,
this seemed fair. I could never understand why the PCH builder could be so dumb, building across a canyon, Heavy rain would race down the canyon, through the back door, down the hall and out the front door!
I must have forgotton all this, because 26 years later, we built our 12 room studio-home in another canyon. A big rain came and left 5 truck loads of rocks and soil in the bottom of our new pool, causing replastering and installing an 18” drain
pipe to by-pass the pool. Since then, we have not had that problem.
If you’re considering a pool, ask yourself if it will be a liability. There’s a considerable upkeep cost, necessity to fence, insurance against pool related accidents, how often will it be used? Heating it in the winter.
Ours has served us well in not having to pay rental to another property for the hundreds of times we’ve used it for commercial jobs, as in the above pictures. For our personal lives it has been a beautiful setting to many a festive
evening.
We prefer ocean swimming. I once swam two miles; from the canyon to the Santa Monica pier. But today all the street water goes down to our beach. While they say it’s okay to swim there, we’re not taking chances
at this stage of our lives."