I will tell you what I tell every would-be A/G pool owner:
Check out your site. You need a perfectly level site that can support the 77 tons of water your pool will have. If you don't have a perfectly level site, you MAY spend as much on the site as you do on the pool.
It's cheaper, by far, to dig down than build up, but in either case if you have anything under the site, like cables, gas lines or even sprinkler lines they need to be moved first.
I learned this hard lesson YEARS ago when I got our first pool: a 15' Intex donut round. I spent weeks building a platform for it--and had to get help. I used a lot of decorative stone we had around, rubble to fill it in, and finally a few yards of sand. Like a dummy I didn't line the site with landscape cloth so ever season was an exercise in re-levelling the sand. Still, I got by on the cheap, with a lot of sweat equity. I THOUGHT my plot was level, but it dropped almost 16" from one corner of the 16' platform to the far corner.
So keep your site in mind.
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