There are a couple standard sizes: 18x32, 18x36, and 20x40 for vinyl liner ingrounds. Most common is 3ft shallow end to 8ft deep end. That being said, you can have the liner made to your specs.

Building one isn't rocket science, but you should have above average DIY skills. I ended up subcontracting out each piece of my pool build, and I saved quite a bit over just doing a "turnkey" pool from a pool builder. Around here, doing a 18x36 inground vinyl liner pool will run $25K, give or take a few thousand.

We build ours in 2004, and it cost about $16-17K by the time we were done. I hired out the excavator to dig the pool, and he ran into rock on the deep end, so luckily he knew a blasting contractor. After the rock was blasted out, he finished the dig.

The pool kit (which includes steel walls, wall foam, liner, pump, filter, one ladder, walk-in steps, coping, and skimmer) cost me about $6500. I bolted the walls together myself, and then had concrete delivered to pour the bond beam. After that's done, I had two guys from the local pool store help me trowl on the vermiculite pool bottom. I paid them to do the vinyl liner, and they also set up the pump and filter for me - that was well worth the money.

A friend of mine is an electrician, and I hired him to run a circuit from the garage to the pool pump.

I also hired a local concrete company to do the pool deck, since it was way too much work to do myself. I bought the 4' vinyl fencing from Home Depot, rented a backhoe with an auger to dig the holes, and my Dad and I put in the fencing ourselves.

So in a nutshell, that was about it. Nothing real difficult; but I highly recommend that you check out a couple local pool dealers and find one that is willing to work with you for technical advice and on an hourly basis in case you need help with the harder stuff like hanging the liner, plumbing the lines, and hooking up the pump and filter.

Wow, bradbrown2, thanks for sharing your experience with your pool.
Sounds like you did put in a lot of effort into completing this project. So, how long did you take to complete the whole thing? By the way, is installing the fencing part of fulfilling the building code? Do you need to get a permit first before you start building? Also, did you have problem getting in all your pool parts and all the equipments that were involved in building the pool (including the excavator)? How big of an entrance access should be allowed for mobilizing the materials and equipments into the yard? If you have pictures of your pool to post, that would be nice.