Yes, the sim uses the door to go swimming also. You click on the pool and tell him to swim, and he will ignore the pool steps in favor of the door. Once he is through the door, he comes up to the surface and swims normally.

If he uses the door for a "go here" instead of swimming, he will again float to the surface but this time he will be standing on the water, from where he can chat etc.

So strange ! So, according to this, we could make basements with "pool" entrances, instead of having stairs…
The way you describe it, at least the sim could get out of the basement that way. Now, can he go back inside via the pool ?

Yes, when it was time to stop swimming or walking on water, the sim sank to the bottom again and went in the door.

Hmm... So, I did get the same results, except that my sim doesn't swim at all. She just stands or walks on water.
And I couldn't get her to use the pool in the normal way either. She also refuses to use the pool stairs either way, from the basement or from outside, and telling her to go outside the pool when she is in results in her taking the basement door to get out.
So, no pool entrances for me at least .

Still, it's a great way to bring sunshine into the basement !

Anyone tried to put a pool in a basement, I mean right inside it, so that it is two levels down? Like a sunken pool in a basement. I'll try it myself, I'm building just now

Did you manage it, Fluttereyes ? I think I tried it in the first days and couldn't. But I didn't try to use any of the usual cheats either. I would try it, but my game is borked right now, so I'm abstaining from doing anything until I know if I have to reinstall or what... I have a really weird case of warped sims on my hands -____-. Oh well.

Haz, no sorry I couldn't get it to do it, I didn't try loads of cheats either as I was busy building a world, lol. It would be good though eh? I have to admit I'm not overly enamoured with the basement tool, I expected something a bit different. When you want to build a house on a sloe with the basement coming out at one side, you can't do it, so the old basement method is still necessary. I wish we could choose the depth for the basements too as I'd like to keep it high enough up, so that I could put some of those privacy windows in to let the light in.

Do you have any dodgy skins in your game that could be causing an issue with your sims?

I have noticed something about skins and pool tool in my game. I can't use any of the replacement skins and have use of the pool tool. Crashes my game. Right now I have EA skins. Ugh.

Also, I found some of the jewelry and some default replacement type clothing will not allow me to use the pool tool. Game crashes every time. It usually happens after downloading a sim in a Sims3Pack and the various other stuff gets included with it. I figured out the crashing was due to something in the download, so I will test after downloading a sim and stuff in my game by trying to build a pool in my test hood. If my game crash when I attempt to click the pool tool, then I remove the items one by one til I found the problem.

On another note about basements, I have always built homes with the old way (using foundations) basements and after the 1.8 update my old basements give sims the unfinished moodlet. The sunken rooms get that moodlet too. Those areas never were considered unfinished before and I checked to make sure that everything was okay, all floors and walls are covered. Anyone else have that problem after the update?