Cost to Upkeep a Swimming Pool?

Question

Hi, my wife and I are doing some house hunting and we think we want to buy a house with a pool. I have no idea how much a pool will cost to upkeep on a monthly basis - power, chemicals, etc...

I would love to know what we could expect (ball park estimates as costs could vary from state to state). I'd also like to know what different costs we will have for the pool.

Thanks!

Answer 1

It gets really hard to estimate monthly costs but one thing IS for sure: it will cost you more while you can get use out of it (summer) than it will when you don't (winter.)

Chlorine tabs will be a good chunk of it and they usually come in huge 5 gallon tubs that last a month or two in the summer, maybe 2 or 3 months in the winter. Costs for these range about $50 or so per tub.

If you have the time to do daily maintenance on it and you do it right, you won't have to worry about buying any specialty chemcials or anything. But always keep some "pH add" (aka soda ash) and "pH decrease" (dry acid) on hand. The pH will fluctuate especially when you have a lot of swimmers. Alkalinity add is something else to keep on hand, though I rarely have to use any of this in my pool. Alkalinity will keep the pH from fluctuating sharply, and high levels of pH will cause your water to cloudy up real quick. I find I add pH decrease in my pool a lot after I've had family and friends over to swim, though I have never ever had to treat the water with pH add.

You'll have to keep lots of filter aid on hand as well, and what kind you'll need depends on the type of filter your pool comes with--the two most popular ones are sand or D.E. (diatomaceous earth.) Anytime you "backwash" your filter and pump, you'll have to replace the filter aid that gets flushed out with the debris. Your filter aid clogs the filter screens and traps the miniscule debris such as dirt to keep it from getting circulated back into your water.

On top of that, you'll need a skimmer net, a vacuum, and a brush. The good news there is these are things you don't have to buy very often, and chances are if you do buy a house with a pool, the pool equipment already at that house will be sold with that house, so you might not have to worry about buying any of that for a while, unless you want something different than what they provide. For example: our home's pool came with a manual pool vacuum, but we wanted one that skimmed the pool by itself via the power from the pump. It was an expensive purchase, but it's worth the cost in the amount of time and trouble it has saved us from having to sweep the pool ourselves. Of course it won't replace EVERY physical pool duty, but manually vacuuming that sucker sometimes took an entire day, especially in the fall with the windy days and leaves blowing in the water from our yard as well as our neighbors' yards. And wearing a coat to do it? Forget it!

I think I've rambled on long enough and I hope I covered everything you needed...

Answer 2

Spend the extra $1000 or so and get the salt chlorinator option, you won't be sorry. We just had one built and got that and it's the best thing we did. All we ever have to add is acid, it makes its own chlorine. Once in awhile we add cyanuric acid and baking soda but those are cheap and rare to have to add. Seriously get the salt chlorinator, you wont regret it.

Answer 3

severe pH. severe pool water pH is many cases the results of severe finished Alkalinity. at the same time as the finished alkalinity is in the recommended parameters of eighty-120ppm, the pH of the swimming pool is many cases extremely stable. Environmental aspects as properly employing actuality the conventional of the fill water can create alterations in the pH of your swimming pool. the tip results of the photograph voltaic on pool water is to enhance the pH, which has an inclination in direction of an staggering fee of 8.5. The addition of chemical components (which includes chlorine, algaecides, flocculants, ...) can replace the pH of the pool water. in case you have a pH undertaking on your swimming pool, the above might prefer to be considered at the same time as attempting to study the rationalization on the back of the pH subject concerns.

Answer 4

Chlorine and acid are the two main expenses.
Electricity to run the filtering pump.
TIME to keep it clean.