Swimming Pool Maintenance Costs

Owning a swimming pool is guaranteed to bring you years of joy shared with your near and dear ones on lazy days with the sun shining bright and the refrigerator stocked with cooling drinks! Hold on to that image…because to make it a permanent feature, you are going to have to care for your swimming pool. Pool maintenance cost can appear to be so prohibitive that people eventually give up on the idea of building a swimming pool on their property even they can afford to. However, if you could cut down on pool maintenance cost and bring it within an acceptable range of affordability, wouldn’t you want to be the proud owner of a home pool?

If you take the trouble to educate yourself a little on how the swimming pool equipment works, how frequently maintenance is needed, and what you can do yourself without calling in the maintenance man, you could be saving yourself big bucks in maintenance costs. Now, isn’t that an appealing thought! You could even use the money saved to landscape the area around the pool. Pool maintenance need not be a traumatic or burdensome experience if you learn the right way to do things and stick to a regular schedule.

On an average, a home pool owner spends around 50-150 USD for pool maintenance services on a monthly basis. The good news is that if you take the onus and put in around four hours a week, you could save up to 50% or more of that amount. An investment of $10-20 per week in testing equipment and chemical additives for preventive maintenance would keep your pool perfectly usable.

Testing the pool water chemistry on a weekly basis is an essential part of pool maintenance. The Total Alkalinity and pH of the water are important factors that must be suitably maintained within acceptable ranges. To increase alkalinity, a pool service would add expensive chemicals called Total Alkalinity Increasers. However, you could just as well save money by substituting these with baking soda from your local grocery store for a fraction of the cost. Be sure to add the right amount, you are aiming for a TA range of 160-180 ppm. You would need to add one pound of baking soda for every 10,000 gallons of water.

Testing kits that form part of your pool maintenance arsenal can tell you what chemicals need to be added to the pool water. If you are still not sure, take a sample of the pool water, taken from a depth of around two feet and a distance of one foot from the edge of the pool, to your local pool supply store. They will tell you what you need to add and how much of it is needed. In general, pool chemicals need to be more carefully monitored as the weather gets hotter and the pool is in more frequent use.

In general, maintenance of your pool needs you to look into the structural components, electric and mechanical equipment, plumbing, accessories and water chemistry. Though this seems a tall order, most of it only needs you to remain vigilant and follow a regular cleaning and maintenance schedule. Pool maintenance costs depend on pool size and age, type of finish as well as pump and filter suitability and compatibility among other considerations.

Swimming Pool Maintenance
A guide on swimming pool maintenance.