What does $300 a month for weekly pool service include that $150 a month service doesn’t?

Serious question, not busting your chops.  If you are doing something that my recent service guy wasn’t, I’d like to know so I can make sure it’s included in the next contract I get.

Last summer I never used a single tab.

I got by just fine with cheap gallon jugs of bleach.

That depends on a number of factors.  Our pool is only open 4-5 months a year and we use a mesh cover in the winter so it is a mess when we open it.   I run 2 floaters with 5 pucks of trichlor each all summer.  Every spring I open to a CYA of zero.

He still has to dick with chlorine or salt.  He should anyway, there is no real way around it if you want your pool water truly safe.

If there was a one and done, expensive but forever untouched solution that actually worked, millions of pool owners would do it.

But you will have scale and high calcium trouble from using them all the time.

Cal hypo does make a great prepper storage to sanitize water or other stuff.

I use pucks, but I know what it dies to my cya. If I don’t drain a decent amount every month cya will be at 100 before season end. One season of them will put your cya sky high and you’ll have to drain half the water or more.

I had one, between the UV lamp in the ozone generator and the pump running 10 hours a day in the summer it added $100 to my electric bill.

Also you still have to maintain some chlorine in the water, but the residual is super low like .2-.5 ppm vs ~1-1.5 ppm.

The "no chemicals" is marketing wankery, it should say far less chemicals because you still use all the same treatments, just generally a lot less of them.

That being said, when my UV lamp burned out, I didn't bother to replace it, at the time just keeping tablets in a floater was cheaper than the electric cost and the novelty of barely there chlorine had worn off. If I could run that ozone generator off of solar I'd probably reconsider, but my experience has been that you end up paying about the same for clean pool water. Buckets of chlorine vs electricity, most cost effective will depend on local utility pricing.

I just worked out the math 1A at 240V for 10 hours a day is about $8/month in electricity, when I was getting a bucket of tablets for $75 and getting about a year out of it. That averages ~$6.25/month.

Now at $125/bucket it looks like Ozone is cheaper until I factor in the replacement cost for the UV bulbs.

Yeah they are ok if you actually test and do what is needed to remove the CYA.  Many don't though.  Just years of not testing and "the kids went for a swim so I will throw some pucks in the floaty ducky thing."

3 years later and $600 in chlorine, gone, and their shit is still a green swamp.  Then the pool store starts selling them everything on the shelf.....except for a test kit and some actual knowledge.

I just prefer liquid chlorine in the form of unscented bleach, for the ease of it.

Liquid chlorine does lose potency over time in case you didn't know.  May require more as your stash gets older.

Order from Amazon.  Way cheaper.

The guy that I did pools for back in 12-13 was getting 65-75 a week. Just basic maintenance.

I have considered it as a side job.  I should get off my ass after work and go do it.  I find fixing the water in pools and making it perfect, fun....I understand that's fuckin weird and I don't know why either.

I use 14.5 grams of 73% calcium hypochlorite to make a gallon of 6% equivalent bleach which I use for things like diluting for sanitizing and cleaning. I go for 600PPM chlorine for cleaning.

Haven't had to adjust grams per liter so far.

You'll own nothing and you'll like it.

They have their place.

I have an in-line auto-chlorinator that uses pucks, but I only use it when we're going to be out of town or I know it is going to be raining a lot.

I can load it up with 10 pucks, set the titration rate, and skip town for a couple weeks without coming home to a nightmare.

That's why I am switching to Lewisite.  

I liked it okay, the plus side: you work alone for the most part.
The minus side? it gets tedious, hot weather can suck the joy out of life fast.
Still, not the worst job that I ever had either.
I'd do it again.

I replaced my chlorine generator last yer so I'm good for several years,,as if it matters by then. FJB.

They were saying there was going to be a chlorine and AN shortage 12 months ago.

Follow the hypochlorous reaction to it's conclusion and you'll notice that the end is chloride ions in solution and sodium or calcium in a charge balance. Another term for those ions is dissolved solids, of which the CYA is also included. The water added to counter evaporation also contains dissolved solids, those solids don't leave the pool, and more get added every time the pool is shocked, bleach is added , or tablets dissolve.

If you're lucky and your water source has very low TDS, it'll take many years for this to get out of hand, if you have particularly hard water or otherwise high TDS in the supply saturation will occur much faster. In Vegas with a very high evaporation rate and fairly high TDS saturation occurs within about 2 years, after that chlorine effectiveness drops to fuck all, and adding more and more just to be effective accelerates the problem.  

When I used to sell pool chemicals I'd get customers that were losing the algae battle that were looking to spend hundreds on more chemicals yet convinced that replacing the water was "too expensive". At the time water in Vegas was about $1/1000 gallons, so I used to tell people you can spend $50 on shock and algacide and maybe have things clear for another month, or spend $12 to $15 on water and have it fixed for at least a year.

I've found replacing half the water every year or about 75% every 18 months maintains nicely balanced chemistry and is cheap in my little 9,000 gallon pool. At current usage rates that adds about $35 to one months water bill.

A thing I learned from owning a pool and being on a well, is probably more common knowledge but I didn't know before I started learning. It is that frequent on/off cycles on a pump causes much more wear than just running.

So if you have multiple hose bibs and can open the taps enough to cause your well pump to run 100% of the time and not kick off, do that.  If you can't do that, it's best to do the opposite.  Let the pool fill very slowly, just a trickle if needed over a long period of time.  The idea is that if you can't cause the pump to run wide open, cause it to cycle on off slowly.  Fast on and off cycles is the least desired.

A decent storage tank can save you a lot of wear and tear on a well pump. Running once a day for an hour will be less wear than 20-30 times a day for a few minutes.

A lot is simply the market. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in my AO for less than $200. But what we offer over the $200 guys is stability, industry knowledge, certifications, licenses, insurance, etc. That all costs me money, and even with our rates I don't make nearly enough. Most guys in this industry run their shop out of the bed of a truck and may stick around for a few summers to earn enough beer/weed money for the weekend. We have a legitimate business that's been servicing pools for the last thirty years.

Not only do our guys brush, net, vacuum and balance chems each visit, they empty skimmers, pump baskets, cleaner bags and clean filters. They'll send you a service log, details regarding their service, pictures of the pool from a cell phone you can call even after hours — you have no idea how valuable that was during the winter freeze and power outages. They'll actively look for deficiencies in the system, leaks, worn o-rings, belts, hoses, cleaner parts, etc. They break down and clean cartridge & DE filters quarterly and look for worn or broken parts. They disassemble 2 & 3-way valves to lubricate, set run times and freeze guard according to the season. Rather than submitting an additional work order and an additional charge, my guys are all trained to make repairs and carry parts on the truck to get you back up and running that day should they see anything that needs to be addressed.

Most importantly, my guys show up precisely when they're scheduled or earlier, can be reached by the customer just about anytime, won't show up hungover, and have an excellent relationship with both the pool and homeowner. When someone new steps into our customer's backyard, the typical reaction is "Where is _______? I want him to clean my pool"  It's usually something as simple as a personal day or vacation, but our customers are really close with their pool guy and they'll gladly pay extra for someone that cares more about their pool and happy swimmers than frisbee golf and smoking weed.

Tri-chlor or Cal-hypo? If you use tri-chlor, PM me, got three buckets at work we can't use

I use bromine, bro!

Just got in August 2021 with our inground we went saltwater. I absolutely love it. Have not added salt since we started.
Well worth the money so far.

Every pool owner praises their salt system until the cell or board needs to be replaced.

two words: Salt System

oh, and RILO next time they send your ass to a commie state.

You could replace one every 5 years for the price of those tabs. And it's not rocket appliances to change out either. I foresee a lot of people moving to TFP method.

I like liquid better than the tablets. I had nothing but problems with CYA getting too high and my pool turning green towards the end of every summer when I used tablets. Last 2-3 years i’ve used only liquid, dump about 1/4 gallon a day in an 18x33 above ground and crystal clear water all summer with very little maintenance. I can usually get 4 gallon boxes for $10-12. That’s $60-70 for jun-aug plus a couple extra boxes for shocking here and there.

This guy did it and scored with Jerry Falwell Junior's wife...

https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/Jerry-Falwell-Jr-s-wife-says-she-made-sex-tapes-with-pool-boy-PB-says-husband-liked-to-watch-/5-2525017/

THANK YOU!  I just hit that, now I'm good with pool supplies through the middle of 2023

Guess my hunch was right last year when I picked up an extra tub of tabs.

Unfuckingbelievable

Don't use tabs anymore. 12.5% Liquid chlorine and a peristaltic pump plumbed into the return line on a timer.

Took a bit of experimentation to figure out how many minutes and times per day I need to keep level in the zone.

Buy it in 5 Ga totes.  Have a 15 Ga Tank.  Almost lasts a month. Doesn't add all that CYA that tabs do.

130-150 a month for weekly visits is crazy cheap and you'd be stupid not to take advantage of that

Correct. Like I said earlier, I charge twice that, have started raising my rates, and could STILL charge more. I have 338 on route in JANUARY and already have customers wait-listed for this summer.

"I need Indeed"

I thought so too when COVID/inflation/Biden hit, but it's been the complete opposite. We did nearly 100% more volume YOY 2021.

I don't necessarily disagree about the salt system — "buy once, cry once" or cry every five years.

Not everyone that owns a pool shares that sentiment. There are some cheap bastards with $100k pools in their back yards.

As soon as I heard about the price / supply issue last year  I ran out and got 3 of the big buckets.

Original price was $89, by the time I got there it was $115 then $135, then out of stock on the whole island.

Still out of stock, price is listed as $199

"I did that"

There should be a way to make chlorine outside the pool and pour it in.

A chlorinator, but where you fill it with water and add the right amount of salt.  Next day pour it in the pool?

Nowhere near enough salt to do that.  Salt water chlorine generators work great. It’s Inline with the pump.

UV alone isnt enough, but if you combine UV with bromine system i think is infinally recycleable as the bromine detroys stuff by binding/ripping it apart. then goes through the UV/filtration setup the UV deactivates teh bromine and the filters grab the resulting crap, then the bromine is free again and since there is no UV is works again. As  in understand it chemical additives are lmited as it is a mostly closed system though it requires indoors or shaded pools to keep out UV.

Hmmm. 5 years x $199 = $1000
Salt water generator that lasts 5 years $700

Guess I dont get it.

$700 is just the cell. The boards can/do fry, flow switch, cost of salt, stabilizer, periodic use of shock, SWG systems don't operate when the water temp drops below 50, so you still have to use chlorine, etc. Add in the cost of annual sealing of coping stone to prevent salt water erosion and any savings is gone.

There's nothing wrong with salt systems and they work as advertised. But selling on the premise of cost savings is downright disingenuous.