Swimming pool

[mstittum]

What is the average time spent a week maintaining a pool

[chem geek]

It depends on whether the pool is indoors or outdoors and if outdoors on whether it has an opaque cover (such as an electric safety cover) or not. It also depends on the kind of sanitizer system you are using, whether it is manually dosed or is automatic such as a saltwater chlorine generator (SWG) or a peristaltic pump or The Liquidator or a Trichlor or Cal-Hypo feeder.

For a pool with an automatic dosing system, once things are settled down and figured out with respect to dosing and usage, once a week checking is about the longest you can get away with. It takes a few minutes to do the chemical water balance tests and to make adjustments as needed. It takes time to brush the pool (usually done with plaster pools), perhaps 15 minutes. It takes time to use a leaf net and other tools to clean the pool if you do not have an automatic pool cleaner. If you have a filter that needs backwashing, then that will be done perhaps every week or so and takes perhaps 10 minutes. If you have an oversized cartridge filter, then it gets cleaned once or twice a season and takes up to an hour depending on how thorough, whether you soak the cartridges overnight, etc. You clean the skimmer basket and the pump basket when needed which depends a lot on how much junk gets in the pool. Cleaning the skimmer basket is fast -- 30 seconds or less. Cleaning the filter pump basket is a little longer, but still around 5 or 10 minutes.

If you don't have an automatic dosing system, an outdoor pool and no opaque cover, then you likely need to add chlorine as much as every day or two and this takes just a minute or two including a quick chlorine check.

My own pool has an oversized cartridge filter I only have to clean once a season. It also has an opaque electric safety cover so doesn't get a lot of junk in it nor a lot of sunlight exposure. I add chlorine twice a week -- chlorinating liquid -- that only takes a few minutes including testing the chlorine level. Once a week I check for pH and once every few weeks or month I check on the Total Alkalinity (TA) level and every few months I check Calcium Hardness (CH) and Cyanuric Acid (CYA). All these tests are fairly fast and most are infrequent. The most time I spend is in brushing the pool usually once a week (during the summer), but I treat that as exercise I need to do anyway (along with swimming).

Richard