[bunny2]

The new house that we are moving into has a pool. I have never had a pool before in my life - I know absolutely nothing about swimming pools!

So, is it worthwhile hiring someone to come in regularly to clean and maintain the pool? Is it something that is easy enough for me to do? I have the time to look after it so time is not an issue.

What do you do with your pool maintenance? Do you do it yourself, or do you hire someone to do it for you?

I'm in QLD if that makes any difference.

[Julie3Girls]

I'd do it myself.

We have a pool, and maintain it ourselves. We do regularly take a water sample to our nearby pool shop - they will test the water for free and give you a printout of any chemicals or salt etc we need to put in. We do have an infloor cleaning system, and just need to occasionally vacumn when the leaves are just a bit too much for the system to handle.

In your situation, it might be worth getting someone to come out to do an initial clean with you there, so you can learn what you need to do yourself.

[zande]

We bought a house with a pool a year ago and the best thing we did was a get a "pool handover", which was the guy from the local pool shop coming out and showing me everything I needed to do to look after the pool. It was great. We have a salt pool so I only test weekly and I may have to occasionally add a bit of acid to bring the PH down, but nothing else. I have an automatic pool vacuum that runs twice a day when the filter is on, very occasionally I will manually vac the pool. We also have a solar blanket we put on at night which keeps some dirt out and reduces evaporation. I have been pleasantly surprised at how little work goes into maintaining the pool. And a tad unpleasantly surprised how much it has added to our electricity bill LOL!

[erindiv]

DBF's dad can't get the hang of the chemical balance in their pool so they're thinking of getting a saltwater one instead. They are a lot easier maintained and apparently better for the environment.

Pool shops will give you lots of helpful guidelines. It's not really neccessary to hire someone to do it unless you really don't have the time to do it yourself. Just an added expense on top of PP's already mentioned horror at the electricity bill

[~shannon~]

We had a pool at a rental property a couple of years ago and part of the agreement was to keep the pool maintenance guy (also worth noting that this guy was from the same company that built the pool). It was really cheap and meant we never needed to worry about it. Not sure I would get someone else in again if we had a pool as DH is pretty good at these sorts of things, but when he was working away, it was one less thing for me to worry about.

[qak]

We do it ourselves, except for when things go wrong with the equipment. A pool handover service is a great suggestion by the PP.

It is easy once you know what hose plug in where, and which switches do what. As to the checmicals, we have a salt pool and test ourselves with the strips and balance whatever is required (invariably acid!). We get the pool shop to test (free) periodically, or if the water doesn't look quite right.

My biggest tip would be to continue to clean and maintain over winter. Som people let it turn into a swamp

[bunny2]

Thanks for all your replies. Really helpful.

I think I'll look into getting a pool handover and start learning about it. I don't mind paying for the first few cleans before I get a handle on things.

It's a salt water pool. That's all I know about it so far. I don't think we get a pool cover so that might be something I have to look into.