steve99

Cheapo hours, do they have them over here??? shows who sorts the bills out in our house

im confused when you say followed by a 1hr vacuum, you have an automated option to run your pump with or without the kreepy going?
And manual as in run the pump and move the Kreepy around yourself?
Or is there a new toy I should go and checkout

MrsDagboy

You might get away with 4 hrs a day but how big is your pool? Our pool is 80,000 litres, we've been told by 3 people (the pool company who installed it as well as 2 different pool guys from different companies) that that is how long we should run it. We can cut it back to 6-7 hrs in winter when we are not using it. Its a salt pool, if you dont run the filter, you dont manufacture the chlorine.

As for the chemicals, the only thing we have had to put in it since we have had it installed is 2 bags of salt & some acid (cos we had alot of rain).

PS. Just cos the water is clear it doesnt necessarily mean the water is clean or safe.
PPS. Badge - the alkalinity is the PH mate .

steve99

Think ours is either 70 or 75,000 litres, ours is salt too.
Im not saying you shouldnt run it for that long, I was just curious as to why it was so different to mine.
Whever I used to test it(weekly over a summer when we moved in), it was always pretty consistently the same, id put chemicals in and next time it would be back at the same levels. So i decide to not bother the next summer and see what happened. I checked it at the start and end of summer and the levels were almost identical. I seem to recall chucking a bag of salt in but that was more because I think the previous owner said that was about all he'd ever had to do... (and there was a bag in the way in the shed )

Maybe our pump is bigger or something and filters more water quicker??

I dont know that 2metres of water can ever really be called "safe" when its about 12ft from our bar and bbq

MrsDagboy

Interesting - not many people on normal house blocks can fit that size pool in. Ours is 12m long, you must have a very big backyard!

As for the pump etc, I have no idea, we just got the best filter the pool company had available & did what they suggested etc, the water is crystal clear & is never far out of the range its supposed to be.

Moody Cow

OMG, I would die if my bill was that high!!! We live in Perth, 2 adults in a 4 bed house with a pool, mostly elec with gas water heater, 2 fridges, ceiling fans in rooms. We have just had a split system a/c unit installed but have yet to use it so things might change come the summer but at present our bill is approx $100 per quarter and $75 ish for gas. We run the pool pump for about 2 hours per day (we don't spend a bunch on pool chemicals, just dump some chlorine in once a month and we are good to go). We both work so no-one's at home during the week, maybe thats why its fairly low???

MC

Ceri

actually that's true lol - run an empty fridge it will be more expensive... that's why our beer fridge is always full - my excuse anyway , re stock, re stock

can I say balls to fridges knocking up the bills by this huge amount- not in our house ( edited to add our drinks fridge is new and fitted (flush/fitted into the units)into our kitchen for the sole purpose of drinks , and not an old spare food fridge which has seen better days ) - what knocks ours up is the aircon in the evenings in mid summer.
The most expensive we have had is one year ( Jan , feb 2004) ( I was back in The UK for a month at the time , left hubby here in Aus ) - when it , touched 40 c here In Brtisbane - my hubby
left the aircon on all day for our cats in the house lol
bill for that quarter was $300's $340 maybe _ and I thought that was too much

winter always gets knocked up too - all aircon usage in the evenings with us ( heat, cold etc)( but never have I ever had a billl in the 400's plus - that is excessive to me)

jad n rich

Elec bill was $387, 5 of us, used dryer a lot due to rain . No ac or pool we sold all that and are renting, will not be contemplating summer without ac or pool tho and will expect electricity to go back up to high 400's.

Salt water pools need the filter to run daily to make the chlorine, ours was 6 to 8 hours a day in mid summer to keep the chlorine up to health standards, we have a lot of kids over and the backyard pool is one of the most common places to pick up illness especially if you have a lot of kids over.

Never heard of hooking your pool up to off peak power, the Qld night rate electricity tariff is discounted, but is for storage type hot water systems only. Maybe you can hook pools in melbourne to the off peak it would help with the cost of melting the ice off the top of the pool. Joke No weather stats please.

ABCDiamond

Here's a quote from http://moneymanager.smh.com.au/artic...538963042.html

................., will make further savings. So will ditching the old beer fridge in the garage, which can cost $20 a month.

I have a 2 star Fridge Freezer (not an economical one) and it is quoted as using 1240Kwh per year, about $11 per month.

kirsty&al

Hello,

Our pool is slightly bigger than yours and I run the filter for only 4hrs a night at the moment (the bloke in the pool shop said 8 hours in summer and 4 in winter - seems to work). I've been chucking about 1kg of chlorine in every 2 weeks as well (because my chlorinator's broke).

I did stick some overwintering stuff in that keeps the phosphorius down and the water's been clear for weeks and weeks and weeks (about 6 I think) and it still looks good.

I can't wait till October when the kids want to get in brrr!
Cheers
Al
PS: I also run the pool filter overnight on economy 8 electric.

Badge

Wrong(!) *Total* Alkalinity is not the same as pH...it is very important as the the level of it allows you to maintain your pH level which itself allows your chlorine to work.

Badge

ABCDiamond

I was just reading the website I gave the link to, and calculated that the average electric bill in Victoria may be $ 187.50 per quarter.

That was based on this quote:
Megan Wheatley, of Victoria's Sustainable Energy Authority, says energy use at home can be cut by up to 40 per cent ($300 a year) by making simple changes.
If a 40% saving is $300, then 100% of the bill is $750 which equals $187.50 per quarter.

Badge

Nah - automated is when I turn the crawly on. However even after x hrs it is bound to miss bits of the pool so while waste hours? I now only let it go 1 hour at a time then:

Manual: I disconnect the crawly head - and connect just the creepy crawly pipe to the ''brush/hoover attachment'' which we had when we moved in and also to a long pole normally used to hold the sive. Holding the pipe, as a control arm, and then turning on the pump,I then slowly sweep the brush over the visible dirt - takes 5 mins. Slow so as not to disturb the settled dirt any more than you have to. Connect it up before you turn on the pump so you're not sucking air. There is a perverse delight in seeing the dirt magic away and you can see the pump eyeglass go black.

Problems:
If the pipe comes loose or the brush falls off - you have to jump in and extricate.. Bloody cold in a Melbourne winter. No joke I could have tied a bit of string to it, but there's always a first time. I didn't have to have a shower that day.

Itens Needed:
Long Pole - you can use the one you may already have to sive
Brush/Hoover attachment

An existing pump, and creepy crawly.

cheers
Badge

steve99

Dont think we have that big a back yard, Its about a 950sqm block???
Its not a regular shape pool, sort of a swollen kidney shape!
Its about 8m across at the widest part and just over 2m deep at the deep end.

We diverse!, back to the original question, our bills about $200-250 per quarter. 2 Adults, Pool pump as mentioned, Solar water heating, but need to use the elec booster thingy for June to Sept, Bit of A/C during very warm and cold snaps.
Have a gas BBQ and hob, costs something silly like $20 a quarter for that.
Steve

steve99

Makes sense now, part of the shallow end in mine just as it start to go up the side doesnt get that well cleaned, I usually brush it down further into the pool, but the vacuum thing sounds like a good idea, I'll have to see if I can track them down.
Ive got a ridiculously long pole already, im forever cracking it into things
I got it caught on a climbing rose the other day and nearly took an accidental dip.
Our waters warmed up a bit over the past few weeks. was at 18c on sunday afternoon, but saw it down at around 13c when we had the cold snap in June.
Cheers
Steve

cranni

how long is that for.
my last electric was 140 dollars for 62 days
the one before was 140 for 62 days
hope that makes you feel good.
Bunbury WA