Salt water pool
 

Hi i have just bought a property with a 12x6 mtr salt water pool has any one any idea how much it would cost to have it cleaned three times a week ?

Re: Salt water pool
 

I always understood the advantage to a salt water pool was low maintenance.

If you're talking about simply hoovering it, it should take less than 1/2 hour if you have the kit. You can also buy a "robot" to do it.

Re: Salt water pool
 

Or if you live, like I do, near a campo track it can take North of three hours once a week to get the dust out of it.
It is not possible to generalise to half an hour a week they are all different. Mine always needs the ph lowering, one 300m away, same builder even, always needs ph raising for example.

Re: Salt water pool
 

Salt water pools are very expensive to run.

What you save on the chemicals is more than offset by the need to run the pump for at least 8 hours a day to generate the chlorine that keeps the pool clean.

Basically, it is a very expensive way of creating chlorine, which is much cheaper in tablet/powder form. Also the electrodes need replacing eventually which are expensive.

I wouldn't touch one with a barge pole!

Re: Salt water pool
 

Hola

Normal pools are from 60 to 80€ a month; a 12X 6 is about twice the size so from 80 to 100€ seems reasonable for once a week!

But why do you need it cleaned three times a week

Davexf

Re: Salt water pool
 

Wow - really that much?

We have an 8x5 and I would say that 5kg of tablets (5 in 1) last a couple of months in the summer. Run the pump 2 or 3 hours per day and that's it.

Tablets 15€/month, electricity say 10€/month (haven't really a clue on this)


What am I missing?

Re: Salt water pool
 

A wild guess here but paying someone to rip you off doing a very simple task, or doing it yourself. oh and shop around, 5kg tablets here 17.40€

Re: Salt water pool
 

Around here, there's no shortage of (naive) folks who complain about their "gardener" or "maintenance people" charging a fortune, with the justification that it's necessary to conduct pool & garden work on a daily basis - which is reality, is nonsense. If you buy that, you probably have a bit too much money for your own good.

We don't hire a "gardener" or "maintenance" people, but keeping the pool clean is no more than a half hour's work every other day - and that's only when we want it absolutely spotless - when we have guests, for example. Keeping the garden trimmed is a few hours' work in a week.

Re: Salt water pool
 

And if you had to pay someone else to clean it - as their job - then how much per hour would you expect to pay? How much per month on a yearly basis?

Davexf

Re: Salt water pool
 

Most of the books i have read say that the pool water should be pumped round at least once a day in suimmer if in a fair amount of use. That's 6 hours pumping for me. Are you suggesting that if there's just two of us 2 hours a day will be ok? I don't see how the water is effectively filtered and chlorinated with just 2 hours a day. Could you reassure on this point. I'm not disagreeing, i've just never read a figure of less than 6 hours a day in the pool books or websites.

Re: Salt water pool
 

You're right - all the books say up to 8 hours a day.

That is totally unnecessary for a lightly used pool and the book recommendations really only apply to heavily used public pools. There is a world of difference between having a couple of pensioners having a short dip before a sundowner and a pool full of incontinent kids covered in oily suncream, playing in the pool all day.

Chlorine is usually administered by putting tablets in the skimmers or from a floating container. If you use the skimmers, clearly you will be relying on the pump to pass the water over the tablets to dissolve the chlorine into the water. It certainly doesn't take 8 hours to do this and if you do use the skimmers and run the pump for 8 hours it will probably end up with too much chlorine in the water.

From my experince only 90 minutes is necessary to keep the chloine levels up with two tablets in each skimmer. They do dissolve faster as the water temperature increases, but that is necessary as the chlorine doesn't last so long in hot sunny weather.

The filter is full of sand and is a relatively inefficient filter. It only removes fairly large particles and these is no way it will remove any germs, bacteria or viruses that may be lurking in the water - the chlorine does that without any help from the filter.

Really small particles such as fine dust just go straight through - that's why people use flocculants which cause the very small particles to stick together and then get trapped by the filter or they drop to the bottom and get vacuumed up.

Essentially, if the water looks really crystal clear and the chlorine and pH levels are OK you are doing it right.

Re: Salt water pool
 

I've had a salt water pool for nearly ten years and have generally run it for around four hours per day in the summer and thirty minutes in the winter. It is a light use pool most of the time and does have a cover which is used all winter and every night in the summer.

It's always been easy to look after, I've never had a problem with algae or anything else. I aim to clean it once a week in the summer.

If you are not there all the time it can be much cheaper to run as you don't need someone to come in and dose your pool with chemicals every week.

If I was choosing a pool again now I would still go for a saltwater one.
Yvonne

Re: Salt water pool
 

One of the reasons why sand filters are thought to be inefficient is that people back wash too often. The pressure in the filter starts to rise as the sand gets dirty and the return jets produce less flow, therefore most people think, "Oh, the sand must be dirty, it must be time to backwash", when in fact that is the time that the filter is running at its most efficient. Dirty sand catches the fine particles in the water. Clean sand just lets them through and although you might be circulating the water faster with clean sand, you aren't extracting the fine particles of dirt. Basically, dirty sand cleans better.

Re: Salt water pool
 

You're quite right. In the past when I had a very fine dust problem (before they made up the road outside) I found a product called "Miraclear". It was a small block of a substance that you put in the pump filter and is dissolved slowly and coated the sand to make it more efficient. The results were remarkable.

The dust was so fine that it never really settled on the bottom to be vacuumed away and the pool never had that "sparkle". It solved the problem brilliantly.

I don't have the fine dust problem any more and the water stays really clear. The dust now settles on the bottom and I vacuum it out about every 4 weeks. The biggest problem I have is leaves and petals in the pool as we have the pool surrounded by flower beds - it looks great, but if it gets windy it looks like you have just had a Hindu funeral!

Re: Salt water pool
 

Hola

In a salt water pool, you add chlorine to the water by circulating the water through a catalytic converter. Therefore if you have a pool cover, the amount of sunlight is less so the chlorine lasts longer. so less hours are needed.

The same is true of a "normal" chlorine tablet pool - if it is covered then the chlorine lasts longer, so less circulation is needed.

But what has been said about usage also holds true; chlorine is used to kill germs so the more usage the more germs the longer circulation is needed.

Davexf