Average Cost To Build Pool (Austin, Round Rock: home, buy, school)

[Nuclear Bear]

Good thread. Can someone explain the difference between a Saltwater pool and a Chlorine pool?

Is one more expensive than the other?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

[blakely]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Bear

Good thread. Can someone explain the difference between a Saltwater pool and a Chlorine pool?

Is one more expensive than the other?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

This is a *highly* simplified version. We've had both:

If you're building a pool, salt water pools will generally cost a little bit more up front because the equipment is more expensive; however, there are meaningful savings down the road because the ongoing chemical cost is less. Salt is pretty easy to maintain.

HOWEVER, and this is a big one, salt can take a toll on your equipment and that leads to things like replacing your salt cell. Not cheap. It can also degrade surrounding limestone coping faster (this was a source of debate among some we spoke to, but we saw it first hand).

It is a MYTH that salt water pools don't have chlorine. A saltwater system uses electrolysis to generate chlorine. I do like the feel of swimming in a salt water pool. There are fewer chloramines than most chlorine pools -- there are some options for chlorine pools that can reduce chloramines too, so I'm generalizing.

And...IMHO saltwater pools do not "taste salty" like an ocean.

[riaelise]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Bear

Good thread. Can someone explain the difference between a Saltwater pool and a Chlorine pool?

Is one more expensive than the other?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

What blakely said. We own a saltwater pool and honestly, it's the best in my opinion. The water is soft, like the water in your home. It makes a difference. But the salt cell will crap out in a few years...it doesn't last very long, and it is not a cheap component. Not pool pump level of cost, but we've already had two die on us. Our past pool company switched us to chlorine tabs without our knowledge and when we did swim in it, none of us liked the feel of the water. This isn't to say that "chlorine pools" are inferior, because they're not..but we like the feel of soft water. Equipment takes a beating here in Texas.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Bear

Good thread. Can someone explain the difference between a Saltwater pool and a Chlorine pool?

Is one more expensive than the other?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

a saltwater pool uses a small device called a salt water chlorine generator to generate the chlorine to sanitize the pool. The SWCG gets plumbed into the return line. You put Na CL (salt) in your pool and the generator uses electrolysis to split the salt to create HClO which kills bacteria, viruses, algae etc. The generator costs about 1K and lasts about 5 years. The generator means you dont have to add any chlorine as the salt isnt used up.

A chlorine pool uses bleach aka sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) or often times trichlor (C2HCl3) pucks. Both bleach and trichlor dissociates in water to release the chlorine.

Bleach is expensive now. I pay about 2.50/day in the summer and about 50 cents/day the rest of the year. So right now chlorine is more expensive than a SWCG.


For awhile people thought the salt water from salt pools was damaging natural rock. But it turns out the rock might have been damaged from freeze thaw cycles anyway.

SWCG - dont need to add chlorine, reduced acid use, need to add cyanuric acid to stabilize the chlorine, small upfront cost, salt can rust some metals

liquid bleach - a pain to buy, a pain to add daily to the pool, no standard pump systems to automatically add it - I built my own, needs cyanuric acid to stabilize the chlorine. There is some salt in the pool, but not as much as a saltwater pool

pucks - pucks are the most popular, only need to be added weekly in the summer, less other times of the year. Pucks add massive amounts of cyanuric acid over a few months which means you need higher and higher levels of chlorine to sanitize your pool. Eventually it is too much and a pool company will tell you you have to drain your pool because of chlorine lock or some other nonsense.

A typical pool in texas will consume about 3-5 ppm of chlorine a day. That maps to about half a gallon of bleach or around 1 puck for a typical sized pool. A puck will add 2 ppm of cyanuric acid/day for a typical pool, which means after 30 days your CYA will be 60 and at 60 days it will be over 100 which starts to make the chlorine much less effective. Typically a pool will have to be drained about every two years with pucks.

[DMChicago]

Just replaced my Salt Cell in June. $695.00. My pool company quoted me about $1100. I ordered it from Pool Supply Unlimited and had them install it.

We love our SW pool. I actually took over weekly maintenance earlier this year. After a few algae mishaps, I figured out how to keep it looking great. It's cleaner than any pool company I tried (and I tried 4) kept it.

I did buy a Polaris robot for keeping the bottom clean. Expensive but worth every penny. The sand and dirt it picks up shocks me. I use it every other day and it picks up a ton of dirt you can't see.

We also have a Solar Breeze robot that skims the surface.

We use our pool all the time, year round with the heater.

[Aquitaine]

I just moved from East Austin to NW Austin in June and bought a house with a pool and a spa. Not huge (maybe 11,000 gallons?) and I'd never taken care of a pool before.

I've since spent:

$1,287 (parts) on a Circupool RJ30+ Salt water generator and about $200 to have our pool company install it (and maybe $25 in salt from Home Depot to do the initial conversion)
$2,279 on a mesh fence to keep toddlers from falling in and drowning
$1,662.53 to replace the 10 year old DE filter that had parts failing left and right with a cartridge filter that requires maintenance 2x a year
$901.26 to replace two underwater lights and a valve on the pump
$2,094.68 to replace the 10 year old pump that failed with a variable speed pump
$100ish on a complete test kit for Chlorine/Ph/CYA levels

Probably $100-$150/mo during the summer on water to keep the water level constant.

The sellers got out just in time before all their pool parts failed, so they got lucky. Now that I've done all the work, it's not much effort to maintain. Salt water generator was the best money I spent. I bought an additional $30 dummy tube so that I can take out the SWG+ cell for the winter and get more life out of the cell (which will mean manually adding chlorine every blue moon in the wintertime but that's not a big deal).

There are days that I wish I'd bought a place without a pool. My son is 2 and loves it. There's a country club nearby with a pool, and if I had to do it all over again, I might prefer that. I would DEFINITELY not spend $100k to build a brand new pool.

DMChicago - I have a giant, ancient pool + spa heater but I have yet to turn it on. It seems like it would cost a fortune to run the thing! What does yours run?

[DMChicago]

Originally Posted by Aquitaine

I just moved from East Austin to NW Austin in June and bought a house with a pool and a spa. Not huge (maybe 11,000 gallons?) and I'd never taken care of a pool before.

I've since spent:

$1,287 (parts) on a Circupool RJ30+ Salt water generator and about $200 to have our pool company install it (and maybe $25 in salt from Home Depot to do the initial conversion)
$2,279 on a mesh fence to keep toddlers from falling in and drowning
$1,662.53 to replace the 10 year old DE filter that had parts failing left and right with a cartridge filter that requires maintenance 2x a year
$901.26 to replace two underwater lights and a valve on the pump
$2,094.68 to replace the 10 year old pump that failed with a variable speed pump
$100ish on a complete test kit for Chlorine/Ph/CYA levels

Probably $100-$150/mo during the summer on water to keep the water level constant.

The sellers got out just in time before all their pool parts failed, so they got lucky. Now that I've done all the work, it's not much effort to maintain. Salt water generator was the best money I spent. I bought an additional $30 dummy tube so that I can take out the SWG+ cell for the winter and get more life out of the cell (which will mean manually adding chlorine every blue moon in the wintertime but that's not a big deal).

There are days that I wish I'd bought a place without a pool. My son is 2 and loves it. There's a country club nearby with a pool, and if I had to do it all over again, I might prefer that. I would DEFINITELY not spend $100k to build a brand new pool.

DMChicago - I have a giant, ancient pool + spa heater but I have yet to turn it on. It seems like it would cost a fortune to run the thing! What does yours run?

No too much. NG is cheap. We figure about an additional $50.00 per month in the winter if we are turning it on Friday or Saturday nights.

What's weird about our pool (small...12 X 22, about 8000 gallons) is that it stays COLD all summer and we have to put the heater on even in August. Faces south, no shade all day. Bizarre.

Turned it on around 3 today for an after dinner soak 'n sip.

[sloppymeg]

Originally Posted by DMChicago

What's weird about our pool (small...12 X 22, about 8000 gallons) is that it stays COLD all summer and we have to put the heater on even in August. Faces south, no shade all day. Bizarre..

That's VERY bizarre! Do you have a chiller you don't know about?


My pool is about 18K gallons and it gets to 95 in the summer, when it's in the sun about 90% of daylight hours. Now that the sun goes down earlier and the earth shifted, it's about 77 degrees and will continue to drop.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by sloppymeg

That's VERY bizarre! Do you have a chiller you don't know about?


My pool is about 18K gallons and it gets to 95 in the summer, when it's in the sun about 90% of daylight hours. Now that the sun goes down earlier and the earth shifted, it's about 77 degrees and will continue to drop.

ours is about 15K gallons, gets sun half the day as it faces west. It gets to 90+ degrees in the summer as well. we typically stop swimming by the end of sept.

[Mama Grey]

Now that we're under contract on a home with a pool (yes!), I need to pivot on my original question. What is typical pricing for a pool maintenance company in the area? Our pool is a chlorine pool. I have a quote from the current servicer, but I'm wondering if I shouldn't get a few more quotes. They quoted:
$46/week for full cleaning, weekly service
$56/week for full cleaning, every other week
Chemicals billed separately
Full cleaning = brush, vacuum, skim, empty baskets, adjust chems, maintain sand & DE filter