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Hey everyone! My parents are older and they found a house they liked but it has a very small spa/pool in it. They normally wouldn't want a pool but everything in this place is nice and they put an offer on it.
Can someone who is knowledgeable give me an estimate of how much work it would take for them to take care of it. It's a heated pebble tech pool apparently from the listing information. Is this something that will cost them a decent amount each month to upkeep and have someone out to take care of it. Or is it something that is pretty easy to take care of on their own.
If it is salt water or converted to salt water. you will need about 30 - 50$ of salt a year (if you use water softener salt and a new salt cell every 3-5 years (about $200, plus installation if they do not DIY). You need to take water in and have it analyzed twice monthly (free) , or get a test kit (about $30 lasts a season), then balance for hardness softness and also possibly add clarifiers stabilizer and the like. Chemical cost will vary depending on what your water is like and whether you keep it covered, whether you allow dogs or children in the pool, etc.
If it is not salt, figure on $400 chlorine per year. And you need to add chlorine every few days. If it is sunny and not covered you may need to add it every day. There are various automatic chlorine feeders available tha cna do the routine adding for you, then you just fill them up weekly or biweekly.
Your pump and filter needs to be backwashed at least once a week, and maintenance once a year. If you have a cartridge filter, you will need new cartridges from time to time. At salt cell will need cleaning once a year.
To keep it clean, they will need to skim it daily or weekly depending on where they live and vacuum every three to ten days. You can get robot vacuums for about $800 that you just toss in the pool and let them run.
They may also want to buy a floating cover and keep it covered to reduce evaporation and chlorine conversion and to retard algae growth. Flotaing covers are cheap, probably less than $50 for a pool that size.
Your best bet is to have a pool company look at it tell you hwat is needed and the cost, plus the cost for them to take care of it. Eventually, they are gong to want to have someone come in to take care of it. If you forget for a while, you may end up with algea blooms and that is a lot of work to get rid of (shock and schok to kill it then vacum out the muck the dead algea makes at the bottom of the pool, backwash filter repeatedly, etc).
First have it thoroughly inspected. It looks like it has an in-deck/automatic fill valve for added water (have that checked too!).
If they are physically able to, then servicing that pool wold be easy save for major replacements like light fixtures, pumps etc. Servicing filters takes some know-how as well.
The inspection should be all inclusive by very qualified personnel- don't be afraid to get multiple opinions.
They can learn about pool water chemistry and other maintenance related items online. testing and treatment of the water, brushing , and netting are the most common tasks and most people can do that. Chemicals and equipment are readily available.
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