Pool Service?

[rileyandfredsmom]

DH and I close on our new home Nov. 1 and we are very excited. The only thing I am a bit nervous about is the pool. Neither one of us has ever had a pool so we have NO CLUE what to do with it.

I'm going to call around and see if there are any pool stores that offer in-home consultations where they would come out and teach us how to take care of the pool. I am also considering hiring a service. DH does not want to pay teh $50/month for the service and says we can do it ourselves.

So, for those of you with pools, how many of you take care of them yourselves, and how many of you have a service that does it for you. If you do it yourself, how difficult is it? Does it take you an hour a week, 10 minutes, what? Again, we have absolutely no idea what we are doing so any and all help would be very appreciated.

[ManteoChik]

We have a pool. SO grew up with a HUGE pool and I never had one, so he takes care of all the pool stuff. Its not hard to do.....I put the chlorine (sp?) in it when it starts to turn green and run the pool pump. Whenever the big stuff needs to be done (shock, vaccuming) SO does it.

Since his job requires lots of travel we had a pool service coming out for a while but since we hardly use the pool we stopped that and just started doing it ourselves.

[rileyandfredsmom]

Thanks, ManteoChik. I would think two college educated adults could do this, it shouldn't be too hard. It's just a lot to learn. DH will probably win out and we will do it ourselves...at least at first. ;)

[ManteoChik]

Its really not that bad. I know how to vaccume it and everything - I just don't have a lot of patience..lol. Also, we agreed from the get go that all things inside the house were my job to keep up with and he gets all the oustide duties.

[sophiapb]

What do you get for $50? If they take care of all the chemicals and cleaning, $50 a month is soooooooooo worth it. The vaccuuming is probably the worst part. If you decide not to go with a service, spend the $700 or so on a pool robot to clean the pool for you. We finally got one this summer after four years of vacuuming ourselves and we're kicking ourselves for not getting one sooner. FYI, we bought ours from a store on ebay and saved about $250 from the regular brick & mortar stores and mail order catalogs.
Also, if you have any new neighbors with pools, see if they'll help you out with instructions. Our next door neighbor has been our best source for pool knowledge. He's more than willing to pass it on because the former owner of our house is the one who showed him how to take care of his pool.