Pool service questions, answered

Skimming, brushing the walls and steps, vacuuming, emptying the skimmer and pump baskets, six water readings, dosing to those readings and a filter pressure check. The report is on your phone before we leave.

No. We need the gate unlocked or the code, and the dog told about us. If there is a gate code, give it to the office rather than leaving the gate open: an open gate is a safety problem on a property with a pool.

The visit still happens. Rain changes the chemistry rather than canceling the work, and it’s one of the weeks the readings matter most.

No contract and no cancellation fee. Stop any week you like. If a visit is missed for weather, it is made up, not billed.

Nine times out of ten it is stabilizer (cyanuric acid). It protects chlorine from the sun and also holds it back, so a pool at 80 ppm needs roughly three times the free chlorine of a pool at 30. More chlorine won’t fix it; replacing some water will.

Clear and safe are different conditions, and only one of them is visible. A pool can be perfectly clear with no free chlorine left in it, and cloudy after a storm with nothing wrong. That is why we write the numbers down.

A salt pool is still a chlorine pool: the cell makes the chlorine on site instead of you carrying it. It’s genuinely less handling. It isn’t less maintenance, and the cell is a wear part.

Usually it can be brought back. Sometimes it can’t, because the chemistry has gone somewhere adding things won’t fix. You’ll be told which on the first visit, before you’ve spent anything.

Probably not. A screaming bearing is a bearing, a weeping seal is a seal, and a pump that won’t hold prime is usually an air leak on the suction side. We measure before we quote.

Long enough to turn the water over, which depends on the pool and the pump speed, not on a number somebody gave you at the store. On a variable-speed pump, longer and slower is cheaper than shorter and faster.

Both, on the same truck. The technician who tests your water every week is the one who notices the pump is drawing high, and the repair is quoted with that reading attached.

Attached spas, yes, as part of the system. Standalone spas and swim spas are usually somebody else’s specialty, and we’ll say so rather than learn on yours.

You’re told the price before we start, and whether it comes off the repair if you go ahead. Never after.

The warranty is written on your service order, in months, before you approve it. If the same fault comes back inside it, it’s put right at no charge.