- a covered pool's honest weekly upkeep
- 20 mina covered pool's honest weekly upkeep
- the pH band everything else depends on
- 7.2–7.4the pH band everything else depends on
- one full turnover through the filter
- 4–6 hone full turnover through the filter
- filter pressure rise that means backwash
- +0.3 barfilter pressure rise that means backwash
The weekly routine, honestly
Test the water and adjust it: five minutes. Empty the skimmer baskets and the pump strainer: two minutes. Brush the waterline, if there is a line to brush: ten minutes, and not every week. Drop the robot in and take it out again: two minutes of your time and none of its. That is the whole season routine for a covered, well-circulated pool: twenty minutes, once a week.
The honest caveats. An uncovered pool under a birch or a lime is a different job: netting every second day in spring and autumn, and a basket that fills in a day. A pool used by eight people on a hot Saturday wants attention on Sunday. And neglect compounds — two skipped weeks in July turn clear water green, and that costs a weekend and a lot of chemicals.
The five numbers, in plain words
pH first, always. The target band is 7.2–7.4. Below it the water attacks skin, eyes, grout and metal; above it chlorine loses much of its punch and scale starts to form. If anything seems wrong, this is the value you check before you add anything.
Then the sanitiser: free chlorine of roughly 1–3 mg/l, from tablets, a dosing pump or a salt cell. That is what stops bacteria and algae from starting. Strips are fine for the weekly glance; a drop test or photometer earns its place when a number has to be trusted. Warm water and heavy use eat it faster — a pool at 30 °C consumes noticeably more than the same pool at 26 °C.
Three supporting numbers. Total alkalinity, 80–120 mg/l, is the buffer that keeps pH from bouncing when it rains — if your pH will not stay put, that is usually why. Cyanuric acid, 30–50 mg/l, shields chlorine from sunlight; above roughly 75 mg/l it shields it from its job too. Calcium hardness, 200–300 mg/l, stops water attacking grout and plaster, or scaling.
Circulation does most of the work
Chemicals get the credit; circulation does the labour. The turnover rate — the time the pump needs to push the whole volume through the filter once — is typically 4–6 hours, and two to three turnovers a day keeps water polished. On a 48 m³ family pool that is roughly 10 m³ an hour for eight to twelve hours.
Run it long and slow rather than short and fast. A variable-speed pump at half speed uses a fraction of the power, makes almost no noise, and filters better, because slow water gives the sand or the cartridge time to catch fine particles. Run it through the day, not only on a cheap night tariff.
Watch the pressure gauge. At about 0.3 bar above the pressure of a freshly cleaned filter, backwash the sand or rinse the cartridge — and not before. A slightly dirty filter filters more finely than a spotless one, and backwashing out of habit wastes water and media.
Almost every hour you will ever spend on maintenance was decided before the concrete was poured.
The year, month by month
Spring opening: take the cover off and clean it before it goes away, brush and vacuum, top the level up, balance pH and alkalinity, shock, then filter continuously for a day or two. A pool closed properly opens in an afternoon; one closed badly opens over a weekend.
Summer is the routine above, plus topping up. An uncovered pool loses roughly 3–5 mm a day to evaporation in warm weather — on 32 m² that is over 100 litres a day, and every litre takes heat with it. A cover cuts both by around 90%.
Autumn is leaves: net daily while the trees are dropping, keep the baskets empty, and never let leaves overwinter on the floor — they stain, and they feed everything you spend spring killing. Then either winterise properly — level below the skimmers, lines blown and plugged, winter chemicals, cover on — or, in a mild climate, circulate on frost nights and run through the winter.
The three ways water goes wrong
Green means algae, and algae means one of four things: sanitiser too low, pH too high for it to work, water standing still in a dead corner, or organics arriving faster than the system removes them — typically after a storm. The fix is always the same: correct pH, shock at dusk, brush every wall, filter continuously until it clears.
Cloudy but not green is usually filtration or balance: a filter that needs cleaning, a pump running too few hours, high pH throwing calcium out of solution, or particles finer than the media can catch. Check pH, run the pump longer, and reach for a clarifier only after those.
Stains and scale come from the water itself. Brown or grey marks are usually iron or manganese arriving with well water; a white crust at the waterline is calcium, encouraged by hard fill water and high pH. Both are far easier to prevent — a filter on the fill line, a pH that stays in band — than to remove.
Design choices that cut the work
Maintenance is mostly decided at design time, not in the shop. A cover keeps debris out, heat in and evaporation down, and nothing else comes close. A deck-level overflow edge skims the whole perimeter continuously instead of relying on the wind to walk debris to two wall skimmers. Shapes without corners give algae nowhere to camp, and a smooth finish gives it nothing to hold on to.
Circulation is a design decision too. Enough return inlets, aimed to sweep the whole basin — the inside corner of an L, the water under the steps, the far end of a long pool — separates a pool that cleans itself from one with two cloudy corners. Put a skimmer on the wall the prevailing wind blows toward, and the weather does part of the work.
Then look at the trees. A large deciduous tree within 10 m roughly doubles the netting and basket-emptying for two months of the year, and its roots are a separate conversation with your builder. You do not have to fell it — but knowing this before you site the pool lets you put the pool, or the skimmers, somewhere better.
Automation: what actually saves time
Rank the money by hours saved. A robot cleaner comes first: it removes the most tedious job in pool ownership and does it better than a person with a vacuum head. An automatic cover comes second, because a cover that takes a button press gets used every night, and one that takes ten minutes and two people does not.
Then dosing. A pH and redox controller with two dosing pumps holds the water in band day by day, so your job changes from adjusting chemistry to checking it. A salt cell does the same for chlorine without the handling: same chemistry, gentler feel, a new cell every several years. A variable-speed pump saves electricity rather than time, but it pays for itself.
What rarely earns its place: testers that need calibrating more often than you test, and ionisers sold as replacements for a sanitiser. Keep the system boring — boring is what keeps running while you are away.
What it costs to run
Think in categories rather than prices, because prices go stale. Electricity for circulation is a steady background cost, set by the pump's efficiency and its hours. Chemicals for a balanced, covered family pool are a modest, predictable line, and smaller again on a salt system. Water is only a top-up.
Heating is the variable that dwarfs the rest, and the cover is the biggest lever on it. Uncovered, a pool loses most of its heat overnight through the surface. The same heat pump on the same pool can cost twice as much to run, purely on whether the cover goes on.
Replacements are the part people forget. A robot lasts several years, sand or glass media five to seven, cartridges a season or two, a cover's slats a decade or more, and a liner ten to fifteen years. None are emergencies if you know they are coming; all are unpleasant surprises if you do not.
Your weekly twenty minutes
- Test pH first, then the sanitiser — and correct pH before adding anything else.
- Empty the skimmer baskets and the pump strainer.
- Read the filter pressure; backwash only at about +0.3 bar.
- Run the robot, and brush the waterline if there is a mark.
- Top up to mid-skimmer: evaporation is not a leak.
- Shock at dusk after a party or a thunderstorm, never in midday sun.
- Put the cover on every night you are not swimming.
What goes wrong in practice
Chasing chlorine while the pH is wrong
At pH 8 a large part of the chlorine you add does very little, so people add more, which pushes pH further out. Fix pH first, every time — it is the cheapest correction in the pool.
Shocking at noon
Unstabilised chlorine in full summer sun is largely gone within the hour. Shock at dusk with the pump running, and let it work through the night.
Tablets forever
Every stabilised tablet adds cyanuric acid, and it does not evaporate. After a few seasons it can climb high enough that chlorine stops performing at normal levels — the classic pool that will not hold a reading. Test for it once a year and part-drain when it gets high.
Running the pump only at night
The cheap tariff is tempting, but algae grows in daylight and swimmers arrive in the afternoon. Split the hours so the pool circulates while the sun is on it and while it is being used.
Two weeks away with no plan
A pool with nobody to top it up, no dosing and no cover can be green when you get back. Before a holiday: balance, shock, cover, leave filtration on a timer, and ask someone to empty the baskets once.
Frequently asked questions
- How much time does a pool take weekly?
- 15–30 minutes for a covered pool with a robot cleaner. An uncovered pool under trees is a different job — closer to an hour a week in spring and autumn.
- Salt water or chlorine?
- A salt system generates chlorine on site from water at about 0.4% salt: the same chemistry, a gentler feel and no chemical handling. The cell is an upfront cost and a periodic replacement, and most owners who have had one would not go back.
- What does annual upkeep cost?
- Chemicals, top-up water and pump electricity are a modest, predictable annual sum for a covered family pool. Heating is the variable on top, and it can exceed everything else combined if the pool sits uncovered at night.
- How long should the pump run each day?
- Long enough for two to three turnovers — typically eight to twelve hours in summer on a variable-speed pump at low speed, and much less in the shoulder season. Long and slow beats short and fast.
- Do I have to drain the pool every year?
- No. A well-kept pool can go many years without a full drain; what forces a partial one is usually cyanuric acid or dissolved solids building up. Emptying a pool is also a structural risk — never do it without asking the builder.
- What do I do if the water turns green?
- Correct pH into 7.2–7.4, shock at dusk, brush every wall, and run filtration around the clock until it clears, then clean the filter. Most green pools are back within 48 hours, and the cause is usually a missed week rather than bad luck.
