How Long Does it Take to Clean a Swimming Pool - Is An Automatic Pool Cleaner Worth It?

Read : Should I buy an automatic pool cleaning machine? The answer is Yes - here is why.
How long does it take to clean a backyard swimming pool?

 Fantastic question. And to be blunt not one most people think about when getting a swimming pool. Perhaps they should.

Here's why you should plan for this. I have a medium sized salt water chlorinated swimming pool in my back yard. We are lucky, as we don't have trees everywhere dropping leaves into the pool, nor do we live in a super dusty environment which would mean lots of dirt and dust getting blown into the pool

 We thought about buying an automatic pool cleaner, you know, one of the types that plugs onto the filter and just scrubs around by itself. These start at around two or three hundred dollars however, so I thought I would make do with a hand held vacuum attachment on the end of a long pole.

My swimming pool cleaning head

 Every couple of days I spend about ten minutes scooping the leaves and larger debris out of the pool with a strainer. But after about a week a noticeable layer start to build up on the bottom of the pool. This build up is actually fine leaf litter, dead bugs and insects, dirt and dust.

It's a perfect breeding ground for bacteria and algae. In fact, I have noticed that if I don't clear it out the pool starts to go hazy, which means its coming to life literally. So every week I vacuum the pool out by hand.

Well. This brings it up to a nice safe sparkling clear water look, idea for swimming in and splashing about. It takes me about half an hour. So if we multiply that half an hour by 100 which is the number of weeks in two years we get 50 hours, but lets say three years instead which is 75 hours.

 The cost of the automatic pool cleaner works out to be about $4 per hour over the three years. In short, by doing it myself I am saving about $4 per hour. Not a great return really.

 I think I am going back to the swimming pool shop to buy an automatic pool cleaner sometime soon!

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Swimming pool cleaning tools post : Tools you might need to keep your pool clean

What sort of tools should I buy for my pool? And how much do pool cleaners and swimming pool cleaning equipment cost?

What great questions. In fact, you are not buying the tools for the pool, the tools are for YOU to clean said pool with. Yes?

So we bought a house with a pool. Yay we said, envisaging hours of splash filled fun in the sun, lazing beside the pool, no work involved. Floating around on pool toys with drink holders in them. Now that sounds more like it.

Seems we forgot to buy a house with a pool that had a pool cleaner guy, so guess what.....that meant pool cleaner guy had to be made. Forged in sweat and pain. Once a meek and mild mannered dad, morphed into a pool tool wielding pool cleaner guy.

Yep. Thumbs in pockets, bulging biceps, the works.

Who am I kidding lol. This is me we are talking about here.

So the house settled, we moved in, the boxes were unloaded, and once the dust had settled we meandered down to the back yard to check out the pool. It was green. And slimy.

And found to our dismay that the tools the previous owners had seemed to be using to clean the pool were all basically worn out. Knackered, no good, ready to go to that great big plastic recyclers in the sky. Or the council wheelie bin. So we thought lets get the cleaning equipment we need, give the pool a scrub and vacuum, run the filter and get rid of the algae.

Lets give you a few examples at what we started with.- have a look at the pictures. Not going to get far with these. Lets just say the sun had done a fair bit of damage to the pvc fittings

All pools need a leaf scoop. These are sometimes called strainers. They are usually a plastic frame, with a nylon net in the middle. Scoops or hand skimmers are mounted on a pole so you can reach the pool without bending. You use these to skim the surface of the pool, taking out floating leaves, bugs and other debris. When full, you shake them out. That's the theory. The one we inherited had more holes in it than grandma's stockings. In fact, the very first leaves we tried to skim caused the last bits of nylon to fail, leaving us with just a frame.

The leaf scoop we inherited with our swimming pool

So we looked at the poles we received. All broken except one. Bonus, made of metal, so these could be recycled too. Well at least there was one.

How about a vacuum head for the pool. This seemed to work. Made of sturdy PVC, that had been left out in the sun for at least ten years, it worked fine. Till we tried to remove the vacuum hose. This caused the pool cleaners vacuum head to disintegrate. Hmm, time for a new vacuum head.

The vacuum head we received with our swimming pool

There was also a PVC sweep head for scrubbing the pool base. It suffered the same fate as the other plastic pool cleaning tool parts.

Our pool sweeper - not much good is it?

So off we went to our trusty pool shop, to buy new pool cleaning equipment. And to be honest, it wasn't as pain filled as we thought. Vacuum heads start at about $29.95 at Clark Rubber, all the way to the latest Dolphin Pool Cleaners, Frill Neks, or other automatics such as Kreepy Krauleys and the like.

We settled on the cheapest one there. This mostly did the job but be aware, the units with stiffer bristles or no wheels can sometimes damage the pool liner if used with too much force. Occupational hazard of being a bloke.

So after all of that, we now have a leaf scoop for our pool, a new vacuum head, some old aluminium poles, and a very old sand filter and pump. Now we can get started on cleaning our pool, getting it to turn from green to sparkling blue.





Tags : pool cleaners, pool tools, swimming pool cleaner, swimming pool cleaning. swimming pool equipment, frillnekWizard, Dolphin pool cleaner, Automatic pool cleaners, , leaf scoop, pool skimmers, swimming pool skimmers, pool skimmer