Pool service questions answered

Three things. The address with a way through the gate, the sanitizer type if you happen to know it, and a photo of the water and the equipment pad. That is enough for us to load the right chemicals on the truck the first time instead of the second. If you do not know the sanitizer type, say so. We read the pad and tell you.

Yes. You do not have to wait for somebody else to finish a billing cycle. Tell your current company you are done, then send us the date of their last stop. We pick up on the next open day in your area. Billing starts at our first visit, never at the date you first called us.

No. Most stops happen with nobody home and that is normal. What we need is a way in that does not depend on you being there, so a code, a key box, or a gate left unlatched on your day. The photo report is how you see what happened. If we cannot get in, you hear about it that afternoon.

A full set of readings, a walk of the pad with a photo of every unit, a filter check, and a written note on anything already broken or close to it. We record the condition before we touch anything. That record is what protects both of us six months later when a part dies and nobody remembers how it looked in week one.

Yes. A single clean is a real service and not a sales trick. You get the same work and the same photo report. What one visit cannot do is undo chemistry that has drifted for months, because balance is a habit rather than an event. We will tell you honestly which of the two you have.

Usually not. If the water is cloudy, stained, or growing something, the pool needs a recovery job before a weekly rate means anything. We price that on its own so you can see what is catch up work and what is the ongoing number. Recovery sits in a band of $450 to $1,250+ and the quote says which visits are included.

It is the fixed weekday your street gets served. Every stop near you sits on that same day, which is what keeps the driving short and the price steady. You are told your day before the first visit. It does not wander from week to week, so you can plan a Friday evening around it without checking with us.

We still come. Rain does not stop cleaning and it changes the water more than most owners expect, because runoff carries dirt and phosphates straight in. Lightning is the one thing that stops a crew, since nobody should be holding a long metal pole in a storm. A weather stop becomes a makeup stop.

Saturday mornings are short and mostly held for repairs and openings. Cleaning runs Monday through Friday. If your gate is locked on weekdays, the answer is a code or a key box rather than a weekend visit, because a weekend route doubles the driving and the driving is what sets the price.

A code, a key in a lock box, or a gate left unlatched on your day. We do not climb fences and we do not walk through the house. If the gate is bolted when the tech arrives, they photograph it, text you, and move on to the next stop. That visit gets rescheduled rather than quietly billed.

Tell us before the first visit. We like dogs, but a stranger walking into a yard with a long pole is not fair to the animal or to the tech. If a loose dog meets a crew that was not warned, they leave and text you. Most families put the dog inside on route day and it never comes up again.

Most of them, because algae does not take the week off. There is a short list of days the crews are off, and those weeks move to the day before or the day after. You are told which one in advance rather than on the morning of. Nothing on the calendar gets skipped without you hearing why.

Dull water is usually a filter story rather than a chlorine story. Very fine dirt slips past a tired cartridge or a channelled sand bed and hangs in the water where your eye picks it up. High calcium hazes a pool too. We look at filter pressure and hardness before anybody adds one more chemical.

Sting almost always means the pH has drifted or the chlorine is used up rather than absent. Used up chlorine (chloramine) still shows on a cheap strip while doing nearly no work, and it is what people are smelling when they say a pool smells like chlorine. The answer is a proper split test, then a correction.

Scale. Our fill water carries a lot of calcium, and every hot day the pool gives up water to the air and leaves that calcium behind at the surface. It builds into a rough grey band at the water line. It comes off with the right treatment, and it returns faster whenever pH is allowed to run high for weeks.

A salt pool makes its own chlorine. It does not balance itself. Acid, stabilizer (cyanuric acid), and a bag of salt now and then are all still part of the job, and the cell needs cleaning and eventually replacing. Salt changes where the chlorine comes from. It does not change the chemistry sitting underneath it.

Less often than most owners are told and more often than never. Dissolved solids and stabilizer both climb over years until dosing stops working no matter what you add. That is usually a partial drain, not a full one, and never in July on a plaster pool. We read the numbers first and drain only when they say to.

For a quick look between visits, yes. For choosing a dose, no. Strips drift as the bottle ages, they lean on total chlorine rather than the free chlorine that does the sanitizing, and they read stabilizer poorly. Use them to catch a problem early, then send us the reading and let a full kit settle the number.

We service Pentair, Hayward, Jandy, Zodiac, Polaris, Raypak, Sta-Rite and Waterway hardware, IntelliChlor and AquaRite salt systems, IntelliFlo pumps, Maytronics and Dolphin cleaners, and Aqualink, EasyTouch and IntelliCenter controls. We are not a dealer for any of those brands and we do not process their warranty claims. We service what is bolted to your pad.

Gas line work past the heater connection, electrical work behind the panel, and structural repair on a shell that needs an engineer to sign it. We also turn down guessing. If the answer needs a tool or a trade we do not have, we say that and tell you which contractor to call instead of opening something and hoping.

Common wear parts, yes. Seals, o rings, gaskets, baskets, drain plugs, unions and a spread of salt cell fittings ride with the crews. A motor, a heater board or a control panel gets ordered, because nobody stocks every model of everything. You are told the part, the wait, and the number before anything is ordered.

Age, the cost of the fix set against the cost of new, and whether the rest of the unit is close behind. A seal on a five year old motor is worth doing. The same seal on a rusted out fifteen year old motor is money spent twice. You get both numbers in writing. Replacement pumps run $900 to $2,400+.

No, and winter is the worst possible time to learn yours is dead. Heaters get eyes on them during the pad walk all year. The right month to fix one is a quiet month, not the first hard cold snap when every pool company in the county is already booked out. Spa owners feel a bad heater first.

We can test for one and tell you where the water is leaving, which is more often a fitting, a light housing or a line under the deck than the shell itself. Diagnosis runs $175 to $275+ and you keep the written finding either way. Structural crack repair in the shell is a specialist job and we will say when you have crossed into it.

Because a description and a pool are two different objects. One photo of the water and one of the pad shows the size, the surface, the sanitizer type, the tree load and most of the equipment at once. It is the difference between a number that holds and a number that gets revised on the first visit.

Finding out what is actually wrong takes tools, time and a drive, and a company that pretends otherwise is burying that cost somewhere else. The charge runs $175 to $275+, it credits toward approved work, and it buys you a written finding you keep even if you never book the repair with us.

Not always. Volume matters less than what falls into the water and what sits on the pad. A small pool under three live oaks with a struggling filter is more work than a big clean one in an open yard. Weekly sits in a band of $225 to $375+, and tree load, surface and starting condition decide where in it you land.

Not when the return is ours to own, such as a part that arrived wrong or work a crew did not finish. We do bill when a trip is wasted for a reason nobody told us about, such as a bolted gate or a pool that could not be reached. The rule is short. You never pay for our mistakes.

Seasonal work sits in a band of $275 to $650+. Pool size, whether there is an attached spa, how many features have to be cleared, and the state of the cover all move it. An opening on a pool that sat green all winter is not seasonal work at all, and we will say that before quoting it.

You can pay ahead if you want the paperwork off your desk, but we do not wave a discount to get it. A prepaid year is a year you cannot walk away from, and we would rather earn next month than lock up the next twelve. Month to month keeps the pressure exactly where it should sit, which is on us.

Yes. Moving water is far harder to freeze than still water, so a pump running through the cold hours is the cheapest protection available to you. Switch off any timer that would shut things down at two in the morning. If the power drops, the water in the lines stops, and that is the hour fittings split.

Most do not. A North Texas winter is too short and too mild to justify shutting a pool down the way a northern one is shut down. What happens instead is that the pad gets protected, the water stays balanced through the cold months, and the freeze nights get handled before they arrive rather than after.

Pollen arrives in sheets, the water warms faster than owners expect, and every pool that was ignored since November comes due in the same three weeks. Baskets fill twice over and filters load up. Spring is when a filter clean stops being optional and when the calendar fills, so booking early beats booking urgent.

It burns sanitizer off faster than any label predicts, drops the level through evaporation, and pushes calcium up as that level falls. Sunlight burns chlorine off fast. Stabilizer (cyanuric acid) slows it down, though too much of it locks the chlorine up instead. August dosing follows a reading, never a routine.

For debris and water loss, often yes. For heat, only if you actually swim in the shoulder months. A cover also holds whatever lands on it, so a cover over a neglected pool is a lid on a problem. Ask about one after you answer the tree question, because the trees usually decide the answer.

Before the water warms, not after it turns. Once surface temperatures climb, algae moves faster than a schedule does, and by then the book is full of everybody who waited. Late winter is quiet. If you are reading this in May with a green pool, what you need is a recovery, not an opening.

Full weekly service in this market typically runs $225 to $375+ a month. Pool size, equipment, sanitizer type, tree load and the starting condition of the water all move the number. We do not publish a figure the phone will not honour, so the quote you get is the number you pay.

Yes, for like for like weekly scope against a current invoice. Send what you pay now and exactly what it covers. If your current plan is chemistry only and ours is full service, that is not a like for like comparison and we will say so rather than quietly match a lower number for more work.

You get a makeup visit or a credit, decided the same day rather than at the end of the month. A missed stop followed by silence is the thing that ends relationships, so the rule is that we contact you first.

That is the intent, and it is why we keep the book dense around Flower Mound rather than chasing every town inside thirty five miles. If the person on your route changes we introduce them in writing rather than sending a stranger through your gate.

An extra is texted to you with the dollar amount and the reason, and it does not proceed until you reply yes. There are no verbal add ons. If you do not reply, the extra is left undone and noted on the report.

Yes, with CPO oversight and written logs. Commercial water runs on records an inspector will accept, not on a friendly wave. That includes inspection week preparation and a documented path when a pool has to close.