What does a pool really cost to own here?
Most articles price a pool by its monthly service rate, which is roughly like pricing a car by its insurance. The real number has five parts: service or chemicals, electricity, water, filter cleaning, and the annualized cost of everything that will eventually need replacing.
Put your pool in and this works out all five, both for doing it yourself and for having it done. Nothing is hidden behind an email address.
The longest run, wall to wall.
At the widest point.
Same as shallow if the floor is flat.
What is on the pad
Owning this pool costs about
$209a month
- Volume
- 18,000 gal
- Water surface
- 512 sq ft
- Price band
- Medium
Doing it yourself, or having it done
The same pool, priced both ways. Everything above the care line is yours either way.
You do it
$209/mo
We do it
$293/mo
Weekly service on this pool is $84 a month more than doing it yourself, not the $293 the rate suggests. Most of the difference closes on its own, because chemicals bought by the jug cost roughly twice what they cost by the drum.
Yours no matter who cleans the pool
Electricity, water and wear do not care whether you or a company holds the brush. These three are the lines a service quote never mentions, and together they are the reason the monthly rate is not the whole number.
Electricity
About 951 kWh a year running a variable-speed pump long enough to turn the pool over.
$12/mo
Water
About 36,919 gallons a year replacing normal evaporation. Splash-out and features sit on top of this.
$19/mo
Replacement reserve
Every wear item on the pad divided by its service life. This is the line that never appears on a quote and arrives all at once in a year you did not choose.
$81/mo
$112 a month, or $1,340 a year.
If you do the work
Retail prices, because you will not be buying at trade.
Chemicals, bought retail
Chlorine, acid, stabilizer and the rest at shelf prices, weighted across a hot summer and a cheap winter.
$58/mo
Test kit and reagents
A drop kit and a year of reagents. Test strips are cheaper and are the reason most DIY pools are dosed against a reading that is not true.
$8/mo
Filter cleaning
3 deep cleans a year at published rates. Do it yourself and you trade this for about an hour each time.
$31/mo
If we do the work
Our published rate, chemicals included, no contract.
Weekly service
Published rate for a medium pool, chemicals included, no contract.
$150/mo
Filter cleaning
3 deep cleans a year, billed separately from the weekly rate.
$31/mo
The line nobody puts on a quote
Everything on a pool pad is a wear item with a finite life. Ignoring that does not make it free, it means the bill arrives all at once in a year you did not choose. Each of these is a realistic replacement cost divided by a realistic service life here.
Interior resurface
about $7,018 every 10 years
$59/mo
Pump
about $1,850 every 10 years
$15/mo
Filter cartridges
about $350 every 4 years
$7/mo
Resurfacing is usually the largest figure on this list and the one owners are most surprised by. It is priced against the interior surface, floor and walls together, which on most pools is close to twice the water surface.
Our weekly rate is 51% of what this pool actually costs you in a year. The other 49% is electricity, water and wear, and it arrives whether anyone services the pool or not. That is the whole reason we publish this arithmetic instead of quoting a monthly figure and letting you find out the rest later.
What this assumed, and how to change it
Retail electricity here is deregulated, so there is no single right figure. Yours is on your bill.
Municipal water here is tiered, and a summer top-off lands in an upper tier on top of irrigation.
We will take $181 a month of that off your hands.
Weekly visits, chemicals included, and a photo report after every one. Published pricing, no contract, and Austin handles every job personally. The electricity, the water and the reserve stay yours, and we would rather you knew that now.
If you are new to this
Three things that cost more here than wherever you moved from
Water is a real line
A normal pool loses about half an inch a day to evaporation in a North Texas summer, with nothing wrong. On a 15 by 30 pool that is close to a thousand gallons a week, metered, every week of the summer.
Chemistry is seasonal
Sun destroys chlorine and warm water grows algae, so a July pool can consume roughly twice what the same pool used in June. Your August bill and your February bill will not resemble each other.
You cannot drain it
Expansive clay soil here holds groundwater that pushes up on an empty shell and can lift or crack it. The local answer is a staged partial exchange, which costs water rather than risk.
Costs by city
Build era, tree load, water rates and local ordinances genuinely differ across the county, so we price these separately rather than quoting one metro figure.
Questions we get asked
- How much does a pool cost to maintain in the DFW area?
- Once you count everything, considerably more than the monthly service rate. Published DFW service rates run about $120 to $220 a month, but that figure covers labour and chemicals only. Electricity, water, and the annualized cost of replacing worn equipment are yours regardless of who cleans the pool, and together they are usually about half the true annual cost. Enter your own dimensions above for a figure specific to your pool.
- We are moving to Texas and the house has a pool. What are we taking on?
- Three things that surprise people who have owned a pool elsewhere. Water is a real line here, because a normal pool loses about half an inch a day to evaporation in a North Texas summer with nothing wrong. Chemical demand roughly doubles between February and August, because sun and warm water both consume chlorine. And a full drain is not a maintenance option here: expansive clay soil holds groundwater that can lift or crack an empty shell, so water is exchanged in stages instead.
- Why does the replacement reserve matter if nothing is broken?
- Because everything on a pool pad is a wear item with a known life, and ignoring that does not make it free. It means the bill arrives all at once in a year you did not choose. Resurfacing is usually the largest of these and the one owners are least prepared for, because it is quoted against the whole interior surface, floor and walls, which on most pools is close to twice the water surface.
- Is it cheaper to look after the pool myself?
- On the money alone, usually yes, but by less than people expect. The service rate looks like the whole saving, and it is not: buying chemicals by the jug at retail costs roughly twice what they cost by the drum at trade, which closes much of the gap on its own. The calculator above prices both paths so you can see the real difference for your pool rather than the headline one.
- Do these figures include a heater?
- Only if you tell it you have one. A heater is the single largest running cost a pool can have and it dwarfs everything else on the list, which is why it is switched off by default and why the heating figure is labelled as an estimate. The real number moves a long way with your target temperature and whether the pool is covered.
- Where do these numbers come from?
- Service and filter figures are our own published prices, the same ones on the pricing cards. Equipment lives and replacement ranges are the ones in our equipment lifespan and cost of ownership guides, taken at the middle of each published range. Electricity and water rates are editable, because retail electricity here is deregulated and municipal water is tiered, so no single figure is right for everyone.
Free tools
The rest of the arithmetic
How long should the pump run, and what is that costing?
Turns your pool's volume and your pump into a run schedule and a monthly electricity figure, then shows what a variable-speed pump would save and how long it would take to pay for itself.
Work out my run timeWhat do I add, how much, and in what order?
Enter what your test kit read and get an ordered correction plan with real doses for your volume. Alkalinity before pH, sanitizer last, and never two things that should not meet.
Balance my waterIs my pool leaking, or is that just a Texas summer?
The bucket test, done properly. Two measurements 24 hours apart tell you whether the water is going somewhere it should not, and what it is costing you a month if it is.
Run the bucket testHow many gallons is my pool?
Measure three things and get your volume, the surface area, and what one adjustment costs at that size. Every other calculator here starts with this number.
Measure my pool