Buying and maintaining a salt water pool isn’t cheap. Especially if you live in an area with a relatively short summer season to actually use the pool.
Here are 5 ways to save money on your salt water pool. Every little bit counts, right?
5 Ways To Save Money On Your Salt Water Pool
Buy a pool solar blanket
They work! The familiar blue solar blankets with bubbles not only help to keep the heat in the pool especially overnight when the temperature drops, it also helps to keep leaves and other debris out.
They also help to keep water evaporation down. If you’re away for the day and keep the cover on, it’ll help to keep the water from evaporating as quickly. While you don’t want to leave the solar blanket on for days on end – it can encourage algae – it does help to keep the pool warm.
And if a mouse or chipmunk walks on your pool at night, chances are they won’t drown.
What about the liquid solar blanket (solar fish) solution? Never used it but from what I’ve read they are not nearly as effective as a solar blanket. Save your money and get a real pool cover with bubbles!
Don’t buy a pool solar blanket roller
If you don’t have enough room to store the solar blanket roller in your backyard, don’t bother getting one. I remember my own pool company guy told me this when I bought a solar blanket. He advised against getting a roller like the one in the pic above given the shape and size of our backyard.
He was right.
The shape of our backyard and landscaped trees and flower beds makes it impossible to store a pool solar blanket roller in our backyard. We’d have to store it on the side of the house and carry it over every time we need the solar blanket.
I knew as soon as I thought about it that if I put this roller on the side of the house I’d never use it. And given the size of the roller, you need two people so if my wife was away, I couldn’t do it even with wheels given the steps leading into our backyard and tight spaces.
In fact, one of our neighbors with a pool has a solar blanket roller and their backyard is slightly smaller than ours. They stored the roller on the side of their house. And quite often I saw it just sitting there not being used.
If you have room to push the roller to one side of the pool, great. If not don’t bother getting one and save $200 or more.
We took the advice of the pool guy: After cutting the pool solar blanket to fit our pool, we simply cut the cover down the middle into two pieces. Then I would roll up each side when opening the pool each morning. At night, I’d pull each piece back into place to cover the pool. It took an extra minute or so, but it was easier than dragging a pool roller from the side of the house back and forth each day.
Use your pool timer
Depending on what you read online and what you’ve been told, you’ll hear that you should ideally run your pool pump 24 hours per day on the high end or 8-12 hours on the low end. And you should definitely run it during the day as opposed to at night. That’s certainly what I was told.
When we bought a Hayward AquaRite chlorinator pool system, it came with a number of great features including a pump timer. I was able to set several on/off times so the pump would come on for a few hours in the morning and then shut off. Then the pump came on again in the afternoon when the sun was out. Then I ran it for a few hours overnight.
Other times, I ran the pool only at night. Running the pump more at night and weekends saves me money. We live in an area with time of use electricity: We pay almost double (!) for electricity during weekdays than at night and on weekends/holidays.
And it’s less stress on the pump when you don’t run it 24/7. Your situation might differ but it has worked for us.
Running your pool pump only as much as you need saves electricity and extends the life of both your chlorinator cell and pump.
Keep pool chemistry in check
I found this out the hard way early on when we first bought our house and I was learning about the pool. I trusted my first pool company that I used and leaned on them for help as I was learning how to maintain the pool. But when I would tell them about a certain problem they’d point me in the direction of a bottle of a chemical that I’d buy. Next week I’d go back for a follow up visit, and it’s be another bottle of chemical to fix it.
One of the biggest salt water pool benefits is the relative lack of maintenance and ease of maintenance. But if you allow pool chemistry to get out of line, it can take costly chemicals to get it back into line and you may go a few days without being able to use your pool.
The closer you can keep your pool chemistry in line, the less likely you’ll need to dump more chemicals into the pool to get things back on track. The more experience you have with your pool, the quicker you’ll be able to sort out the problem possibly with little to no chemicals too.
Watch your pool heater usage
Our new neighbors moved into the house behind us in late August and within days, the digging started for a new pool. By week’s end (!) I heard the splashing around. I couldn’t believe how quickly they’d gotten the pool installed and they were starting to use it. As soon as September 1 hits, we typically stop using the pool regularly as it’s not warm enough. How were they using the pool in weather that was too cold for us?
Well, a few months later in the winter we ran into these neighbors for the first time and started talking. The husband told me about the pool they’d installed and mentioned he left the heater running the whole month of September, 24/7. It was their first pool and they were figuring things out just like we did.
They got the first gas bill (it’s a gas powered heater) and it was over $1,000. A “normal” gas bill in our area is about $100-$200 per month.
While you may not be getting a huge gas bill like our neighbors, it will add up the more you use the pool heater.
Conclusion
- Saving money on your salt water pool is a combination of doing certain things and avoiding others. Some items like a solar blanket are worth the money but a solar blanket roller might not be worth it.
- Keep your pool chemistry in check which saves on chemical usage and ensures your pool will always be usable.
- A big cost each month can be the use of a gas pool heater. The costs can add up.
- Check out my page on pool closing tips which can also save you money in the long run on your salt water pool.