# Estimated expenses for swimming pool



## dogtags

Can anyone give me a rough estimate of the costs of maintaining and operating a swimming pool? Some of the rental houses we are considering have a pool. We have no idea how much this would increase our monthly expenses. 

One of the pools is gas-heated. I assume the rest are electric-heated, or not heated.

And if anyone want to pitch in with comments on hot-tubs, we'd like to hear that, too.


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## epsix

so many views....

I guess you might wanna give some specifics

*City
*Size
*Landscaping around the pool
*Indoor or outdoor or covered
*Heated or normal
*With or without a jaccuzi

so that people who own pools themselves can help you out.


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## sparks

The only way anyone could afford heating with gas or electric is if it's the size of a hot tub. Otherwise it should be solar .... either solar panels or lots of black tubing.

Running a pump 2 hours a day during the summer on the central Pacific coast for a non-heated pool, my electric was about $2000 pesos every 2 months. No air conditioning

If a pool guy and chemicals aren't part of the rent ... there's more time and money


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## tepetapan

Pools are a hole in the ground you pour money into. Size, climate, location all make a huge differance. And unless you are planning on hiring a pool service company time is a huge factor, maybe a couple hours a day depending on the pool. Take off for 4 or 5 days and what you might find could be interesting....and expensive to resolve.


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## makaloco

My pool is very small (about 4-1/2 by 2-1/2 meters and 1.5 meters deep), tiled, and not heated, so it's not difficult to clean or expensive to operate. The filter system runs two hours a day in summer and extra time while cleaning. My electric bills average a little over 400 pesos per two months in summer (CFE Tarifa 1D). Like Sparks, I don't have AC. We have hot summers, strong sun, and a fair amount of wind, so I lose water to evaporation and have to keep topping it off. That probably uses a cubic meter of water per week, but my water bill stays in the minimum rate category (about 108 pesos /mo).

You need at least:
* skimmer net
* cleaning brush
* vacuum head and hose 
* test kit
* chemicals: chlorine, algicide, Ph balancers

Cleaning equipment tends to be pricey but doesn't need to be replaced often, so your biggest ongoing expense will be chemicals, mainly chlorine and algicide. Cost will depend on your shopping options. In my town, City Club has the best prices. Chlorine is about 300 pesos, algicide about 100, and I go through maybe 3-4 containers of each every summer. You'll use more, of course, if your pool is bigger.

Repairs to the filter system can be expensive if you have to replace parts, because they're all imported. Labor is reasonable.

I do routine maintenance myself, including skimming daily, brushing and vacuuming once a week in summer, and emptying the skimmer and pre-filter baskets. Mine is a sand filter, so it needs to be backwashed at least once a month. I could probably get away with less often if my dog didn't use the pool. Hiring a service to do all that costs 700-800 pesos a month or more around here. If I go away (never more than two weeks), I clean everything before I go, add chemicals, cover the pool, and let the filter system run off the timer. The cover raises the water temp to 95 F or more, so it's essential to have a high level of chlorine and algicide.


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## dogtags

I apologize that I forgot that I wasn't posting on a local board. We are in Ajijic, but our new rental could be anywhere in the Chapala-Jocotepec area.

We are only browsing for rentals now, and have so far focused on location, house size, and other more basic factors. Rentals in our price range have smallish outdoor pools (3m x 5~8m), probably <2m deep. So far we have not seen any pool + hot tub combinations, but at least one rental has hot tub only.

Only one listing indicates that the pool is heated (gas). Assuming that a heated pool would be described as such, the others must be unheated.

At the very least, I now know some of the questions I'll have to ask the rental agency as we are comparing. While we are just getting used to the relatively low utility bills in the Chapala area, in my mind I am still comparing everything to Atlanta, where my utility bills include gas heat and electric air conditioning (two HVAC systems, one upstairs, one down). Total monthly gas+elec can be around $300/mo when both systems are being used.

As you can probably tell, neither of us has ever lived in a house with a pool, and we are not in total agreement about how much a pool would add to our appreciation of the area. 

Thanks for the info y'all have offered so far.


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## TundraGreen

dogtags said:


> ... While we are just getting used to the relatively low utility bills in the Chapala area, in my mind I am still comparing everything to Atlanta, where my utility bills include gas heat and electric air conditioning (two HVAC systems, one upstairs, one down). Total monthly gas+elec can be around $300/mo when both systems are being used. ...


It is different isn't it. My total gas+elec is $150 pesos, about $11 usd, split 1/3 propane and 2/3 electricity. That is a consequence of the low rates and having a solar hot water system and few appliances (refri, washing machine, computer).


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## RVGRINGO

However; if you live like you did in Atlanta, with all those electric goodies, you will pay even more in Mexico.
We keep our pool empty and are seriously considering having the compost pile move into it.


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## dogtags

Because we will only be renting, and our commitment will be only for a year, we may be willing to at least try the pool. I think we'll have to see what OTHER amenities are available in rentals. We would never make a decision based solely on the swimming pool factor.

One reason for wanting the pool is that we have two dogs, one of which really should be getting intense exercise on a daily basis. NOB, it was fairly easy to take her to a dog park. We could let her off leash, and usually there were other dogs that would keep her running. We take her running with us on bikes, but she's not really happy with running along the ciclopista.

Dog-parks are harder to find here. We have a decent yard (walled-in), but she really needs canine interaction to get her running hard. Since we haven't found a way for her to run herself ragged with other dogs, we thought a pool would help. But we are looking at all options.

We still considering all our options.


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## eagles100

This thread has been quiet for a while so here are my questions.

When my hubby & I get down to the Chapala area, hopefully during the spring of 2013, we'll be looking for a place with a heated pool. The reasoning is because I'm disabled with Fibromyalgia and need the pool to do physical therapy. I need the pool to be heated because with Fibromyalgia, cold water makes the pain worse. Swimming is the only physical activity I can do with little pain and it does help to relieve pain for a while.

After renting for a while, we plan on buying a place. If the pool is solar-heated, is that reasonable? And if we had solar heat (water), would we be best to have all our water heated by the solar, meaning our indoor water and for the pool?

Does anyone know how much it costs to have a solar energy system installed for heating water only?


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## TundraGreen

eagles100 said:


> This thread has been quiet for a while so here are my questions.
> 
> When my hubby & I get down to the Chapala area, hopefully during the spring of 2013, we'll be looking for a place with a heated pool. The reasoning is because I'm disabled with Fibromyalgia and need the pool to do physical therapy. I need the pool to be heated because with Fibromyalgia, cold water makes the pain worse. Swimming is the only physical activity I can do with little pain and it does help to relieve pain for a while.
> 
> After renting for a while, we plan on buying a place. If the pool is solar-heated, is that reasonable? And if we had solar heat (water), would we be best to have all our water heated by the solar, meaning our indoor water and for the pool?
> 
> Does anyone know how much it costs to have a solar energy system installed for heating water only?


I spent about $15,000 pesos installing my solar hot water system ($7500 for the solar system itself, and about the same for pipes and valves). I did all the plumbing myself. It would have cost a couple thousand more pesos to have someone do the plumbing, but I probably would have saved that more than that on materials because I used better materials (all copper) than they would have. 

The cost is I mentioned is for a typical Mexican style gravity fed water system. It about doubles the cost if you have a high pressure water system. The valves have to have a better sealing mechanism. The installation instructions on mine specified that the supply be no more than 1.5 m above the solar system. I exceeded that but haven't had any problems with the seals on the tubes. 

The system is more than adequate for 3 or 4 people under normal sunny weather. If there are several consecutive cloudy days, the supplementary water heater is necessary. That has only happened twice in the year and a half since I installed the system. I don't know if it would be adequate for a pool. In normal sunny weather it produces a lot of water at about 95 degrees centigrade. In fact it boils on sunny afternoons.

If you use one system for both the pool and indoor water, I would put in a valve so you can shut off the supply to the pool during cloudy periods when you may not have an excess of hot water. Normally, I would guess there would be plenty. I believe RVGringo heats a pool with solar.


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## eagles100

TundraGreen said:


> I spent about $15,000 pesos installing my solar hot water system ($7500 for the solar system itself, and about the same for pipes and valves). I did all the plumbing myself. It would have cost a couple thousand more pesos to have someone do the plumbing, but I probably would have saved that more than that on materials because I used better materials (all copper) than they would have.
> 
> I believe RVGringo heats a pool with solar.


Thanks so much for all the info Will. So worse case scenario, it might cost $3,000 US for a power-fed solar water heater? We wouldn't do the work ourselves; plumbing is not our thing. 

I read that RVGringo has his pool empty; I'm not sure how long ago that was and if it's current info.


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## conklinwh

In all cases, I'm assuming that you are talking solar thermal versus solar photovoltaics(electricity). I think that certainly a case can be made for solar thermal and I've seen quite a few reasonable packages in SMA & Queretaro. Solar PV is another matter. I've had a running discussion with a few folk like me that are saddled with the DAC rate and they have multiple times thought they had a justifiable proposition only to find that the installed cost had a very long payback.


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## eagles100

conklinwh said:


> In all cases, I'm assuming that you are talking solar thermal versus solar photovoltaics(electricity). I think that certainly a case can be made for solar thermal and I've seen quite a few reasonable packages in SMA & Queretaro.


Yes, I mean simply to heat water.


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## conklinwh

Thought so but you can heat water directly via solar thermal or indirectly via generating electricity to drive a water heater. So far by my research, the former is justifiable while the latter isn't.


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## eagles100

conklinwh said:


> Thought so but you can heat water directly via solar thermal or indirectly via generating electricity to drive a water heater. So far by my research, the former is justifiable while the latter isn't.


Yeah, if one heats their water via solar and has their major appliances run by gas, the rest are not huge users of electric, in my opinion.


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## conklinwh

Actually, our biggest users of electricity are probably our water pumps. We have interconnected cisterns that hold about 30K liters of water total. We live on about 4+acres of land in the high desert. My wife is inveterate gardner and we probably maintain close to 1.5 acres. Yes I know but you tell her!


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## RVGRINGO

eagles100 said:


> Yeah, if one heats their water via solar and has their major appliances run by gas, the rest are not huge users of electric, in my opinion.


That is absolutely correct. We have solar hot water for our household use; a 160 L shstem with heat pipes. It has yet to let us down, even with a few cloudy days in a row. Just a few hours of partial sunshine seem to keep it hot enough. Once, while home alone for a week, it boiled strongly and I even got some live steam in the shower, so didn't jump in until that settled down and I could mix with enough cold to get a proper temperature. The solar system has been serving our needs for 10 months now; wish we had done it ten years ago! It is saving us about 500 pesos per month and should pay for itself in the near future.

We do keep our pool empty. It just wasn't worth maintaining it and paying to run the viltration pump and solar panel pump for such little use. We don't miss it at all and, if I had the energy, I would move my large compost pile into the pool. I may hire a kid to do it, once I can see to supervise.


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## TundraGreen

RVGRINGO said:


> That is absolutely correct. We have solar hot water for our household use; a 160 L shstem with heat pipes. It has yet to let us down, even with a few cloudy days in a row. Just a few hours of partial sunshine seem to keep it hot enough. Once, while home alone for a week, it boiled strongly and I even got some live steam in the shower, so didn't jump in until that settled down and I could mix with enough cold to get a proper temperature. The solar system has been serving our needs for 10 months now; wish we had done it ten years ago! It is saving us about 500 pesos per month and should pay for itself in the near future.
> 
> We do keep our pool empty. It just wasn't worth maintaining it and paying to run the viltration pump and solar panel pump for such little use. We don't miss it at all and, if I had the energy, I would move my large compost pile into the pool. I may hire a kid to do it, once I can see to supervise.


Were you heating water with electricity before you installed the solar system? I am having a hard time understanding how it can save you $500 pesos/month. I estimate that mine saves me about $25 pesos/month. 

I was heating water with gas and I only turned the water heater on for a few minutes before someone wanted to take a shower. The gas bottles used to last about 4 months. Now they last about 5 months. So the savings is not much.

Even though it will take an estimated 50 years to recover the cost of the solar system, it was worth it for the convenience of having unlimited hot water all the time and for the satisfaction of not wasting non-renewable energy.


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## RVGRINGO

Our solar system is water only, not photovoltaic.
Previously, our water heater was a propane del paso system which feed our home and the occupied casita, which will soon be vacant and I'll turn off the stove's pilot lights and the refrigerator until we find a new tenant; probably a snowbird in the fall. The current occupant has found a new house after losing her husband 14 months ago to cancer.


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