Websites for pool technicians.

Open earlier than feels natural — once daytime temperatures are consistently above about fifteen degrees, because algae starts growing under a cover long before you want to swim, and a green opening costs far more to clear than an early one. Close after the water has cooled and stayed cool, usually well into the fall. Closing too early in warm water is the other common way to get a green spring.

Not necessarily. Evaporation and splash-out account for a surprising amount in hot weather. The bucket test settles it: float a bucket of pool water on the step, mark both levels, and compare after a day or two. If the pool drops faster than the bucket, you have a leak, and then we pressure test the lines and dye test the fittings to find it before anything gets dug up.

Typically ten to fifteen years depending on water chemistry and sun exposure. Small punctures below the waterline patch well and buy years. What does not patch is a liner that has gone brittle, shrunk out of the track or wrinkled from groundwater underneath, and at that point patching just relocates the leak. We tell you which one you have.

No — a salt system makes its own chlorine from the salt, continuously. What you get is gentler water, no jugs to haul and more stable chlorine levels, not chlorine-free water. The trade-offs are the up-front cost of the cell, replacing that cell every few years, and staying on top of pH, which salt pools tend to drift upward.

Every municipality has a pool enclosure by-law, and most require a permit for the fence as well as for the pool, with specified heights, gap sizes, and self-closing and self-latching gates. Hot tubs with a lockable hard cover are often treated differently. We will tell you where your setup stands, but the by-law is the authority and it varies by city.

Plenty of people do, successfully. The parts that catch homeowners out are testing accurately rather than by strip colour, keeping the filter clean instead of just backwashing, and running the pump long enough per day. If you want to do it yourself, we are happy to open the pool, get the chemistry right and show you how to hold it there.