For those struggling with chemicals, TroubleFreePool makes things stupid easy. Use their poolmath app and one of the tft test kits and youre good to go. Way better than going to the local pool supply store and following their bs suggestions.
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Yeah, my nightmare would be that the pool gets stuck in the “down” configuration. Apparently, it has a system that will auto winterize it when the temperature drops below freezing - evacuates all the water into some giant holding tanks in the basement/garage area. Apparently, before designing crazy airplanes, he ran a large custom pool building business for many years - so he’s not doing this on a lark for his personal home.
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Having grown up in SoCal with a pool, I told my wife I would never buy a house with one. If a house had one, I would be filling it full of dirt and planting a palm tree in the middle. I just don’t want to be bothered with the maintenance or energy costs.
If I were in a different stage in life (where my children were younger), I would be more annoyed with my house being the one where everyone else’s kids ended up in the summer because we had a pool (in a neighborhood where pools were infrequent).
Not something we have to worry about, there’s two other pools on our cul-de-sac and one of them is at least double the size and depth of ours.
It isn’t that bad at all, especially if you have solar.
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Many of the homes that I have visited, I believe that most of the maintenance was hired out. I agree that I would want to add another to-do to my list. I’m not sure that I would be willing to (consistently) pay for it either. 
I would prob make it a koi pond myself instead of filling it. But I like that look and hobby so would make sense for me.
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How onerous is pool maintenance these days? We had a built-in above ground pool when I was a kid that we demolished when I was 12. My parents weren’t technical, the internet didn’t exist and the pump, etc. was old - so they struggled with the pool at times. I remember them having to frequently vacuum the bottom manually, backflush the pump, replace the sand periodically - the chlorine was in some floaty thing that meandered around the pool and released peridocially.
Presumably vacuuming (and maybe skimming) can be automated and there are many tutorials on how to fix most things people would encounter - does it take that much time anymore?
It depends.
My house in CA had an older pool, under a bunch of trees, with an old DE filter. It took a lot more maintenance to do than i was willing to do, so the $100/mo pool guy was worth while.
My house in FL with a salt system and under a bird cage so no tree droppings is stupid simple to maintain. Needs a little muriatic acid here and there and about once a season, it needs a boost of cyanuric acid.
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I’ll second this, my pool has been crystal clear for the last 5 years even when I’ve been lax on keeping up with it.
Been open about three weeks and finally warm enough outside to swim regularly. We keep it heated to 88, so feels like a bathtub right now. Saltwater conversion has made it stupid easy to maintain.
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Heat pump and solar panels practically make it free to keep it that warm.
Salt is the only way!
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with all those flips this is chump change to him
Where’s the annual pool meet happening? Which Hackr’s going to host it at his pool?
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