How much do you think it affects your electric bill? I am looking to move into a house at the beginning of the summer with a pool, and not sure how much effect it would have, as I have never had a pool at my home before, well err, nor have I had a house. The house is roughly the same size as my loft, and my electric bill now is around 300 a month. Any ideas of what I could expect?
Whatever you do... DON'T HEAT IT! I have a friend in Houston with a pool and when he has family from Minnesota come to visit in the winter, he heats the pool for them and it triples his gas bill for the month just to heat it for a week.
Originally Posted by Xstr8guy
Oh, I'm not interested in heating it at all! I am just wondering with the pumps and filters, if that would add a substantial amount to the bill.
Well, at work we are currently selling pool chemicals so here's some tips.
To keep costs of filters and chemicals down, cover your pool when you are not using it. This will keep more chlorine in your water as the sun evaporates it and rain will delute it. Also rain will screw up the chemical balance of the other things like alkilenity and calcium.
Change your filter every 2-3 weeks, every week if you use it a great deal.
ALWAYS TEST YOUR POOL BEFORE YOU SWIM! I had a customer, idiot that her husband was, who accidentally put 3x the amount of chlorine needed and then let their kids swim in it. Both children got chemical burns and who knows what else wrong with them.
If you just do regular maintience you won't have large bills cause your pumps and such won't have to work as hard.
Oh, don't get a pool that uses the standard chlorine disinfection... get a salt water pool. It's the only way to go. It generate chlorine by converting salt. It's a much more stable system and the chlorine is barely noticeable at all. Pool maintenance has evolved a lot in recent years.
Dean,
I have several homes with pools. How much extra for electricity it will cost for your pumps and filters will depend on how much per kilowat you are paying of course, but I'm told the average you can expect is about $3 per day. Seems about right to me.
As far as heating a pool, I live in Palm Springs, CA. I'm not aware of anyone that heats with electric. All pool heaters out here are operated by gas. In December, while I was back in Delaware closing the house up there, my partner heated our pool in Palm Springs everyday. I just got the gas bill....it was $732.00. The other writer was correct.....don't heat the damned thing!
As for changing filters every few weeks. At least in Palm Springs, that's a bit much. We clean our filters about every 3 months and we've been doing that for years and it works for us.
Hope this helps,
Bill
Where is God's name do you live? How old is this loft? I bought a new home with Energy Star construction last February, and I live in Colorado. The MOST my electirc bill has been is $74, and my gas bill $108. And I have a saunna that is used every day...and I love to heat in the winter, and air condition in the summer to the point where you could store meat next to the refrigerator. The house is 1800 square feet finished, with an unfinsifed attic and basement. I could not imagine paying $300 for any utility. Have you ever called them to do an audit?
As far as your question though...my last house had a rather large pool, and in the summer we had the filter on a timer to only come on at night. (night electricity is about 1/2 the cost of day electricty.) As far as heating, we used a solar pad that rolled out on top of the pool. It made the water very toasty. I never had problems only filtering at night. We were the only ones using the pool, it was not like a public pool with people peeing in it. Ok, maybe we peed in it once or twice, but you get my drift.
By running the filter only at night I only noticed about a 80 cents a day increase. You can also calculate the volume of water in the pool, and the capacity of your pump, and then only run the pump/filter long enough to circulate all the water in the pool once or twice a day. This would maybe be a few hours at most for 'normal size pools'. With proper chemicals...I dont see how you would need any more than this. I never understood running a filter 24/7 in a home pool.
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use solar - its the only way to go for power - cover at night - paint the pool black! (this can scare the faint at heart swimmer - but works and is very industrial....) - but then again, depends upon your water bill and how much it would cost to drain, paint and re-fill - around here, that can cost ya!)
Here in northern CA, there's some ridiculous law passed so the state could recover the money they paid to Enron in 2000 (which they have no doubt long since recovered. So you get a monthly allotment of power (enough to power your electric toothbrush and maybe your cell phone charger) at the standard per-kwh rate of about 13 cents, and everything over that is 150 to 300% per kwh, depending on use.
My power bill for the summer ran as much as $900/month, and that's with no central air... I put a window unit in the office to save from cooling the whole house... during the winter it's more like $250. Some of that is the pool, but I don't know how much. (It isn't heated.)
In January, when we had 8 models at AJ's house and he heated the pool for 4-5 days, his combined electric/gas bill went from $200 the previous month to $2400.
And on a related note
Remember that chemical you're suppoed to be able t ppur into a pool that turns the water reed if someone pees in it?
Learned that the hard way. Discouraged ME from getting a pool. I mean, who wants one if you can't use it to emberass some nasty pool-pissing kid?
It will not spent more than 2 new PCs with latest graphics cards.
We have a good size pool at our house, and when the pump is on, it roughly adds about $100/month on the TXU bill.
Once a month, we take a sample of the water to Leslie's Pools to test it and they tell us which chemicals we need to add or stop using.
We spend an average of $50/month throughout the year in chemicals.
Then of course, you either do the maintenance* yourself or you pay a company to do it every week... a good maintenance will save you lots of money (mostly in Summer time), if you neglect your pool, be ready to have some extra costs.
* Taking the leaves out, cleaning filters, emptying baskets, add chlorine tablets...
During summer in Texas, because of the heat, you get algeas very quick. So be sure your pool's water has all it needs in order to avoid that green crap
Did I write that? I know what I was trying to say but look at those typos. I only had two beers!
Wow ... good thing I was driving.
Wow. I had not heard of that. I remember why I moved here from San Diego now. Granted, I miss the ocean...but for what you are paying every month in electricity I can fly to San Diego once a month and stay in a hotel and swim for a few days. Ugh.
My gas bill for February was the highest it has ever been here in Colorado. The average daily temperature that month was 22 degrees according to my bill, and my gas cost me $25.85. My electricty that month was a little higher too, but mainly because I bought one of those far-infrared sauna's and I sit in it twice a day. But even so, electricity total was only $24.05. Gotta love Northern Colorado.
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