I know this a bogus question because they vary so wildly, but humor me if you're willing...

We are currently house hunting and I'm trying to get an idea of what to expect in terms of time and cost for maintaining a "normal" in-ground pool w/ hot tub.

Fill in the blank with a number or range of numbers.

Annual Maintenance Time: _____
Annual Maintenance Cost: _____

This is kinda what I'm thinking we want in terms of a pool.

Oh man, where do I start?

Maintenance time is a lot, at least once daily unless it dead calm outside. If the wind blows, especially this time of year, you’re going to be dumping skimmers and scooping leaves 3 times a day, assuming you’re going to try and keep it clean. The dust storm we had a few weeks ago adds another dimension of cleaning.

Chemicals cost a bunch these days, easily double what they were a few years ago. I’m guessing I pour a grand plus in mine over a years time. We got greedy and put a big pool in, your mileage may vary with size of pool.

It’s mechanical, stuff breaks occasionally, it’s a pita unless you hire out your repairs. I’ve put 3-4 motors in over the past 18 years, pressure gauges fail when it gets really cold, and dealing with the really cold weather sucks, you’re just waiting for a monumental failure.

We enjoyed our pool when the kids were young, it’s just an albatross now. I need to put 50 grand into ours to fix it back up nice.

You doing your own maintenance or scheduled maintenance with a pool company?

I'm open to either option. I would lean towards hiring it out at first at least until I learn what to do and how to do it.

Holy cow, this. This right here.

Get some nice patio furniture, a firepit, a grill...maybe a sunshade of some sort, and enjoy your yard without the monumental headache that comes with having to maintain a giant hole in the yard filled with water.

With the utmost respect Dr. Floon... I'm not looking to be talked out of getting a pool.

And by the way, the correct title of this thread is "Let's talk pools."

Come on, spaz.

But I appreciate the sentiment.

Hire a service. That way you have a lot more time to use the pool and the costs should be pretty much the same month to month.
Parts issues will come up occasionally, but you won't have to do the work.

If you stay on top of it, the maintenance time is not terrible, normally. I probably spend an hour a week total cleaning and testing water. Every so often i do a deep filter clean or some other extra maintenance and it obviously takes more time. Maintenance issues will arise and everything is expensive. I replaced a booster pump a couple years ago. It was $350 and that was me doing it myself. Calling someone out you can plan on at least a grand per trip to do repairs.

The cost of chemicals has more than doubled in just the last few years. It seems the prices spiked when covid shut down factories and made it hard to get chlorine and other chemicals and the companies never lowered the prices back. The biggest thing is, the cost of instillation has gone through the roof.

There are plenty of companies that will clean and maintain for you, but the quotes i've gotten are more than i'm willing to pay for something i can do myself.

I would guess the picture you posted is well over 150k to have built in todays climate where it would have been half that a few years ago.

I don't want to talk about pools; I want answers to my questions.

Fair enough. Let me suggest an indoor model. Olympic-sized.

Mind sharing that number?

I probably spend 30 minutes every week or so. Maybe a bit more right before we start using it. I buy filters once a year at about 200 a set and probably 800 to 1000 on chemicals a year. Liquid bleach, acid, and a pool rx every 4 months. I think a pool service is 200 a month or so if you go that route.