What the price is made of
A commercial pool contract pays for four things: labor on site, chemicals, the expertise and equipment behind the testing and control, and the responsibility for keeping the pool open and compliant. How much of each a pool needs depends on the pool, not the vendor. These are the drivers we price from.
Water volume
Chemical consumption scales with gallons. A 60,000-gallon HOA pool uses roughly three times the chlorine and acid of a 20,000-gallon apartment pool under the same load. Volume also drives the time it takes to vacuum and brush. If a vendor has not asked how many gallons the pool holds, they are guessing.
Number of bodies of water
A kiddie pool, a splash pad, or a spa is a separate pool under Georgia code: tested separately, treated separately, inspected separately. Each one adds testing time, chemicals, and records to every visit. A community with a main pool and a kiddie pool is not one account with a small extra; it is two pools.
Visit frequency and season length
The largest single lever. One visit a week for fourteen weeks is a different contract from three visits a week for twenty-two weeks. Bather load sets the frequency: an apartment pool with two hundred units needs more visits than an HOA pool with sixty homes. Season length is a board decision; here is the math on seasonal versus year-round.
Bather load and sun
Every swimmer adds sanitizer demand. Every hour of Georgia sun burns off chlorine. A shaded pool used by a quiet community costs less in chemicals than a full-sun pool with a swim team. Stabilizer helps with the sun but has to be managed, or it becomes its own problem.
Equipment age and condition
An old filter runs at higher pressure and needs more backwashing, which wastes water and chemicals. A pump that is undersized for the plumbing runs longer to make the same flow. Aging equipment raises the routine cost before it ever fails, and the failure is a separate line.
Automation
Every pool we service gets a PoolCop controller that reads pH and ORP continuously and feeds chlorine and acid to setpoint. That reduces chemical waste, because the pool is dosed to what it needs rather than to what it might need by the next visit, and it reduces emergency visits, because the controller and PoolSense Intelligence flag a problem while it is still small. It is part of our price, not an add-on.
How contracts are usually structured
Most commercial contracts in the Atlanta market are a fixed monthly price for the season, or for twelve months on a year-round pool, covering routine visits, testing, chemicals for normal balance, and reporting. Openings and closings are either included or a separate line. Repairs, replacement equipment, and extraordinary cleanup are excluded and quoted as they come up.
Read the exclusions. The differences between bids are usually there: whether chemicals are included or billed by use, whether a fecal incident or an algae recovery is covered, whether there is a trip charge for a call-out, whether the operator certificate is the vendor's or yours.
Typical ranges
We quote from a site assessment, not a phone estimate, because the drivers above cannot be seen from a street address. The assessment is free, takes about an hour, and produces a written proposal with the visit cadence and the price. Request one.
How to compare bids fairly
- Put every bid on the same visit count, season length, and list of bodies of water. If a bid does not state them, ask.
- Ask whether chemicals are included, and what happens when the pool needs more than normal.
- Ask how chemistry is held between visits. If the answer is "it should be fine," expect a pool that is out of range part of every week.
- Ask who holds the operator certificate and who talks to the inspector.
- Ask to see a sample visit record from another property. A vendor that cannot show you one does not keep them.
- Ask what the last three emergency call-outs cost their clients, and why.
The cheapest bid is often the one that plans on the fewest visits and hopes the water holds. It sometimes does. When it does not, the board pays for the algae recovery, the closure, and the reinspection, and the savings are gone by July.