What seasonal service means
A seasonal contract runs from an opening in late April or May to a closing in September or October. The opening removes the cover, starts the equipment, cleans the pool, balances the water, and gets the pool ready for the county inspection. Visits run through the season. The closing lowers the water below the skimmers or plugs the lines, blows out the plumbing, adds winter chemicals, and covers the pool. Between closing and opening, no one visits.
This is the traditional arrangement for a subdivision pool, and it works. The pool is used from Memorial Day to Labor Day, so paying for service outside that window can seem wasteful. The costs of seasonal service are the opening and closing themselves, which are labor-intensive, and what happens to the pool while it sits.
What year-round service means
A year-round contract keeps the pool circulating, filtered, and chemically balanced through the winter, with visits at a reduced cadence, often every other week from November to March, and real-time monitoring the whole time. The pool may or may not be open to swimmers; many communities keep it closed but running. There is no opening and no closing, because the pool never stops.
What winter does to a pool that sits
A covered, uncirculated pool in Georgia is not frozen solid like a pool in Ohio. It is a stagnant body of water at 40 to 60 degrees for five months. Two things happen. The water goes out of balance, because nobody is adjusting it, and out-of-balance water etches plaster and corrodes metal all winter. And organic material collects: leaves under the cover, algae in the spring when the water warms before the opening. The spring opening is often a green pool with a low pH and a filter full of the winter's debris.
The equipment sits too. Pump seals dry out. Valves stick. A heater that is not run develops problems that are discovered the day the pool opens. Some of the equipment failures we see in May are winter failures that nobody was there to notice.
Georgia also freezes, briefly. A hard freeze with the pump off and water in the lines cracks pipes, pumps, and filter tanks. A closing that is done properly blows the lines out; a closing that is not, or a pool left uncovered and unplugged with the pump off, is a gamble.
What running the pool through winter does
Circulating water stays balanced with a fraction of the chemicals a summer pool needs, because there is no sun and no bathers. It does not freeze in the lines, because moving water does not freeze at the temperatures Georgia sees. The plaster and the heater are protected. And the spring opening is a non-event: the pool is clear, balanced, and ready for the inspector in an afternoon, not a week.
The cost is the electricity to run the pump on a reduced winter schedule, the winter visits, and the chemicals, which are modest. Real-time monitoring makes the winter visits efficient: the controller holds the chemistry, and a technician is dispatched when the data says so rather than on a calendar.
The math for an HOA pool
On paper, seasonal service is cheaper because there are fewer visits. The comparison a board should actually run is:
- Seasonal: the contract, plus the opening and closing, plus the spring recovery when the pool opens green or out of balance, plus the winter equipment failures discovered in May, plus the shortened life of the plaster and heater.
- Year-round: the contract, plus winter electricity, minus the opening and closing, minus the spring recovery, minus the freeze risk.
For a pool with a heater, a spa, or an indoor component, year-round is not really a choice: those need to run. For an outdoor plaster pool in a community that does not swim in winter, the decision usually turns on the age of the plaster and the equipment. Old plaster and an old heater favor year-round, because the winter is what ages them. A new pool with new equipment can be closed properly for a few seasons without much penalty.
Inspections
A seasonal pool is inspected at least once a season; a year-round pool at least twice a year, whether or not it is open to swimmers. A year-round pool that is closed to swimmers but running still needs its chemistry in range and its log current. What the code asks.
What we recommend
We run both. For most HOA pools with plaster or a heater that is more than ten years old, we recommend year-round: the winter is where the damage happens, and the spring opening cost disappears. For a newer pool on a tight budget, a proper seasonal closing with the lines blown out is a reasonable choice, and we will tell you when the math changes. A site assessment looks at the plaster and the equipment and gives the board a recommendation for that pool, not a policy.