How To Choose the Best Low Maintenance Pool

When you go into the market for a swimming pool, there are a lot of choices you have to make. What shape do you want? What depth? What style? How will you adjust the landscaping of your property around this pool? But perhaps the most important question you can ask is what materials will your pool be made of?

That’s because different materials have different maintenance requirements. You have to balance a desire for a low maintenance pool with your ideal pool shape or how you want to use your pool. Because not every pool is right for every person.

And a swimming pool is a big investment. You don’t want to pay for installation only to get overwhelmed by the maintenance requirements. If you fall behind on keeping up your pool, you wind up with a whole lot of filthy water in a several-thousand-dollar container.

So what do you need to know about maintenance requirements for different kinds of swimming pools? What are the benefits and drawbacks of concrete versus vinyl siding versus fiberglass?

The Criteria for Being the Best

Before we dive into what is the best low maintenance pool, we need to look at how we quantify that label. There are a few different criteria that we will look at to determine our conclusions here, but it’s important to keep in mind that, no matter what we say, the best pool for you is the best pool.

One type of pool may need more maintenance than another but fits into what you want better than the lowest maintenance choice. If it meets your needs, it’s the best pool. We aren’t trying to tell you what you should buy. We just want to make sure that you have as much info as possible before you purchase your pool.

In order to gauge the best low maintenance swimming pools, you have to look at several criteria. Physical effort, monthly costs, and long-term costs are all contributing factors when you consider the amount of maintenance required by a pool.

Physical effort is the amount of actual work you need to put into your pool daily and weekly during the swimming season to keep your pool looking beautiful and meeting healthy standards to keep everyone that goes swimming safe.

Monthly costs look at supplies you need for your pool. Things like the amount of chemicals you need to keep on hand would fit into this category. For the most part, these costs are pretty consistent in all three major types of pools—though there are some notable differences.

Long-term costs refer to those costs that you don’t need to pay for monthly or even annually, necessarily. These are costs that come up after five years or ten years. Since a swimming pool is a long-term investment, it is imperative that a prospective pool owner consider long-term costs.

Different Types of Pools

There are three major types of inground swimming pools. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. The kind of pool you choose should reflect the environment you want to establish in and around your home, the way you want to use your pool, and the costs you want to pay for maintenance.

Those types of pools are:

Concrete Pools (tiled, painted, or bare)
Vinyl lined
Fiberglass

Again, it is important to remind you that the best pool is always the pool that gives you everything that you want. Inground pool maintenance should not be the only thing you consider when making your final choice—but it should factor into that decision.

Concrete Pools

When you picture a swimming pool in your mind, chances are good that you picture a concrete pool. These were the standard swimming pools throughout the United States for years. They even got a reference in the original Beverly Hillbillies theme song in the sixties as fancy “cement ponds”!

For our purposes today, we will include gunite pools in this category because they require just about the same level of maintenance. Gunite is a mixture of sand and cement. It is a very strong material with a nice texture.

The biggest benefit of installing a concrete pool is the variety of designs you can consider. Concrete allows you to build a pool with irregular proportions—think of pools with lots of curves that create distinct areas for conversation during a poolside gathering.

Concrete is also very durable, so it can hold up well under heavy usage by the whole family. That includes pets crawling up and down the pool steps. And if you want to include a self-cleaning system in your pool, you can make that happen with concrete.

However, a concrete pool is not the easiest pool to maintain. One reason for that is the texture. No matter how smoothly you pour the concrete for your pool, on a microscopic level, it has a rough texture.

That rough texture creates little nooks and crannies that algae and bacteria can inhabit. If you are not vigilant in your maintenance, those little organisms can grow into a big problem for you and your fellow swimmers.

To keep your pool clear of unwanted biology, you will need to scrub the sides of your pool with a steel brush regularly. Typically, you will need to do this once a week. There are automated tools to help with this kind of task, but no matter how you do it, your concrete pool will absolutely need that weekly cleaning.

You will also need to run your filtration system more with a concrete pool than with some other types. Concrete requires two full circulations per day. Additionally, you will need an acid wash every five years or so and a complete resurfacing roughly every fifteen to twenty years.

Maintenance Criteria

Physical Effort: You will need to scrub with a steel brush weekly.
Monthly Costs: Your electric bill will take a hit from the twice daily circulation through the filtration system. Also, concrete affects the pH of your water, so the cost of pool chemicals can be greater than with other pool materials.
Long-Term Costs: You need to get a professional acid wash every five years and a full resurfacing every fifteen to twenty years.

Additionally, if you have a tiled pool, you will need to be vigilant about loose or missing tiles. Tiles can be very resistant to algae, but only if they are in good repair.

Concrete pools are not exactly low maintenance pools, but for many pool owners, the benefits of concrete outweigh the maintenance requirements.

Vinyl Liner Pools

In general, compared to concrete, vinyl-lined pools are low care pools. While these swimming pools do have very specific requirements to keep them clean and ready for use, those requirements are not quite as taxing as those of a concrete build.

The surface of a vinyl liner is not as prone to algae buildup as some other pools. Aside from the liner’s seams, there really isn’t a place for algae to gather. This is not to say that a vinyl liner pool will be free of schmutz on its sides, but keeping your pool clean won’t take as much physical effort as a concrete pool.

The main thing to keep in mind about a vinyl liner is that you need to be vigilant about tears in the lining. When your liner tears, water doesn’t stay where you want it to—potentially corroding the pool’s side panels—and you give a new foothold to the organisms that you work so hard to keep out.

In order to keep your liner in good condition, you should take precautions against any animal that might tear up your vinyl with its nails, claws, or talons. That means keeping your pets out of the water and keeping your pool covered when not in use to guard against wild animals.

When it comes to cleaning your pool, you will still want to brush the sides and use a pool vacuum to take care of debris. With a vinyl liner pool, you will want to use a brush made of soft materials instead of the abrasive brushes you need for concrete.

Where vinyl liner pools score points as low maintenance pools is in the less frequently required filter circulations. They only require half as many per day as concrete pools—saving a great deal of electricity over time. The liner has less of an effect on your water’s pH than concrete as well, meaning you will use fewer chemicals to maintain a proper pH level.

Maintenance Criteria

Physical Effort: Vinyl liner pools require cleaning with soft brushes and pool vacuums as well as vigilance around the liner’s seams and corners
Monthly Costs: You will need to have the correct chemicals on hand to keep your water’s pH consistent and you will need to circulate the water through your filter once a day, but those costs are lower than those of a concrete pool.
Long-Term Costs: Your vinyl liner will need to be replaced every five to nine years—more often if you discover tears

Fiberglass Pools

Most experts will tell you that a fiberglass pool is the most low maintenance pool you can buy. The sides are algae resistant thanks to a gelcoat, don’t have the seams and creases of a vinyl liner and they don’t require the long-term costs of acid washes or resurfacing that you see with concrete.

You will need to keep up with your routine maintenance routines of brushing the sides and clearing the pool of debris as well as doing weekly pH tests of the water. But much like vinyl, you won’t need to dig in with an abrasive steel brush—a soft brush is all you’ll need here as well as a pool vacuum.

Fiberglass pools do not require resurfacing or liner replacement. If you keep up your maintenance, you can ensure that the sides stay pristine and free of stains for the entire life of the pool.

The downside is that fiberglass pools are limited by the shapes and designs offered by their manufacturers. So if you don’t see something that fits your dream pool, you may have to adjust your dream if you only want to commit to the relatively low maintenance of fiberglass.

Maintenance Criteria

Physical Effort: Similar to vinyl liner pools, fiberglass requires regular brushing, but does not require as much physical effort as concrete.
Monthly Costs: You only need to keep your pH balancing chemicals in stock. When it comes to electricity, fiberglass pools only require one filter circulation per day.
Long-Term Costs: It takes a lot to puncture a fiberglass pool. If that happens, you may have a long-term replacement cost, but it’s unlikely.

It seems pretty clear that the most low maintenance pool is the fiberglass pool.

The Best Low Maintenance Pool for You

Different construction materials require different maintenance. Every kind of pool has benefits and drawbacks. And not every drawback is the same for everyone! The routine and activity of pool maintenance really appeals to some people in the same way that yardwork scratches an itch for some folks.

So while a fiberglass pool is the most low maintenance pool you can buy, it may not be the kind of pool you want. A concrete pool has a high maintenance threshold, but it can be designed and installed with much more freedom than vinyl or fiberglass—and that can be a very important factor in your desire for a swimming pool!

To find the build that meets your design wants as well as your maintenance budget, talk to us at Tracer. Our years in the swimming pool installation and care field can be put to use finding you the perfect pool.Whether you want a pool for exercise, for your kids to play in, or for your cool friends to congregate around at a garden party, the right pool is out there for you. Whether a low maintenance pool or a heavy effort pool is right for you, we can help you find what you need.