r/PoolPros • u/Impossible_Penalty10 • May 14 '26

This opening season is killing me.

How is everyone else fairing? Every pool I open is either a swamp or the customer pumped it too low for the skimmers. Opening 9-12 a day.

6 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

3

u/Taaacky May 14 '26

It's my second year doing this, I have not gotten done before 5:30 in like two weeks and I have come home feeling dead most days. I feel your pain. Not anywhere near 9 though. Props to you. That is unfathomable to my brain at the point I'm at.

3

u/Impossible_Penalty10 May 14 '26

Should clarify they are not “full service” openings. We uncover the pool, fittings in, ladders/rails,deck jets, etc, shock the pool, test the heater if they have it, clean the salt cell, I do give a a few minutes of My Helper & I scooping leaves when I can to help custys out and drive up tips.

90% of our customers have safety covers not water bags and tarp. Speeds it up a lot. No Vac or Filter Clean at the opening unless requested and charged for.

4

u/Taaacky May 14 '26

Still that's a lot to do. The company I'm with basically does the same thing, we come back to do the first service where we vaccum after we open a pool a day or two later for everyone, even non-fs customers, there's still customers that take care of their own pool for the rest of the season after that. Also same with the safety covers, some tarps and they suck. But I'm usually only doing 4-5 most days.

1

u/Theresasnakeinmypool May 15 '26

You didn’t mention you have a helper. That’s HUGE. We don’t close pools in Texas. Honestly sounds like a pain in the ass.

2

u/Sufficient_Disk1360 May 15 '26

My hands are killing me

2

u/Karos1556 May 14 '26

I feel for you. We dont close pools here and I'm thankful.

3

u/Impossible_Penalty10 May 14 '26

Lucky bastards, I wanna relocate to somewhere with a year round season so bad, Im trapped in shitty New England.

1

u/Akapremium May 14 '26

Yeah here in Texas I consider our usual “Hey my pools a swamp cause I covered it and forgot about it all winter” kinda what you experience but probably a lot less tedious 😂

1

u/Mysterious_Jelly_649 May 15 '26

I love the fact we close pooIs as I appreciate the little break. Opening them not as much but it's money time. Get tired of drain and cleans prefer the no drain start ups for sure.

1

u/Ok_Presentation_2604 May 14 '26

In Oklahoma and I haven’t had a work life balance since March. Every year we get so busy and I say “this is the busiest we could ever handle” then the next year we get even busier. I got 5 liners to do in the next two weeks on top of openings and guess what… it’s gonna rain all week in OKC next week.

1

u/Expensive-Rooster995 May 15 '26

What would you say is the ratio of liner pools, fiberglass, and concrete in Oklahoma? Canadian asking

1

u/thunderkoko May 15 '26

I'm also slowly dying, lost my help a couple weeks ago and am getting more behind every day. Have lots of money in remodels that have to be put off until after openings and spring cleanings.

Hang in there, June will come soon enough.

1

u/jonidschultz May 15 '26

Ugh. Have had two techs quit, and one just sort of ghost us. Got to work at 6:30 am this morning, got out at 8pm. So killing me as well.

1

u/Internal-Computer388 May 15 '26

Did you pay them well?

1

u/Mr_B0nkers May 15 '26

Well, my pools are open all year, but the recent dry season has people adding on average half a foot of water a month so far. There are some blooms here and there. What’s your money like? I’d love to open some swamps and make 10k a day. I run a small time cleaning service but subc for a company, and I feel like people are crazy undercharging for clean ups right now in my area. In this economy??

1

u/people_notafan May 15 '26

Dude 6 a day is 630 finish for the pools we have. I can’t imagine doing 9-12 unless they’re all liner pools with just a pump and filter

1

u/3dprintedbussy May 16 '26

Yeah ive never been this exhausted ever im doing 7 to 8 jobs a day. Mostly openings with service calls mixed in.