maintaining/cleaning an inground pool

is this the right spot??

does anyone here have a pool?

We recently bought a house and it has an inground pool, neither DH or myself have ever lived in a house before with a pool so this is all brand new to us!!

It is currently chlorine (although once we work out what we are doing we do want to make it salt eventually)

It is currently unusable and looks like a dirty river, which is better than it was.

DH is meant to be organising the old owners to come and show him how to use it, he did come around the other day and set the timer on the pump to go for 8 hours a day. he was meant to come back over the weekend and never did and DH hasnt bothered chasing him up and is now stressing and *****ing about it and putting it on me to work the damn thing out.
going to into winter we think 8 hours is a bit much? is it, we are worried how much power the pump uses, im trying to google what pump it is so i can see if i can get a user manual.
I guess what im trying to get is a basic idea on what you need to do to maintain a pool, how often should the pump be going? ours has lots of differen settings, and what do they mean and what do you use/when? what daily/weekly/monthly things need to be done in terms of us being out there cleaning it/maintaining it? or should the pump/filter do everything for us??

thanks in advance everyone!!! basically just spam me with all your pool experience as i really have no idea where to even start!

=) TIA

Hey Teirae, we have an inground pool. It's my DH's job to look after it, so I don't know if I can answer all your questions!

8 hours a day does seem excessive, particularly as you likely won't use the pool at this time of year. Our filter runs for about two hours a day. Every few days DH hooks up the Barracuda (the vacuum thingy) to do a couple of laps of the pool. Our pool is salt water and so it has a salt/chlorinator cell which is part of the filter system and is supposed to take care of the 'chemical' element of the pool... this bit is really DH's department, but if you have questions I can ask him tonight!

About once a month in winter and once a fortnight in summer DH takes a water sample to the pool shop and they test it for him. You can get home test kits which are good for when you haven't had a chance to get to the pool shop and the kids want to swim! The pool shop tests the water with a computer and a printout tells you if the pool needs any extra chemicals/salt/acid. The pool shop does this testing for free. Make sure you take the water sample in a clean, uncontaminated bottle (an empty water bottle will do) most pool shops will provide you with a bottle which is solely for sample water so it's not contaminated by anything else.

I reckon the best place to start would be to find a good pool supplies shop and have a chat to them. You could also pay someone to come out and get the pool up and running and take you and DH through what you need to do to maintain it.

Good luck, we love our pool! It really doesn't take much time to maintain it and DH quite enjoys doing it all, the kids like to help. Having a pool in the back yard rocks in summer... although expect a lot of uninvited guests!!!

We have an inground salt one too so like nickle it cuts down on the chemical side. However we do still use chlorine in it (from memory and dont quote me here as this is DH's department) about 10ltrs a week. This is in the height of summer when we have about 10 boys a day nearly living in the thing!
Our creepy crawlie and pump run for four hours a day, in winter and in summer about 7-8 hours depending on how much swimming there has been, so it stays relatively clear and pretty much looks after itself.
I would recommend you put your timer on to run after 10 at night. We used to have ours going in the morning and when it was first switched over to night time I noticed $100 difference per quarter.

Take a water sample into your local pool shop and they will be a wealth of knowledge on what you need to get it back into shape.

We had one, go to the local pool shop, they should hopefully have the pool on their records as they need to know how much water it holds. They will work out what you need to do to clear it up. It's cheaper to keep it clean rather than let it go green over winter. Does it have a cover? That will help keep out the muck and leaves in autumn and winter. Our filter was very expensive to run so see if you have cheaper rates at night and it should only be on for 2 hours a day ATM. Ps I wouldn't trust the old owners if they left it in such a bad state! A good pool shop will come and show you if you can't work it out.