Posts Tagged ‘Pool services’
Own a vacation rental home in the Phoenix area? If so, there are definitely things you should do in preparation for our monsoon season! This period of exceptionally wacky weather can start as early as June and not calm down entirely until October. Moxie Girl has a few tips to keep your guests in loop and help limit the potential for summer storm-related damages to your vacation rental home.
Landscaping
Professional tree-trimming done prior to monsoon season is an important step in reducing the chances of branches breaking, and possibly causing other damage to your vacation rental home during high winds.
If your vacation rental property has young trees, be sure they are properly staked. Swaying in the wind is actually helpful in growing strong trees, but if not properly staked young trees are easily uprooted!
As temperatures rise, we often think we should be giving our trees and other landscaping extra watering time, but did you know that over-watering can cause root-rot and top-heavy growth in your trees? Decaying roots, especially in combination with top-heavy growth, leave trees exceptionally vulnerable to damage from high winds.
So, water “deeply” (think of it as a nice leisurely bath, vs. a quick shower) but less frequently to keep those beautiful trees on your vacation rental property growing healthy and strong!
Patio Umbrellas
Patio umbrellas are a versatile source of shade, and can even make a colorful fashion statement at your vacation rental property. Even in our extreme Phoenix summer sunshine, quality patio umbrellas are capable of seeing your vacation rental property through more than a few seasons. Quality patio umbrellas can also be quite pricey, so it’s definitely in your best interest to take proper care of them.
It should be standard to keep umbrellas closed when not in use to prolong their lives and good looks – their labels even say so. Leaving patio umbrellas open during a monsoon storm can be a death sentence for your patio umbrella, especially in areas experiencing “micro-bursts.” Open umbrellas can also be easily picked up and carried by high winds, causing further damage to your vacation rental property.
Pools and Spas
Increasing the frequency of your regular professional pool service, if possible, is a great idea! But even with increased service, unexpected storms can leave the pool at your vacation rental home looking a mess. Have basic tools on hand for guests to do a little DYI cleaning, if necessary – a skimmer, at the very least! (Also, the umbrella rule should also apply to spa covers – keep it down when not in use!)
For more excellent tips on maintaining your vacation rental home pools and spas, and preparing for summer guests, check out these great Moxie Blogs:
Wildlife & Wild Weather – Things You Should Know About Summer In Phoenix
5 Sizzling Summer Tips For Vacation Rental Homes With Pools
Pool Perfection Fireside Chat – Chad Nikkel, Owner of Aquaman Pools
Alert Your Vacation Rental Home Guests
Our Valley summers – especially the crazy monsoon storms – may come as quite a surprise to vacation rental guests new to the Phoenix area! It’s definitely a good idea to warn your guests – as well as ask for their help in preventing weather-related damages during their stay. Your guests may also need to be reminded that you have no control over the weather (sorry, but if a 500ft wall of dust just blew through, the pool may be dirty when you arrive!)
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Phoenix is known for its year-round warm temperatures, but even if it’s 85 degrees on a “winter” day, chances are the pool water is at least 30 degrees less – Brrrr! If your vacation rental home pool isn’t heated, you may be losing fall and winter bookings to properties with warmer waters. Amanda Thomas of Moxie Girl recently had the opportunity to chat with Chad Nikkel, owner of Aquaman Pools, about the costs and benefits associated with installing a pool heater at your vacation rental home. Read on to see if a pool heater makes sense for your vacation rental!
Amanda Thomas: Hi there, I’m Amanda Thomas with Moxie Girl, your vacation rental specialists. We are here again with Chad Nikkel, the owner of Aquaman Pools, and today we are talking pool heaters. As guests come to the Valley and stay in vacation rentals, pool heat is a very popular option for them to add on. Since Chad has expertise in this we thought we’d ask him a few questions about what he sees with the vacation rentals he works with. So thanks for joining us.
Chad Nikkel: You bet, pleased to be here, Amanda. So we’re talking about pool heaters, right? As a vacation rental owner, having your pool heated probably means that people are going to choose your property over the next one. People come to the Valley and they want to enjoy the pool, whether it’s January or whether it’s May.
Even in the later spring, people enjoy swimming in warm water, not in… Minnesota water, let’s call it. So, a pool heater is a great way to make more money on your property. A lot of vacation rental owners charge extra per night if you want to use the pool heater. And that can be an amount of money that is highly profitable, ultimately. We can install the pool heater and put an automation system on it so you can manage it remotely. You can turn it on or off, you can set the temperature remotely, you wouldn’t have to be anywhere near that house to do that. And that could be controlled very easily through a website or an app on your phone. It’s a great idea.
AT: With some of the managers and owners that we work with, we’ve heard anything from $40 or $50 a night, and you were saying some of your clients charge upwards of $75 a night. They may charge a weekly minimum, so even if somebody’s there for three days, they still charge a week of pool heat because it does take that extra energy to get the pool heat up. It can be really profitable especially in those winter months when people come to Arizona and it’s 80° outside, they think the pool is going to be great to get into – until they discover it is 50° in the water! Can you talk a little bit about what is the upfront investment of getting a pool heater installed?
CN: So, a couple things… If you don’t have a pool heater already and if the house does not have natural gas, then a gas pool heater might be a more costly option because then you have to plumb in the gas line and things like that. Quite often the best solution is to install what we call a heat pump. It’s an electric pool heater – it works very similarly to an air-conditioner, only in reverse. It’s very cost-effective to run. In actual operation, it may only be a few hundred dollars a month to run it, if it is run correctly. The installation is going to be maybe $5,000-$7000, whereas a gas heater might be in the $3,000-$4000 range. The disadvantage to a gas heater is that it’s costlier to run, over time. The advantage to a gas heater is that it is more instant heat. If it’s March and you want the pool to be 85° tomorrow, you turn on the gas and it’s 85° tomorrow. With the heat pump, it will take a few days to get up to that temperature but it’s more cost-effective in the long run. I would say 80 to 90% of all the vacation rentals we take care of have heat pumps rather than gas heaters.
AT: All right, make sense. So, if you don’t have a heater in your pool and you are thinking about doing it, run the numbers. You want to look at the initial up-front cost of $5,000-$7,000 for an electric heater, or for gas, you’re saying $3,000 to $5,000. And then how quickly can you make that back? It may be a really good investment and you can get it paid for, and it’s profit on top of that as you go forward!
CN: Good stuff!
AT: Awesome! If you have any questions, please reach out to Aquaman Pools. They are locally owned, this is Chad the owner. Absolutely fantastic company. Highly recommend them for residential, vacation rental, all your pool needs!
CN: Sounds great, thanks!
For all your pool service needs, contact Aquaman Pools at 480-243 POOL (480-243-7665) or email info@supercleanpools.com!
With our vast experience, Moxie Girl can help with all your vacation rental home needs – and we’ve found some of the best local products and services in The Valley. Watch for more Moxie Girl fireside chats coming soon!
With the Phoenix summer upon us, a sparkling clean swimming pool is at the top of “must-have” list for many vacation home rental guests. As a vacation rental home owner, you’ll want to be sure your pool is maintained with excellence. You’ll also want protect yourself against potential liabilities!
A residential pool you might have, you know, two or three people in the pool during the week. At a vacation rental pool, people are paying for use of the property for a vacation, so quite often there may be 10 people in the house. Since they are paying for the use of the pool, they are using that pool much more. In this situation there might be 5, 6, 8, 10 people – maybe more – in the pool every day. Pools run and consume chemicals based on how many people are in them and how much organic matter is in the pool. So you might have 10 or 15 times the amount of people in that pool than you would normally have in a residential pool. And that’s why we treat it like a commercial pool, much like an HOA for condo complex or a hotel.
The pool would need a chemical feeder on the pool, like a tab feeder that’s back at the equipment, essentially so that it is continually feeding chlorine to that pool. So it is staying in front of those issues so that it doesn’t get murky, etc.
But then also maybe some other chemicals like enzymes and that type of thing that we wouldn’t always use in a residential setting. So for instance, with sunscreen and things like that on the body, chlorine is fighting to get rid of that and it’s consuming a lot of chlorine to do that, so if there’s more and more people in the pool, things like enzymes and other types of algaecides can help get rid of those things so that the chlorine can actually do its job correctly and keep the water clear.
One of the things is to make sure it’s not just a chlorine floater in the pool. In a residential situation there’s a little pop-up feeder that has chlorine in it that’s floating around the pool. In a vacation rental pool, it’s better to have that back at the equipment because somebody’s kid could take that chlorine tablet out of that floater and it could hurt them. That’s a potential liability and something that could be easily solved with a simple tablet feeder that’s located back at the pool equipment, so that it is away from the environment that the guests are swimming in.
All commercial pools have that as a requirement – it’s code. So, even though it’s not an “inspected” pool, that’s the best way to do it. And from a liability perspective, that eliminates some concerns so it may be a situation where you could reduce some insurance costs if you can do some of these things, like putting “No Diving” signs around, and doing your part as a vacation rental home owner in saying, hey, the signs were there, you know if somebody – god forbid – hurts themselves diving in your pool.
To protect yourself from the silly decisions your guests could make. It’s important to have signs posted and also make sure that your pool guy knows that this is a vacation rental so he can have the chemicals set up correctly for that.
With our vast experience, Moxie Girl can help with all your vacation rental home needs – and we’ve found some of the best local products and services in The Valley.
