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Practical, reviewed advice for planning repairs and projects, choosing the right pro and knowing what to ask before you hire.
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491 guides
- Guide
Pool Contractors guide
Hiring a pool contractor feels like hiring one business, and it almost never is. A backyard pool in Australia is assembled by a chain of separately regulated occupations: an excavator, a concreter or a shell…
8 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Pool Installation guide
A swimming pool is the largest structure most Australian households will ever add to a backyard, and from the first line on the plan it is treated as building work rather than landscaping.
13 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Pool Renovation guide
Pool renovation covers the work that brings an existing pool back: re-rendering or re-pebbling the interior, replacing a vinyl liner, re-tiling the waterline, lifting and relaying coping, replacing pumps and filters…
8 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Pool Repair guide
Pool repair in Australia splits into three kinds of problem, and they are not equally urgent. There is water going somewhere it should not, which wastes an expensive resource and can undermine the pool surround.
9 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Pool Opening guide
Opening a pool is an odd phrase in a country where most pools never shut. North of about Brisbane the water is swimmable for most of the year; in Melbourne, Hobart and Canberra the pool goes quiet from around April and…
9 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Pool Closing guide
Australian pools are rarely closed in the northern-hemisphere sense. What happens here instead is that a pool goes quiet: the family stops swimming around May, the holiday house empties out, a rental sits between…
8 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Pool Maintenance guide
Pool maintenance is the recurring work that keeps a pool safe to swim in and keeps its equipment alive: testing and correcting the water, dosing sanitiser, managing stabiliser and calcium, servicing the pump, filter,…
7 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Pool Cleaning guide
Pool cleaning is the physical half of pool care: brushing the walls and steps, vacuuming the floor, emptying skimmer and pump baskets, netting the surface, cleaning the waterline, and cleaning or backwashing the filter.
8 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Pool Heating guide
Heating a pool is usually sold as a comfort decision and is actually a regulated one. The ABCB Housing Provisions set out, in the energy efficiency part, what may heat a swimming pool in a new or altered house: a solar…
10 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Pool Covers guide
A pool cover is one of the few pool purchases that pays for itself. It cuts evaporation, which in a hot dry Australian summer is the largest single loss from an uncovered pool.
8 min read22 September 2026 - Guide
Hot Tub Installation guide
Installing a spa, or hot tub, looks like a delivery and a power point. In Australia it is usually neither. Most states treat a spa that holds water deeper than 300 millimetres as a pool for safety purposes, which pulls…
10 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Hot Tub Repair guide
Spa repair covers the faults that stop a hot tub heating, circulating or holding water: a spa that will not reach temperature, a safety switch that trips, a pump that grinds or hums, jets that have lost their push, an…
9 min read14 September 2026
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