- May 27, 2019
- 1,621
- Pool Size
- 25000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Hayward Aqua Rite Pro (T-15)
I understand cleaning and lawn service. But with the pool, you are risking a health hazard or green mess if they do it wrong.
How does a pool service really work?
- Thread starter red-beard
- Start date
when we were renting "the pool house" I found TFP. I smashed the tablet floater.... next service, there was a new one, I smashed it again and left the pieces out for the pool kid to find. no more tabs.
After a couple months the pool company changed. I was locking the timer box. I had set the timer how I wanted it and three times he pool person changed my times and took the little screw things. so I set it and locked the box. soon after there were new pool guy stickers on the equipment. I dunno if he quit or got fired.
The new company was sending a kid, maybe 17 y/o?
I installed two cameras on the pool. This was because there was no safety net... if the neighbor crawled over the fence to die in "our" pool, i'd have a recording of it... This gave me the chance to watch the pool kid every week. At first I was mad the kid came on Mondays. But I started checking chems after he came and dang did he SLAM the pool. this made be glad he came early in the week. I used to think "this sucks the chems are gone by the time we want to use the pool. But it became obvious that was a small price to pay vs. swimming in a spiked pool. I could add chems to what I wanted. Sometimes i'd lock the gate. i'd get an angry call from the rental office.... i couldn't convince them that I was taking care of things.
bottom line, in my videos of the kid coming to do "work" consisted of him walking in, he'd have two bottles of reagent. He'd drop in a couple drops of each, while standing on the deck, look at it a second... maybe do a couple more drops... and then exit.. he'd come back with acid and chlorine in bottles and dump them. I dunno if he measured at the truck or just dumped what was left. I never say him measure. sometimes he didn't dump the whole bottle. So I think he just guessed. I don't think he ever used the brush once. a couple times he'd use the net but it was just to unblock the skimmer on days when it was crazy windy. I ALWAYS did the actually netting of debris and brushing.
I'll never hire someone unless we become SO BUSY we can't take care of the pool. But If I do hire someone, it'll be a regiment and will likely cost a lot more than a typical pool trip.
After a couple months the pool company changed. I was locking the timer box. I had set the timer how I wanted it and three times he pool person changed my times and took the little screw things. so I set it and locked the box. soon after there were new pool guy stickers on the equipment. I dunno if he quit or got fired.
The new company was sending a kid, maybe 17 y/o?
I installed two cameras on the pool. This was because there was no safety net... if the neighbor crawled over the fence to die in "our" pool, i'd have a recording of it... This gave me the chance to watch the pool kid every week. At first I was mad the kid came on Mondays. But I started checking chems after he came and dang did he SLAM the pool. this made be glad he came early in the week. I used to think "this sucks the chems are gone by the time we want to use the pool. But it became obvious that was a small price to pay vs. swimming in a spiked pool. I could add chems to what I wanted. Sometimes i'd lock the gate. i'd get an angry call from the rental office.... i couldn't convince them that I was taking care of things.
bottom line, in my videos of the kid coming to do "work" consisted of him walking in, he'd have two bottles of reagent. He'd drop in a couple drops of each, while standing on the deck, look at it a second... maybe do a couple more drops... and then exit.. he'd come back with acid and chlorine in bottles and dump them. I dunno if he measured at the truck or just dumped what was left. I never say him measure. sometimes he didn't dump the whole bottle. So I think he just guessed. I don't think he ever used the brush once. a couple times he'd use the net but it was just to unblock the skimmer on days when it was crazy windy. I ALWAYS did the actually netting of debris and brushing.
I'll never hire someone unless we become SO BUSY we can't take care of the pool. But If I do hire someone, it'll be a regiment and will likely cost a lot more than a typical pool trip.
Cleaning can create health problems if it's done incorrectly.
Many businesses can create danger to the customer if it's done wrong.
A restaurant can make people sick if they get it wrong.
A car mechanic can create danger if they don't install your brake pads correctly.
The biggest problem with pool service is that there is very little quality control.
Really qualified people are in short supply and they want to be paid more than most people want to pay.
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People want the business to be licensed, bonded, insured and they want the service person to have some sort of real qualification like years of experience and classes in chemistry and pool service.
They want the person to be professional, well dressed and in a professional well maintained vehicle.
They want the person to be well organized, efficient, thorough and have a good personality that customers like.
The person has to have a good driver’s license and work unsupervised.
Try to hire and retain employees like that at $14.00 per hour who know that they are just hired for the busy season and they will be let go once things slow down.
When a new person is hired at a McDonald’s or some other centralized location, they can be directly supervised. Service people are on their own with no assistance when they need it. There’s no one to verify that their work meets quality control.
For all of this, customers want to pay $30 to $50 per week.
You also have to define what constitutes a “Cleaning”.
In any contract, there is a term called “a meeting of the minds”, which means that both parties are clear about the duties and responsibilities of both parties to the agreement.
This is usually absent in the agreement. Both parties assume certain things without verifying.
What will the service person do?
How long will they take? 10 minutes? 2 hours?
Will they do a full set of chemistry tests and report the values?
Do they guarantee some sort of quality control metrics for the chemistry values?
Will they, vacuum, brush, clean the skimmers, and backwash the filter as needed?
Will they disassemble the DE or cartridge filter as needed for cleaning?
Will they clean the robot debris bag?
If there is a defective part, like a pressure gauge, are they expected to replace it as part of the service for just the cost of parts?
Are chemicals included or charged as used?
What if there is a big storm and there is a lot to clean up? Are they expected to do a 2 hour cleanup as part of the service?
In my opinion the lack of clarity on exactly what constitutes a “cleaning” is a big part of the problem.
The other part is finding service people who meet all of the qualifications at a price the customer is willing to pay.
They want the person to be professional, well dressed and in a professional well maintained vehicle.
They want the person to be well organized, efficient, thorough and have a good personality that customers like.
The person has to have a good driver’s license and work unsupervised.
Try to hire and retain employees like that at $14.00 per hour who know that they are just hired for the busy season and they will be let go once things slow down.
When a new person is hired at a McDonald’s or some other centralized location, they can be directly supervised. Service people are on their own with no assistance when they need it. There’s no one to verify that their work meets quality control.
For all of this, customers want to pay $30 to $50 per week.
You also have to define what constitutes a “Cleaning”.
In any contract, there is a term called “a meeting of the minds”, which means that both parties are clear about the duties and responsibilities of both parties to the agreement.
This is usually absent in the agreement. Both parties assume certain things without verifying.
What will the service person do?
How long will they take? 10 minutes? 2 hours?
Will they do a full set of chemistry tests and report the values?
Do they guarantee some sort of quality control metrics for the chemistry values?
Will they, vacuum, brush, clean the skimmers, and backwash the filter as needed?
Will they disassemble the DE or cartridge filter as needed for cleaning?
Will they clean the robot debris bag?
If there is a defective part, like a pressure gauge, are they expected to replace it as part of the service for just the cost of parts?
Are chemicals included or charged as used?
What if there is a big storm and there is a lot to clean up? Are they expected to do a 2 hour cleanup as part of the service?
In my opinion the lack of clarity on exactly what constitutes a “cleaning” is a big part of the problem.
The other part is finding service people who meet all of the qualifications at a price the customer is willing to pay.
A big part of the problem is the seasonal nature of pool cleanings.
Every spring, the pool company needs to hire enough people to meet the busy season and every fall, the people are let go.
So, you start off with a bunch of zero experience people who know nothing. You have to spend some time training, which cost qualified people time and effort. Most training time is lost money.
Most training isn’t that good. Even if it is good, there’s only so much people can learn during training.
So, the company sends out mostly unqualified and unsupervised people.
By the end of the season, the employees have gained some experience, but it’s irrelevant because they are let go when things slow down and all the training and experience is lost.
Genuinely good people are not going to want to be treated like this. So, the average quality of employee will not be in the above average category.
Next spring, it’s the same process all over again.
Most people think that service people follow a normally distributed Gaussian “Bell” curve for quality, but it’s really more of a power curve where 20% of the service people are reasonably good and 80% of the people are not quite as good as you want them to be.
Watch any Consumer Watchdog news show where they test service people from garage doors to plumbers to HVAC technicians and you will see a disturbingly high number of unqualified and unethical people.
www.forbes.com
The 20% of really good people quickly get a full schedule and they can’t get to new customers even if they want to.
So, that leaves everyone else having to deal with the 80% of average or below average performers.
Another part of the problem is that there are no “Consumer Report” type analyses of services like you have for products.
If you want to buy a new car, there are ten different professional reviews that you can look up.
All mass produced products should be made the same. So, one car make and model should be relatively equivalent to another of the same make, model and year.
Services are all individual and custom. Even if a company gets a good review on Yelp or Google, there’s no assurance that you will get the same level of quality.
Will they send the one really qualified service technician or the new guy who has no idea what they’re doing?
Every spring, the pool company needs to hire enough people to meet the busy season and every fall, the people are let go.
So, you start off with a bunch of zero experience people who know nothing. You have to spend some time training, which cost qualified people time and effort. Most training time is lost money.
Most training isn’t that good. Even if it is good, there’s only so much people can learn during training.
So, the company sends out mostly unqualified and unsupervised people.
By the end of the season, the employees have gained some experience, but it’s irrelevant because they are let go when things slow down and all the training and experience is lost.
Genuinely good people are not going to want to be treated like this. So, the average quality of employee will not be in the above average category.
Next spring, it’s the same process all over again.
Most people think that service people follow a normally distributed Gaussian “Bell” curve for quality, but it’s really more of a power curve where 20% of the service people are reasonably good and 80% of the people are not quite as good as you want them to be.
Watch any Consumer Watchdog news show where they test service people from garage doors to plumbers to HVAC technicians and you will see a disturbingly high number of unqualified and unethical people.
The Myth Of The Bell Curve: Look For The Hyper-Performers
There is a long standing belief in business that people performance follows the Bell Curve (also called the Normal Distribution). This belief has been embedded in many business practices: performance appraisals, compensation models, and even how we get graded in school. (Remember "grading by the...
www.forbes.com
The 20% of really good people quickly get a full schedule and they can’t get to new customers even if they want to.
So, that leaves everyone else having to deal with the 80% of average or below average performers.
Another part of the problem is that there are no “Consumer Report” type analyses of services like you have for products.
If you want to buy a new car, there are ten different professional reviews that you can look up.
All mass produced products should be made the same. So, one car make and model should be relatively equivalent to another of the same make, model and year.
Services are all individual and custom. Even if a company gets a good review on Yelp or Google, there’s no assurance that you will get the same level of quality.
Will they send the one really qualified service technician or the new guy who has no idea what they’re doing?
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- May 23, 2015
- 24,474
- Pool Size
- 16000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
A big part of the problem is the seasonal nature of pool cleanings.
Every spring, the pool company needs to hire enough people to meet the busy season and every fall, the people are let go.
So, you start off with a bunch of zero experience people who know nothing. You have to spend some time training, which cost qualified people time and effort. Most training time is lost money.
Most training isn’t that good. Even if it is good, there’s only so much people can learn during training.
So, the company sends out mostly unqualified and unsupervised people.
By the end of the season, the employees have gained some experience, but it’s irrelevant because they are let go when things slow down and all the training and experience is lost.
Genuinely good people are not going to want to be treated like this. So, the average quality of employee will not be in the above average category.
Next spring, it’s the same process all over again.
Most people think that service people follow a normally distributed Gaussian “Bell” curve for quality, but it’s really more of a power curve where 20% of the service people are reasonably good and 80% of the people are not quite as good as you want them to be.
Watch any Consumer Watchdog news show where they test service people from garage doors to plumbers to HVAC technicians and you will see a disturbingly high number of unqualified and unethical people.
The Myth Of The Bell Curve: Look For The Hyper-Performers
There is a long standing belief in business that people performance follows the Bell Curve (also called the Normal Distribution). This belief has been embedded in many business practices: performance appraisals, compensation models, and even how we get graded in school. (Remember "grading by the...
The 20% of really good people quickly get a full schedule and they can’t get to new customers even if they want to.
So, that leaves everyone else having to deal with the 80% of average or below average performers.
Another part of the problem is that there are no “Consumer Report” type analyses of services like you have for products.
If you want to buy a new car, there are ten different professional reviews that you can look up.
All mass produced products should be made the same. So, one car make and model should be relatively equivalent to another of the same make, model and year.
Services are all individual and custom. Even if a company gets a good review on Yelp or Google, there’s no assurance that you will get the same level of quality.
Will they send the one really qualified service technician or the new guy who has no idea what they’re doing?
Great article. I worked for a Fortune 50 tech company in their research division and saw what “forced distribution” performance reviews did. I was there before it was implemented and the division used direct evaluations with manager discretion over who got the best ratings. I was there when they implemented a forced distribution and essentially stripped first line managers of their discretion. It literally destroyed morale among the rank & file, made employees mad, and no one took seriously any of the performance reviews or nonsense “commitments” you had to draft every year. You basically knew that if you did the bare minimum or extra work that your performance review would always be in the middle and so no one really tried. You would occasionally have a good year and get a nice bonus bump but those were few and far between. All the system really did was motivate longtime engineers with huge amounts of institutional knowledge to go look for better paying jobs at rival companies. You could see the Google’s and Facebooks of the tech world offering stupid little perks like a roving espresso cart or fun time during the day at a corporate ping pong table without all the hassle of forced distributions and think, “yeah, you can kiss my 20+ years of experience goodbye, Google pays for everyone’s lunch ...”.
So I agree, the power law distribution is much more accurate. Any company that still uses that outdated methodology will only push away their best employees.
Sorry @Jimrahbe, I know, stick to pools ....
Laszlo Bock, previously the SVP of Google's People Operations, has a book titled "Work Rules!", which is pretty good.
www.businessinsider.com
Another part of the problem is that services are stuck in the dark ages.
Services are done roughly like they have been done for the last several hundred years.
There is a science to service that some big companies employ, but the science is well out of reach to small companies.
You really need experts in service science, math, quality control, logistics, software etc. to really step up and do things at scale and at consistent levels of quality and reliability.
This is just not something that small businesses can do.
This is why companies like Google, Amazon, Uber, eBay, FedEx, UPS, WalMart etc. all have a scale advantage that is really difficult to impossible overcome by smaller challengers.
Inside Google's policy to 'pay unfairly' — why 2 people in the same role can earn dramatically different amounts
Google HR boss Laszlo Bock says pay can vary 300% to 500% between people working in the same area.
www.businessinsider.com
Another part of the problem is that services are stuck in the dark ages.
Services are done roughly like they have been done for the last several hundred years.
There is a science to service that some big companies employ, but the science is well out of reach to small companies.
You really need experts in service science, math, quality control, logistics, software etc. to really step up and do things at scale and at consistent levels of quality and reliability.
This is just not something that small businesses can do.
This is why companies like Google, Amazon, Uber, eBay, FedEx, UPS, WalMart etc. all have a scale advantage that is really difficult to impossible overcome by smaller challengers.
- Nov 7, 2018
- 1,049
- Pool Size
- 14000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- CircuPool RJ-60 Plus
Or was it his AI bot?
- Nov 7, 2018
- 1,049
- Pool Size
- 14000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- CircuPool RJ-60 Plus
Reminds me of a friend who has a weekly housekeeper that spends about 6-8 hours cleaning their 2500 SF house. But, they always "pre-clean" so she isn't there longer.
There are some services I pay for that I could do for myself. Mowing a portion of our yard is an example. The front is very hilly and precludes the use of a riding mower. I am in Oklahoma and it gets to be VERY HOT in the summer and I have always disliked mowing the grass. Plus, when I worked (owned a law firm) it *cost* me money to mow my own grass. Now that I am retired, I reap the benefits of my hard work and let the neighborhood kid do it while I lounge at the pool. But, I do mow the back...but only because I can ride around on the mower and I enjoy the fruits of my "not so laborious labor."
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- Sep 1, 2011
- 545
- Pool Size
- 21000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- CircuPool Universal40
I've thought several times about going "freelance pool guy" as a side gig and doing it the right way. I like the work, the chemistry is fun, I like teaching people stuff, and it would be a way to turn a hobby into an income. I kind of had the idea of working myself out of a job, a pool "Equalizer" if you will. Then I started figuring, how much I would have to charge to make it worthwhile, and quickly realized I would never be able to compete with the pool companies, even the bad ones, around me. Just the cost of chemicals would probably push me out of the right price bracket.
I have merged the A.I and human into a single entity.Or was it his AI bot?
- Nov 7, 2018
- 1,049
- Pool Size
- 14000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- CircuPool RJ-60 Plus
Yep. And as James W explained, running a company is very expensive. When I had my law firm, I dropped close to $35,000 a year before I made a dime...and that doesn't count the variable costs that could be pretty expensive. Retirement is *much* cheaper. ☺
Any thoughts on the idea of having a networking forum on this site, for small business owners (non pool related businesses) ?
Not sure if that would fit in forum rules, but may be an opportunity for people here to pick up some new customers, as well as share ideas.
There are a bunch of videos on Youtube that describe pool services for anyone who's interested in getting a better idea about what it takes.
The truth is that running a small business of any type is brutal.
Owners work 60, 70 or 80 hours a week trying to survive.
Chlorine King on Youtube is a good place to see some of the challenges of running a pool service for anyone interested in learning more.
According to the latest information on small business failure rate published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Roughly 20% of small businesses fail within the first year.
33% of small businesses fail within two years.
50%of small businesses fail within five years.
66% of small businesses fail within 10 years.
Even businesses that don’t go bankrupt have owners working 80 hours a week trying to pull in $50,000.00 per year, which is $9.62 per hour.
Because money’s so tight, many small businesses don’t have health insurance for the owners or employees. If someone gets sick, you’re probably going out of business.
In my opinion, that’s not succeeding, that’s failing. The second that you can no longer put in 80 hours a week, the business fails and you have nothing.
Many small business owners can’t take a vacation because they are indispensable to the business.
In many cases, the business can’t be sold because the owner is the business.
Owners work 60, 70 or 80 hours a week trying to survive.
Chlorine King on Youtube is a good place to see some of the challenges of running a pool service for anyone interested in learning more.
According to the latest information on small business failure rate published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Roughly 20% of small businesses fail within the first year.
33% of small businesses fail within two years.
50%of small businesses fail within five years.
66% of small businesses fail within 10 years.
Even businesses that don’t go bankrupt have owners working 80 hours a week trying to pull in $50,000.00 per year, which is $9.62 per hour.
Because money’s so tight, many small businesses don’t have health insurance for the owners or employees. If someone gets sick, you’re probably going out of business.
In my opinion, that’s not succeeding, that’s failing. The second that you can no longer put in 80 hours a week, the business fails and you have nothing.
Many small business owners can’t take a vacation because they are indispensable to the business.
In many cases, the business can’t be sold because the owner is the business.