Temperatures aren’t the only thing that increase during summer – if you’re not careful, your energy bills can also quickly rise. Alongside summer energy conservation tips like managing your thermostat, closing window coverings, and sealing window and door cracks, let’s examine another summer power guzzler: swimming pools.

Having a pool is a welcome retreat on hot, sunny days, but it can come at the cost of staggering energy bills. Temperature control, lighting, filtering, and plumbing all require power, and those associated costs can add up.

The good news? You can splash smart and be environmentally conscience by taking time to check out your pool’s systems and make a plan to reduce your energy use.

Optimizing a pool for energy efficiency may sound costly and appear daunting. However, we’ve categorized energy-efficient pool tips from easiest and cheapest to more complex and expensive.

Starting Small with the Low-Hanging Fruit

• Keep up with cleaning. Staying on top of pool maintenance can make your filtering system run far more efficiently. A dirty, clogged pool pump works much harder than a clean one. Adding and balancing chemicals, backwashing your drain system, and even taking a little time to skim your pool can keep everything running smoothly.
• Buy and use a pool cover. This one simple change can dramatically reduce water evaporation and, therefore, water use, as well as help keep your water free of debris.
• Be smart with scheduling. Schedule your systems to run outside the peak hours of 3-7 pm, when energy costs are typically higher.
• Using LED lightbulbs instead of incandescent bulbs in your pool’s lighting could save as much as 80% in lighting costs. You will have to replace bulbs less frequently, require fewer lights to achieve the same brightness, and consume less power.
• If you have a pool heating system, keep the temperature toward the lower end of a normal heating range (usually about 78 degrees) to save money. Every degree higher can add as much as 30% to your heater’s energy costs. Better yet, keep the heater off altogether!

Medium Effort and Expense for Maximum Efficiency

• Try slowly reducing the time your pool pump runs each day to determine the optimal balance of maintaining a clean pool with minimal active filtering. Often, pools are programmed to run their pumps for more hours in the summer than necessary.
• Install some solar-powered lighting around your pool for a relatively easy and environmentally friendly energy-saving solution.
• Replace your pump with a smaller, more energy-efficient model. Switching out a single-speed pump for a variable-speed ENERGY STAR-certified pump could save you hundreds of dollars, meaning you’ll recoup the cost of the replacement in just a couple of years.
• Automate your pool functions with timers, robotic pool cleaners, or automated pool covers to reduce your manual labor while increasing your pool’s efficiency.

Bigger Investment, Bigger Rewards

• Replace your pool heater with a solar pool heating system. Installing one could cost you several thousand dollars upfront, but once you add up your gas or electric system costs per year, you’ll see it’s a cost-effective (and green) choice.
• A lower-tech option for pool heating in areas where the heat index isn’t excessive is refinishing your pool in a darker color, which will absorb and retain more of the sun’s heat.
• Your pool's plumbing can affect how hard the pump works. If the pipes are too narrow or have complicated paths, the pump must work harder. Fixing this after the pool is installed is a big job, so it's best to make sure it's done correctly when the pool is being built.
• Adding landscaping to your pool area can create windbreaks to reduce heat loss and evaporation without increasing power consumption.

Most people know a pool is a significant investment, but it doesn’t have to be one you regret. With a simple audit of your pool’s functions and following energy-efficient pool tips that work for you, it’s possible to go green, reduce your workload, and improve your energy savings all at once – and that makes your pool the summertime joy it’s supposed to be.

Are you searching for more energy-efficient tips? Check out all our blog posts about energy saving!