Pool running cost calculator
Tell it about your pool and it will price every part of running it at your own electricity rate — the filtration pump, the salt cell, the cleaner and the heating if you have any. It also works out how many turnovers a day your timer setting is actually buying, which for most pools is two or three times what the water needs.
Your pool
Your energy rates — change any of them
These are New South Wales’s published reference rates. They are a starting point, not what you necessarily pay — put the numbers from your own bill in and every figure on this site changes with them.
The usage rate on your bill, sometimes called the peak or anytime rate.
Gas is billed by the megajoule, not the kilowatt hour.
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Before you buy anything
The hours above are calculated at the flow rate on the pump's energy label, which is measured at a standard resistance. A long pipe run, a roof solar loop or a filter that is due for a clean all reduce real flow, so treat this as a floor and add a margin rather than trimming to the minute.
Every pump, doing the same job
Each of these is running for however long it needs to move the same water as your current pump does on your current setting — so this is a fair comparison of pumps, not a comparison of timer settings. The slow ones run longest and cost least.
A suction cleaner is modelled as about ten hours a week of pumping at the pump's rated maximum input power. That is the largest single assumption here: a cleaner left permanently connected forces high speed for the whole filtration cycle and costs more than this, one run twice a week costs less, and a cleaner rarely needs everything the pump has. Treat the penalty as an indication of size rather than a figure for your installation — but do not treat it as nothing, because it is not.
Prices and star ratings come from the Australian GEMS Swimming Pool Pumps register. Each class shows the labelled consumption of the median registered product in that class, and how many products the class contains — a figure drawn from four products is a much weaker guide than one drawn from 229.
Heating, if you want it
These are not interchangeable and the cheapest is not automatically the answer. What each one can and cannot do is on the card, and it matters more than the price.
These figures are rounded, deliberately. Pool heating is the one part of this site fitted to industry figures rather than to a published determination, and the fit was only ever checked against covered pools — so the ranking here is solid and the absolute figures are not precise. An exposed, windy site will do worse than these and a sheltered one better. What the coefficient was fitted to, and whether it still matches.
What this does not include
Chemicals, salt, filter media, repairs and the water itself. Chemicals run roughly $300 to $600 a year for a typical Australian pool depending on how it is sanitised and how much sun it gets, and a salt cell needs replacing every three to seven years at around $300 to $400. Water is not priced here at all, because it is billed by the utility rather than by the state and this site does not carry water tariffs — the calculator reports the litres and leaves the rate to you.
None of those change which pump or which heater to choose, which is what this page is for. They do change what a pool costs to own, so they are worth knowing before you build one.
Frequently asked questions
How many hours a day should a pool pump run?
Long enough to turn the water over once, which is not a number of hours — it depends entirely on your pump and the size of your pool. The industry standard is one turnover a day, two in hot weather or heavy use. On the single-speed pump sitting beside most Australian pools, one turnover of a 48,000 litre pool takes about three hours; most timers are set to eight. That is 2.7 turnovers rather than one, and it costs $1,173 a year at New South Wales rates instead of $440. Fixing the timer is free, takes two minutes, and saves more than replacing the pump would.
Is a variable speed pump worth the money?
Usually yes, and the physics is unusually clear: pump power rises with roughly the cube of speed, so running at half speed for twice as long moves the same water for about a quarter of the energy. Doing identical filtration work, a 6-star variable speed pump costs about $146 a year against $435 for the most common single-speed model. Against a supplied-and-installed price of roughly $1,300 to $2,200, that is a payback of three to five years — but fix the timer first, because that saving costs nothing and is often the larger of the two.
Why does my star rating not match another pump's?
Because star ratings are banded separately for each type of pump and the bands overlap heavily. A two-speed pump rated 3.5 stars and a single-speed pump rated 2 stars use about the same energy to move the same water. Comparing stars across pump types tells you almost nothing. The consumption figure on the label — the kilowatt hours a year — is calculated the same way for every pump on the register, so it is directly comparable between any two. Compare that number, not the stars.
Does a suction cleaner really change which pump is cheapest?
Yes, and it is the finding in this module we have not seen anywhere else. A suction cleaner has no motor of its own — the filtration pump drives it, and to drive it the pump has to run up to high speed. On the median 6-star variable speed pump that means going from about 212 W to 1,319 W for as long as the cleaner is working. It takes that pump from $146 a year to $347, and it drops it from first to third in the rankings behind the 7-star and 5-star models, which have lower maximum draws. A robotic cleaner runs on its own low-voltage supply for about $19 a year and lets the pump stay slow. If you are buying a variable speed pump, budget for a robotic cleaner with it.
Does salt chlorination cost anything to run?
A little, and it is easy to miss because the cell only draws power while the pump is running. On the default pool the chlorinator adds about $104 a year in New South Wales — roughly two thirds again on top of an efficient pump's own running cost. It is not a reason to avoid salt, which most people prefer for other reasons, but it is a reason to get the timer right: the chlorinator's cost scales with pump hours, so over-filtering costs you twice.
How much water does a heated pool lose?
More than most people expect, and it is the same physics as the heating bill. An uncovered pool held at 28 °C through the season loses roughly 5 cm a week to evaporation, because evaporation is where most of the heat goes — around 58,000 litres over a season on a 48,000 litre pool, which is more than the pool holds. A bubble cover cuts both the heat loss and the water loss by about 70%. We report the water in litres rather than dollars because water is billed by utility rather than by state, and this site carries no water tariffs.