Guests report pool problems overlate

[KKC]

@muddy

pool is a “1770’s home experience”.

Pools and algae are very 1770s.

[mica555]

@pdolc

Our rental is definitely not the kind of place where guests expect or want anything more than the bare minimum of intrusive services

Sounds like you want very badly to hear someone say that you’re right.

You have decided on your model of business, and it mostly works great. There are some downsides and you’ve found one. It doesn’t necessarily mean you need to change the way you do things, but it’s inevitable that things like this will occasionally happen.

You can set aside some of the money that would have gone into frequent “intrusive” management and save it to pay for events like this.

[JJD]

@pdolc

Bad smells, green pools, water where it shouldn’t be, suspicious sounds, are all things we’d really hope a guest reports ASAP

I agree with all of those things except for green pools. Those other things are obvious issues but pools turn green. I would’ve thought that it was just time for it to be serviced and wouldn’t have wanted to bother you with it if I was leaving the next day anyway. And I’ve owned homes and rented homes. Even homes with pools. And they turn green. And then the pool company comes and does stuff and it’s not green anymore. I am surprised to hear that it is something that should’ve been reported.

[HostAirbnbVRBO]

This is a straw man argument about’ daily’ pool help.

Pools don’t turn green in a day.

Again, you don’t know that the guests were outside and saw the green pool developing, do you? Do you want to amend your House Rules to say “It is up to you to go outside each day and observe the pool, its coloring and alert us immediately if it’s color becomes greenish, suggesting algae…”?

If I were your guest and you dinged me I would look for governmental authorities to report your pool as unhealthy and unsafe and available to the public.

[mollimac]

Looks like you may have dodged a bullet. As an old friend once told me, “Even a blind squirrel gets a nut now and then!” Lesson learned, & good luck with future bookings.

[gillian]

@pdolc

Definitely going to have the caretaker do several pool-health visits/checks per week when guests are over. In retrospect I must have just gotten lucky that his never happened before.

in summer, things can change very quickly in a pool. We have weekly visits from our pool guy in summer. I have a note in our manual that service professionals may be on site for maintenance, that’s suitably vague.

however, We are pool owners and we would notice if the water was below the skimmer box and absolutely would say something if the water colour was off. The only time our pool turned green was when were were away, and my parents were in charge, neither of them have ever managed a pool. It turned green and instead of calling for help, they very unhelpfully hired a pump and drained the whole pool! (really dumb idea in case you don’t know. the pool water is just a cocktail and it can be fixed)

@muddy

@pdolc

People love the property and the 1770’s home experience.

That’s cool. I do think it’s rather ironic, though, that a place with a pool is a “1770’s home experience”.

lol, my house is 1880s with a 1970s pool experience.

[MountainGirl1]

That’s interesting. I looked out the back window to see one of the guests in the backyard in the evening. Closed the blinds straight away.
His GF left a review along the lines they were being surveilled from the big house, which was a bit farcical.

[casailinglady]

@pdolc

daily visits by a pool guy would ruin the solitude and privacy that guests expect from this particular property.

Mine is weekly and guests know when they’re coming. Getting someone in weekly and posting that in your listing and telling them that in messenger lets them know if there are issues, there’s someone close by to fix them.

[Tranquility_Base]

@pdolc

several pool-health visits/checks per week when guests are over.

This will be insufficient. Not the frequency, but the lack of consistency. Pool chemistry shifts whether people use the pool or not. So if your caretaker only monitors the pool when people are staying, and you have more than a week between stays, the pool will already be in bad shape when the new guest arrive. When we rented a house with a pool, the dedicated pool guy (paid for by the mgmt co) came every. single. Wednesday. …even when the house was vacant for months before we rented it. That’s what it takes.

We have a spa at our listing. Hot water can go funky fast, if the chemistry is not maintained in balance frequently. We typically have 2- or 3-night stays (2 night minimum) back to back when we’re busy. I adjust the chemistry at each check-out and again before a check-in if it’s been more than several days between bookings. Most of the time, it’s just adding some chlorine, but sometimes other things need to be adjusted. People didn’t rinse off their sunscreen and trail dust before climbing in? Bummer, gotta do extra adjustments and filter cleaning. But letting the spa go more than a week without checking will put it out of service until the chemistry can be reset, or do a dreaded drain & refill. But our spa is only 300 gallons. Pools can be 10s of thousands of gallons.

[Tranquility_Base]

@JJD

But if a single leaf falls on an outdoor table, neither a guest nor tenant ever sees it.

Invasion of the Leaf-Snatchers, starring JJD, Samuel L. Jackson, and Sir Patrick Stewart.