Green Pool Cleanup Pricing Calculator
Work out how much to charge for a green pool cleanup from your own numbers: return visits, crew time, drive per visit, chemicals at cost, a drain option, contingency and margin.
How this is calculated
The quote is a straight build-up from measured volume and time you enter. Three things behave deliberately: task times are per technician and crew size multiplies them, the round trip is paid once per visit rather than once per job, and chemistry enters as your own cost per 10,000 gallons rather than as a dose.
visits = 1 + followUpVisits
onSite = initial + followUpVisits × followUpHours + filterClean + extra
crewHours = onSite × crewSize
driveCrew = drivePerVisit × visits × crewSize
billedDrv = driveCrew × driveBillPct
labourBase = (crewHours + billedDrv) × chargeRate
labour = labourBase × (1 + contingency)
chemicals = poolGallons ÷ 10,000 × chemicalCostPer10kGal
water = waterReplaced ÷ 1,000 × waterRatePer1000Gal
materials = (chemicals + water + filterMedia + disposal) × (1 + markup)
subtotal = labour + materials + addOns
recovery = max(subtotal, jobMinimum)
tax = recovery × taxRate
cost = (crewHours + driveCrew) × costRate + materialsAtCost
margin = (recovery − cost) ÷ recovery
extraVisit = (followUpHours + drivePerVisit) × crewSize × costRate
absorbable = floor(grossProfit ÷ extraVisit)Worked example, the one the unit tests pin. A dark green 20,000 gallon pool, two techs, treated in place over three visits: 2 h on the first visit, 1 h on each of two returns, 1 h on the filter, so 5 h per tech and 10 crew-hours. At 85 a crew-hour that is 850, plus a 10% revisit contingency of 85, so 935 of labour. A half-hour round trip on each of the three visits is 3 paid crew-hours that are not billed. Chemicals at 60 per 10,000 gallons come to 120, 3,000 gallons of replacement water at 9 per 1,000 gallons comes to 27, and 40 of filter media brings materials to 187 at cost, marked up 20% to 224.40. Quote before tax: 1,159.40. At a 45 loaded cost per crew-hour the job costs 772, so the margin is 387.40, one more unbilled return visit would cost 135, and the quote can absorb two of them before it goes under.
Where the constants come from. There are only two sets, and neither is money. The cost bases are fixed arithmetic: chemicals are entered per 10,000 gallons and water per 1,000 gallons, so the tool divides by those numbers and nothing else. The severity profiles are scoping conventions, not sourced benchmarks: a light green pool starts at 1.5 h and one return visit, a dark green pool at 2 h and two returns, a black swamp at 3 h and three returns of 1.5 h each. They say only that a darker pool takes more returns. Each lands in an editable box and is expected to be overwritten with your own timed recoveries. Every currency field starts empty, and this page publishes no price band, because the circulating green pool cleanup figures resolve to homeowner cost pages and directories quoting each other rather than to any regulator, trade body or published survey.
Units. Volumes default to US gallons, with water priced per 1,000 US gallons and chemicals per 10,000 US gallons. Switch the toggle to litres and all four convert at the form boundary, the volumes by 3.785411784 litres per US gallon and both rate bases by the same factor, so the same job costs the same whichever unit you typed.
The revisit question, answered twice. The honest risk on a recovery is that the water does not clear on schedule. You can price that in with the contingency percentage, and you can measure it with the break-even figure: how many unbilled return visits the quote's margin will cover before the job goes below its own cost. Both need your loaded cost per crew-hour, and the whole margin block is all-or-nothing, because without that number the labour half of the cost is unknown and a margin taken off materials alone would flatter every quote.
Coupled side effects the tool will not let you skip. A dark green or black pool scoped as a single visit is flagged. A drain and refill is always flagged, because emptying a pool is a structural decision with hydrostatic and surface risks of its own and a discharge your local authority may regulate; picking it here prices it, it does not endorse it. Water going in with no utility rate entered is flagged. Drive time you do not bill is flagged and still costed, once per visit. And a missing pool volume is flagged, because it is the measurement the whole job is scoped from.
Everything runs in your browser. No account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent.
What this prices, and what the recovery calculator next door does
A green pool is two separate problems. One is chemistry: what goes in the water, at what strength, to what target. The other is commercial: how many visits it takes, what the drive costs when it is paid three or four times, and what is left when the chemicals and the water are paid for. The green pool recovery calculator answers the first. This page answers the second, and it deliberately shares no math with it: nothing here doses, sequences or quantifies a chemical.
Every money field starts empty on purpose
Search for what a green pool cleanup costs and you will find plenty of numbers, most of them written for homeowners. Follow their citations and they resolve to cost-guide pages and lead-generation directories quoting each other: no regulator, no trade body, no published survey. Under this site’s cite-or-omit rule that means this page publishes no price band, no regional average and no “typical” green to clean fee. Those figures were left out deliberately rather than fabricated.
What the tool gives you instead is the shape of the quote, with every currency field blank until you fill it. The only pre-filled numbers anywhere are the per-severity visit counts and visit times, and they sit in editable boxes: they are a scoping starting point, not a benchmark. Overwrite them after your first few recoveries. If you have not yet set a defensible number to type into the rate box, the service hourly rate calculator and the labor burden rate calculator are the two places to start.
The drive is paid once per visit, and that is the whole game
A recovery is an initial treatment plus a run of return visits to vacuum, re-test and re-treat. Each of those returns is a fresh round trip, and most operators bill none of it. Price the job as one block of hours and that drive time vanishes from the quote while staying very much in your week. So this tool asks for the round trip once, multiplies it by the visit count, puts every one of those hours in your cost, and bills only the share you nominate. The per-paid-crew-hour figure underneath the quote counts all of it.
Chemistry is a cost line here, never a dose
The chemical line asks for one thing: what a recovery’s worth of product costs you per 10,000 gallons of pool. That is a cost you already know from your own purchasing, and it scales with the measured volume you enter. It is not a dose, not a strength, and not a recommendation. Work the quantities out in the green pool recovery calculator and the pool shock calculator against your own measured volume, with the product label in front of you, then bring the cost back here. The label is the authority on every chemical you use.
Measure the pool before you price the job
Volume is the anchor. It scales the chemical line, it sets what a full drain costs to refill, and it is the number a recovery quote is least forgivable for guessing. If you do not have it, measure it: the pool volume calculator turns dimensions into gallons or litres, and the tool flags a missing volume rather than quietly pricing the chemicals at zero.
The drain option is a risk decision, not a pricing preference
Sometimes the water is beyond treating and the answer is to empty the pool and start again. That is a structural call: hydrostatic pressure, the condition of the surface, and whatever your local authority requires of the discharge. This tool will not make it for you. What it does is price it honestly when you pick it, adding replacement water, disposal and permit costs and the time, with the risk flagged on the result rather than buried in a subtotal. If the reason you are considering a drain is cyanuric acid rather than algae, the CYA drain and dilution calculator works out how much water actually has to go to reach your target, which is usually less than all of it.
Price the revisit risk, then measure it
The honest risk on a recovery is that the water does not clear on the schedule you quoted. The tool handles that from both ends. The contingency percentage prices the risk into the quote as an uplift on labour. The break-even figure measures it: given your loaded cost per crew-hour, how many unbilled return visits this quote’s margin will cover before the job goes below its own cost. A quote that can absorb none of them is a gamble with a price attached.
A green pool at opening is a different job from an opening
Plenty of recoveries arrive on the day the cover comes off. When that happens the visit is not a longer opening, it is two jobs: a normal spring startup and a recovery, each with its own price. The pool opening pricing calculator prices the first and flags the second rather than absorbing it.
The job is the account, not the invoice
A recovery is a one-off. What makes it worth doing is often the monthly account that follows once the water is clear. Tick the plan conversion, enter your monthly price, and the tool shows what that account is worth annualised beside the recovery, never added to it. When you are ready to set that monthly number properly, the pool service price calculator is the tool for it, and the weekly pool maintenance checklist is what the visits look like after that.
Everything runs in your browser: no account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent. Estimate only, not a binding quote.