Green Pool Cleanup Pricing Calculator (Australia)
Work out how much to charge to clean a green pool in Australia: AUD, litres, return visits, drive per visit, chemicals at cost, a drain option and GST at 10%.
How this is calculated
The quote is a straight build-up from measured litres and the 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 litres rather than as a dose. Margin is taken ex GST; GST goes on top.
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 = litres ÷ 10,000 × chemicalCostPer10kL
water = litresReplaced ÷ 1,000 × waterRatePerKL
materials = (chemicals + water + filterMedia + disposal) × (1 + markup)
exGST = max(labour + materials + addOns, jobMinimum)
GST = exGST × 10% (when registered)
quote = exGST + GST
cost = (crewHours + driveCrew) × costRate + materialsAtCost
margin = (exGST − cost) ÷ exGST
extraVisit = (followUpHours + drivePerVisit) × crewSize × costRate
absorbable = floor(grossProfit ÷ extraVisit)Worked example, the one the unit tests pin. Every money figure here is a typed example, not a rate. A dark green 75,000 L 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 $95 a crew-hour that is $950, plus a 10% revisit contingency of $95, so $1,045 of labour. A half-hour round trip on each of the three visits is 3 paid crew-hours that are not billed. Chemicals at $15 per 10,000 L come to $112.50, 10,000 L of replacement water at $3.50 a kilolitre is $35, and $60 of filter media brings materials to $207.50 at cost, marked up 20% to $249. Quote ex GST: $1,294.00; GST $129.40; quote including GST $1,423.40. At a $55 loaded cost per crew-hour the job costs $922.50, so the margin is $371.50 (28.7%), one more unbilled return visit would cost $165, and the quote can absorb two of them before it goes under.
Where the constants come from. GST is 10% in Australia and is collected as one-eleventh of the sale price (business.gov.au). The cost bases are fixed arithmetic: chemicals per 10,000 L and water per kilolitre, 1,000 L, the unit a water bill charges in. 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. Every currency field starts empty, and this page publishes no price band, because the circulating green pool clean-up figures resolve to homeowner cost pages rather than any regulator, trade body or published survey.
Units. Volumes are litres. Switch the toggle to US gallons and the boxes convert in place by 3.785411784 litres per US gallon, with both rate bases rebased by the same factor, so the same job costs the same whichever unit you typed.
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 twice: once because emptying a pool is a structural decision with hydrostatic and surface risks of its own, and once because the refill may not be allowed. In Melbourne, Yarra Valley Water puts no restriction on filling a pool under its Permanent Water Saving Rules, but once water restrictions are declared a residential pool cannot be filled without an exemption. Water going in with no rate entered is flagged, drive time you do not bill is flagged and still costed, and a missing pool volume is flagged.
Everything runs in your browser. No account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent.
How much to charge to clean a green pool in Australia is the sum of the visits the job takes, the drive you pay on each one, your chemicals, water and filter media at cost, and the margin you need, with 10% GST on top if you are registered. The calculator above builds that quote in AUD and litres from your own numbers. It prices the job; it never doses the pool.
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 and what is left when the chemicals and the water are paid for. The green pool recovery calculator answers the first, and the phosphate remover and algaecide dose calculator handles the phosphate and algaecide side. This page answers the second and shares no math with either: nothing here doses, sequences or quantifies a chemical. Work the quantities out there, against your measured volume and the product label, then bring the cost back here.
Every money field starts empty on purpose
Search for what a green pool clean-up costs in Australia and the results are homeowner cost pages, several of them city by city. None of them traces to a regulator, a trade body or a published survey, so under this site’s cite-or-omit rule this page publishes no price band, no state average and no “typical” green to clean fee. Those figures were left out deliberately rather than invented. The only pre-filled numbers are the per-severity visit counts and visit times, and they are a scoping starting point to overwrite after your first few recoveries. If you have not yet set a defensible charge-out rate, the labour burden rate calculator is the place to build one, with super and on-costs in it.
The drive is paid once per visit
A recovery is a first treatment plus a run of return visits to vacuum, re-test and re-treat. Each return is a fresh round trip, and it often goes unbilled. Price the job as one block of hours and that drive time vanishes from the quote while staying in your week. So the tool asks for the round trip once, multiplies it by the visit count, keeps every one of those hours in your cost, and bills only the share you nominate.
Litres, kilolitres and a chemical line that is a cost
Volume is the anchor: it scales the chemical line, it sets what a full refill costs, and it is the number a recovery quote is least forgivable for guessing. The pool volume calculator turns dimensions into litres. Chemicals are entered as what a recovery’s worth of product costs you per 10,000 litres of pool, from your own purchasing, and water as your water and sewer charge per kilolitre, the unit on an Australian water bill. Working in US gallons, switch the toggle and the boxes convert in place.
The drain option, and Melbourne’s water rules
Sometimes the water is beyond treating and the answer is to empty the pool and start again. That is a structural call first: hydrostatic pressure and the condition of the surface. In Australia it is also a water-rules call, because the refill may not be allowed.
In Melbourne, Yarra Valley Water states that “there are no restrictions on filling or topping up pools, spas or ponds under the Permanent Water Saving Rules”. That changes once restrictions are declared: “Unless granted an exemption, you are not allowed to fill up a residential pool or spa during water restrictions”, and an exemption runs through a Water Use Plan in which the water you save should equal the water you need to fill or top up. The corporation’s 2026 Water Outlook puts storages at 69.3% as at 1 September 2026 and says that if dry conditions continue through spring, water restrictions may be possible over summer 2026/27. Check the stage in force on the day before you quote a refill.
So the tool prices a drain honestly when you pick it, adding the replacement water, disposal and time, and it flags both the structural risk and the refill rule on the result. Outside Melbourne, your own water corporation sets the rule; this page does not summarise every one of them. 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, which is usually less than all of it. For the wider Melbourne storage picture and the season it sits in, the southern-hemisphere pool season hub sets out the published record.
After the summer holidays
“Summer is peak season for Australian pool services”, and a pool that goes unserviced through the Christmas and January break meets that season without anyone watching it. If your book fills with greens in the weeks after the holidays, that is when this quote has to hold up, and also when you have the least spare capacity for unbilled return visits. This page puts no number on that rush, because no Australian survey publishes one. What it gives you instead is the three levers that protect a quote in a busy month: a job minimum, a revisit contingency, and an honest visit count with the drive costed on every one.
GST goes on top, never into the margin
GST is 10% in Australia, collected as “one-eleventh of the sale price”, and registration is compulsory once your GST turnover reaches $75,000. Registered, the invoice you issue to a customer must be a tax invoice. The tool takes your margin ex GST and adds GST afterwards, because GST is collected for the ATO and is never part of what the job earns. Not registered, untick the box and no GST is charged.
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. To set that monthly number properly, with a summer and a winter cadence, the pool service pricing calculator for Australia is the tool for it. Pricing in US dollars and gallons, the US green pool cleanup pricing calculator runs the same model.
Everything runs in your browser: no account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent. Estimate only, not a binding quote.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I charge to clean a green pool in Australia?
How is this different from the green pool recovery calculator?
Can I drain and refill a green pool in Melbourne?
Do I add GST to a green pool clean-up quote?
What if the pool does not clear on schedule?
Sources
- Register for goods and services tax (GST): "Goods and services tax (GST) is a tax of 10% on most goods, services and other items sold or consumed in Australia"; a registered business collects it as "one-eleventh of the sale price"; you must register once "your business has a GST turnover of $75,000 or more", and "Otherwise, registration for GST is optional"; "If your GST turnover is under $75,000 and you haven't chosen to register for GST, you don't include GST in your prices"; "If you're registered for GST, the invoice you issue to a customer must be a tax invoice". business.gov.au (Australian Government). Retrieved .
- Permanent Water Saving Rules: "There are no restrictions on filling or topping up pools, spas or ponds under the Permanent Water Saving Rules". Yarra Valley Water. Retrieved .
- Exemptions: "Unless granted an exemption, you are not allowed to fill up a residential pool or spa during water restrictions"; under a Water Use Plan, "The amount of water you save should be the same as the amount of water you need to fill or top up your pool or spa". Yarra Valley Water. Retrieved .
- 2026 Water Outlook for Melbourne: "Melbourne's storages are currently at 69.3%" (data as at 1 September 2026); "If dry conditions continue through spring, water restrictions may be possible over summer 2026/27". Yarra Valley Water. Retrieved .
- Pool maintenance cost (national homeowner cost guide, cited for its season statement only, no price used): "Summer is peak season for Australian pool services". What's The Damage. Retrieved .