Green pools
How to fix a green pool fast (a Gold Coast guide)
A green pool is almost always an algae bloom — usually after hot weather, heavy rain, or a filter that's stopped pulling its weight. The good news: most pools can be back to swim-ready in 3–5 days if you attack it in the right order.
1. Test and balance first. Get the pH down to around 7.2 — chlorine barely works in unbalanced water. 2. Shock it hard. A light dose won't cut it on a real bloom; you need a proper shock treatment. 3. Run the filter 24/7 and backwash as it loads up. 4. Brush daily — algae clings to walls and steps. 5. Clear the dead algae with a flocculant or by vacuuming to waste.
If it's gone past light green to "can't see the bottom," DIY can cost more in chemicals than it's worth. That's exactly what our fixed-price green pool recovery is for.
Maintenance
How often should you service your pool on the Gold Coast?
Our climate is tough on pools — long hot summers, sudden storms and heavy leaf drop. As a rule of thumb on the Coast: weekly in summer and fortnightly in the cooler months keeps most residential pools reliably clear.
Pools that get used a lot, sit under trees, or belong to holiday rentals usually need weekly year-round. The real risk with stretching visits out is that chemistry drifts quietly — and by the time the water looks off, you're already paying to recover it rather than maintain it.
Not sure what yours needs? A quick assessment will tell you exactly.
Equipment
Salt vs chlorine pools: which is right for you?
It's a common myth that "salt pools have no chlorine." They do — a salt-water chlorinator simply makes chlorine from salt automatically, so you're not handling liquid chlorine as often. Both end up sanitising the same way.
Salt tends to be gentler on skin and eyes and lower-fuss day to day, but the chlorinator cell needs cleaning and eventually replacing. Manual chlorine is cheaper to set up and easy to dose, but it's more hands-on. Either way, the water still needs regular balancing — the system doesn't replace proper servicing.
Thinking of switching, or your chlorinator's on the way out? We can advise and handle the upgrade.
Safety compliance
The sneaky reasons Gold Coast pools fail their safety inspection
Most owners assume a pool fence either "is" or "isn't" compliant — built once, done forever. It's not. The real failure points are rarely the fence itself; they're what's around it.
The non-climbable zone. Nothing climbable is allowed within 900mm outside the barrier, or 300mm inside it — that includes pot plants, a BBQ, outdoor furniture, even a stack of pool noodles a toddler could use as a step. Move something into that zone after your last certificate and you can fail the next one without ever touching the fence.
Ground clearance and "effective height." The gap under your fence can't exceed 100mm — but here's the one nobody thinks about: garden beds, mulch or soil that's crept up over the years can quietly shrink your fence's real height below the 1200mm minimum, even though the fence itself hasn't moved. It's measured from the ground you've actually got today, not the day the fence went in. We catch all of this before your formal inspection, not after — get a free quote.
Glass fencing
Glass pool fences on the Gold Coast: what actually needs to comply
Frameless and semi-frameless glass fencing looks incredible around a pool — and it's everywhere in the suburbs we work in. But glass doesn't get an exemption from the rules, it just makes small mistakes harder to spot.
Same 1200mm minimum height, same 100mm maximum gap under every panel — measured at the actual ground level, not the day it was installed. Glass systems rely on spigots to hold panel spacing exact, so if a panel's ever been removed and reinstalled for a clean, a repair or a resurface, it's worth checking the gaps are still tight.
The other thing we see a lot: grime or scale built up along the base of a panel can hide a growing gap until someone looks closely — which is exactly why we check compliance and give panels a proper clean at the same time. See Glass Fence Sparkling Clean, or go straight to a compliance check.
Gates & latches
Self-closing, self-latching: the QLD gate rule most people quietly break
It's one of the simplest rules in the whole pool safety standard — your gate has to close and latch itself, from any open position, without anyone touching it. It's also one of the most common things we find broken on an otherwise compliant pool.
The usual culprit isn't a faulty latch — it's convenience. A brick against the gate on pool days. A hook someone installed to stop it slamming. A hinge that's sagged just enough that the gate settles half-open instead of swinging shut. Every one of those defeats the entire point of a self-closing gate: it has to work when nobody's watching, not just when someone remembers to check it.
The fix is usually minutes, not dollars — a hinge adjustment, removing a prop, a latch spring replacement. It's just one of the things that's easy to let slide until an inspection catches it. Get a free quote and we'll check it along with everything else.
