pool maintenancein stella maris.

In most countries a pool has an opening day and a closing day. In the UAE it never closes, but it does change character completely four or five times a year. From October to April the water sits between roughly 18 and 26 degrees, chemical demand is modest, and a weekly visit is usually enough. From May onwards the water climbs past 30 degrees, chlorine starts disappearing almost as fast as it goes in, and evaporation can pull several millimetres of water out of the pool every day.

Layered over that heat cycle are the shamal winds, which arrive mainly in early summer and again in winter, carrying fine Gulf dust that acts as a nutrient delivery service for algae. Then there is the social calendar: Ramadan compresses working hours, Eid empties villas for a week, and the December-to-February stretch is when everyone suddenly remembers they own a heater. A good maintenance plan anticipates all of this rather than reacting to it.

The waterline is where owners judge a pool, but the pump room is where pools are actually won or lost, and it is the part of the visit worth watching once so you know what good looks like. A thorough technician reads the filter pressure gauge before touching anything, because pressure relative to the clean baseline dictates whether a backwash is needed; backwashes when the pressure rises roughly half a bar above baseline; and checks the sight glass runs clear before rinsing and returning to filtration.

UAE pump rooms have one hazard of their own: heat. An enclosed block room in August can exceed 50 degrees inside, which shortens motor and capacitor life dramatically. Ventilation grilles blocked by garden storage are one of the most common and most avoidable causes of summer pump failure. If your pump room doubles as a store cupboard, stop; the space around the motor is not shelf space.

If you own a villa with a private pool, everything in this guide is your responsibility, discharged either personally or through a maintenance contract. There is no inspector coming; the consequences of neglect are simply borne by your family and your resale value. Most villa owners settle on a contract in the AED 300–900 monthly band depending on pool size and visit frequency, and treat one-off jobs — media changes, green recoveries, heater services — as extras.

The place these worlds meet is the townhouse compound with both a small private plunge pool and a shared community pool. Owners there sometimes assume the community contractor covers their private pool; it almost never does. Read the community rules, and if your plot pool needs its own contract, arrange one — several tamam vendors service clusters of neighbours in the same compound on the same morning, which is worth mentioning when comparing quotes.