Hotel pool maintenance in Tulum

A hotel pool is not measured in cubic metres, it is measured in beds. Eight guests in the water at midday burn through the chlorine a house uses in three days. From $2,400 MXN per month, with the visit before 9 in the morning and parameters logged at every service.

We service boutique hotels, hostels, cabanas and small lodgings in the Zona Hotelera Tulum, in Centro Tulum and in the jungle around Francisco Uh May and Holistika, plus the corridor out to Tankah, Soliman Bay and Akumal.

Public-use pool versus house pool

Both have water and chlorine, and that is where the resemblance ends. What changes is the speed at which everything moves.

The practical consequence is that in a hotel, maintenance is not scheduled by calendar, it is scheduled by occupancy. A week at 40 per cent and a week at 95 per cent are not the same pool.

The service window

Our route opens at 7:30. On the beach strip we go in early, with the pool empty: it is the only hour when you can brush walls and waterline, vacuum the floor and backwash without getting anyone out of the water and without a hose appearing in the breakfast photo.

What that hour allows and a midday visit does not:

• A full brushing of walls and steps, which is where algae start and which cannot be done with people in the pool.
• Vacuuming the floor without lifting sediment in front of guests.
• Backwashing the filter while the water is still, so the level recovers before the pool opens.
• Dosing with contact time. Chemicals need to circulate before anyone gets in; applying them at midday means applying them on top of people.

What the beach does to your pool

A hotel on the beach strip has three problems that do not exist two kilometres inland.

• Sand. It comes in stuck to bodies and in flip-flops. It goes to the floor and then to the filter. A rinse shower before the pool cuts more filter load than any chemical.
• Salt air. It attacks screws, handrails, ladders and the pump lid. In a beachfront equipment room what fails first is not the motor, it is what holds it together.
• Sargassum. In season it is not only on the beach: it comes in as fine organic matter in hair, swimsuits and towels, and it eats chlorine. During sargassum peaks the disinfectant demand rises even at the same occupancy.

The full calendar of rains, nortes and sargassum is in the Tulum climate guide.

When the power goes

Across much of Tulum the supply is intermittent and many beachfront properties run on a generator or on solar. The first thing an outage stops is the pump, and with no circulation the water stops passing through the filter and the chlorinator. In this heat that becomes visible in 24 to 48 hours.

We leave the protocol in writing in the equipment room, four steps the night staff can follow without knowing anything about pools: check the pump restarted by itself when power returned, check the timer did not reset to zero, note the time of the cut, and call us if it ran over four hours. With that, the difference between a scare and a green-pool rescue is one phone call.

Frequency by type of property

In hotels the realistic recommendation is not that we come every day: it is that we come two or three times a week and that your staff take a daily chlorine and pH reading with strips or a photometer, written in the log. We teach that in one visit and we review the log at every service. It costs less and works better than a daily visit with no record.

Why the pool shows up in reviews

Because it is the first thing photographed and the only part of the hotel a guest evaluates with their body. Three complaints account for almost all of it:

• Chlorine smell. It is almost never excess: it is chloramines, chlorine already spent that nobody replaced. It is fixed with oxidation, not by lowering the dose.
• Red eyes. It is not the chlorine, it is pH out of range. That is why we measure pH before chlorinating and not the other way round.
• Cloudy water after a big group. That is a saturated filter. It is prevented by backwashing after the peak, not by waiting for the routine day.

What is included and what is quoted separately

• Visits on the agreed plan, before pool hours, with the same technician
• Chlorine, pH and alkalinity adjusters, preventive algaecide and clarifier
• Full cleaning, backwash and filter pressure check
• Pump, timer, chlorinator and circulation checked on every visit
• Parameter log per visit and password access to the history
• Emergency attention between visits, weekends and high season included

Separate and always approved beforehand: parts and equipment, filter media replacement ($2,200 MXN), surge tank cleaning ($1,800 MXN), salt cell cleaning ($900 MXN), green pool rescue ($2,500 MXN) and tanker refills. It is all on the pricing page.

Start before the season, not during it

The best moment to change pool service is October or November, not 20 December. A pool that has been running badly for months needs two to four days of recovery, and those days do not exist with a full hotel.

Message us on WhatsApp at +52 984 208 8235 with the name of the hotel, the area and the approximate pool volume. We come and look, we measure and we hand over a written proposal. If what you run is villas or apartments on rental rather than a hotel, the service is Airbnb and rental villa pools; if it is the shared pool of a building, it is condo and HOA pools.