The moving truck is gone and you’re standing in the side yard looking at the equipment pad: a pump, a filter, maybe a heater, three valve handles pointing in directions that mean nothing yet, and a gray box with a switch nobody labeled. The seller’s instructions were “the pool guy handles it.” The pool guy was the seller’s. “I just bought a house with a pool, what should I do?” is a fair question at this moment, and our monthly maintenance and pool cleaning service exists for the people who get to week four and decide they’d rather not.

Either way, the first month is the same: learn what you own, find out what shape the water is in, and make the safety stuff boring.

I just bought a house with a pool: what should I do, week by week?

Week one: find everything and write it down

Photograph every piece of equipment on the pad, then every data plate up close. The data plate is the tag with the brand, model, serial number and electrical rating, and often a manufacture date. It’s the most honest document on the property, and it outranks the listing.

You want the pump, filter, heater, salt cell or chlorinator, the time clock or automation panel, and the breakers that feed them. Find the heater’s gas shutoff while you’re there. Keep it all in one note on your phone, because the first question anyone asks about a noisy pump is the model number. Our rundown of what pool equipment actually breaks will make more sense once you know what’s on your pad and how old it is.

Ask the seller, through the agents if you have to, for the name of their pool service, any manuals and any warranty paperwork. Some people hand over a folder. Some hand over a shrug.

Learn which valve does what

Most pads have two or three big valve handles. Before the pump, one usually splits suction between the skimmer and the main drain. After the filter, a pool and spa combo has one that sends water to the pool, the spa or both.

Figure yours out with the pump off. Move one handle, turn the pump on at low speed, and watch where the water goes: skimmer pulling, spa spilling, jets pushing. Then write the answer on the pipe with a paint marker. Labels from the previous owner are a suggestion, not a fact. The one firm rule: never run the pump with every suction line closed, or with every return closed.

Test the whole panel, not just chlorine and pH

A test strip reading chlorine and pH tells you about this week. Stabilizer and calcium tell you about the last few years, which is the history you just bought. Get the full panel once, with a good kit or a sample taken to a pool store. The CDC’s home pool guidance says a DPD test kit is the most accurate option, and that test strips are less accurate.

Stabilizer is the one to watch on an inherited pool. The Pool & Hot Tub Alliance fact sheet puts the ideal at 30 to 50 ppm and says it should not exceed 100. Stabilized tablets push it up every week, and PHTA’s fix for too much is a partial drain and refill. If your reading comes back at 150, that’s not a chemical you add. That’s a drain.

Calcium is the local one. California American Water’s 2025 report for Thousand Oaks lists total hardness around 140 mg/L, and evaporation takes the water and leaves the calcium, so pools here trend harder every summer. After this first full panel, Hayward’s Aqua Rite manual gives a sensible rhythm: chlorine, pH, alkalinity and salt weekly, stabilizer and calcium quarterly.

Clean the filter and write down the clean pressure

You have no idea when the filter was last cleaned. Assume it was a while ago. Pentair’s Clean & Clear Plus manual says to clean a cartridge filter when the gauge reads about 10 psi above its clean starting pressure, and that number only works if you know the starting pressure. So clean it now, turn the pump back on at its normal speed, read the gauge, and write that number on the tank.

Empty the skimmer and pump baskets while you’re at it. If the cartridges are torn or the pressure won’t come back down, our post on the signs a pool filter is going bad covers clean, repair or replace.

Week two: drain covers, gates and alarms

This is the week that isn’t about the water. The CPSC’s June 2026 report says an average of 376 children under 15 drowned each year from 2021 to 2023 in pool or spa incidents. Nearly 80% were under five, and more than 70% of the deaths happened at a home, the victim’s or a neighbor’s.

Start with the drains. The CPSC’s Pool Safely tips say never to enter a pool or spa with a loose, broken or missing drain cover, and that drain suction can trap an adult, not just a child’s hair or swimsuit. Look at every cover in the pool and spa: screwed down, not cracked, not missing. If one fails, keep people out until it’s replaced.

Then the barriers. Pool Safely calls for a fence at least four feet high around the pool, access only through a self-closing, self-latching gate, and a door alarm from the house to the pool area. California’s own rules are more specific, and your home inspector was required to report which of the state’s seven drowning prevention features the property has. Our guide to California pool fence law explains what that section of your inspection report means.

While you’re thinking about liability, call your insurance agent. The Insurance Information Institute says the insurance industry considers a pool an “attractive nuisance” and suggests pool owners consider raising the liability part of their homeowners policy to at least $300,000 or $500,000, more if their assets warrant it, or adding an umbrella policy.

Week three: set the pump around SCE’s peak

Whatever schedule the seller left on the time clock was set for the seller’s bill. Now it’s yours. On SCE’s TOU-D-4-9PM plan, summer weekday power from 4 to 9 p.m. is 58 cents a kWh against 34 cents off-peak. From October through May, the cheapest block is super off-peak at 33 cents, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

So the first move is simple: nothing big runs from 4 to 9 p.m. on weekdays. Our post on whether to run the pool pump at night or day has the full SCE rate table and a default schedule you can copy. And check that a mechanical time clock shows the right time. They don’t adjust for daylight saving.

Salt or chlorine? Look at the plumbing

A salt pool has a salt cell on the return plumbing after the filter, a tube with a thick cable running to a control box that usually shows salt readings or a salt warning light. A tablet pool has a chlorinator, a canister with a screw-down lid, plumbed into the line or sitting next to it. A pool with neither gets liquid chlorine by hand, which means somebody was pouring it in every week and that somebody no longer lives here.

If it’s salt, your test list includes salt and the cell needs inspecting. Hayward says every 3 months or 500 operating hours. It also means more acid than you expect. Our honest take on whether a saltwater pool is really less maintenance covers what the cell does and doesn’t do for you.

Week four: DIY or a pool service

You just bought a house with a pool, not a second job. So put the numbers side by side.

Time first. Hurricane Pool Filters, a filter maker, estimates about 2 hours a week for skimming, brushing, vacuuming, testing and adding chemicals, plus basket cleaning, plus 30 to 60 minutes of filter cleaning every 2 to 4 weeks. Its overall estimate for doing it yourself is 3 to 4 hours a week. Compare that to your own log.

Money second. HomeGuide’s cost guide puts pool maintenance at $80 to $150 a month, or about $960 to $1,800 a year, and says doing it yourself saves about $1,200 a year. Angi’s 2026 data puts DIY chemicals and supplies at $30 to $50 a month, plus $100 to $300 in tools up front. Angi also puts a single maintenance visit at $236 on average nationally, and $202 in Los Angeles. One-off visits are priced like one-off visits.

Our position: DIY is reasonable if you like the work and will test twice a week, including the weeks you travel. If week three already slipped, that’s your answer. If you do hire someone, our guide to choosing a pool service near you covers what to ask before you sign anything.

Asked at the pad by new owners

Should I drain and refill the pool right away? Only if the tests say so. Stabilizer over 100 ppm or calcium far above 400 are the usual reasons. Clear water with bad numbers is still bad water, and cloudy water with good numbers is usually a filter problem.

The seller’s pool service offered to stay on. Should I keep them? It can be a smart first month, because they know the pad. Ask what they’ve been adding, how often, and what they’d fix first. If the answers are vague, that tells you something too.

The pool went green the week we moved in. Usually the chlorine ran out during the handoff. Test, shock, run the filter, and clean it again when the pressure climbs.

Do one thing this weekend: photograph the pad

If you do one thing from this list, make it the photos. Every data plate, every valve, the gauge and the time clock, in one note on your phone. It costs nothing and makes every later call faster, whether it’s to a parts counter or to us.

If you’d like a second set of eyes on what you bought, send us the photos and model numbers through the site. We service Pentair, Jandy, Zodiac, Hayward and Sta-Rite equipment, so whatever the last owner installed probably isn’t new to us. Call (805) 586-2055 and we’ll get a tech out to the pad.