Before April: setting up a pool company for the season

Mid-March is the last quiet stretch a pool company gets. In Phoenix and Tampa the water is warming and the first green-pool calls are coming in. In the Northeast and the Midwest, owners are digging out last year’s opening list and wondering whether to call the same company again. Whatever you set up in the next three weeks is what the season runs on, because nobody has time to rebuild a Business Profile in June.

The season, as Leslie’s annual report lays it out

Leslie’s filed its annual report in December, and its description of the pool year doubles as a planning calendar. Sales and earnings are highest in the quarters that include April through September, which the company calls “the peak months of swimming pool use.” It also warns that unseasonably early or late warming can lengthen or shorten the season and move the timing of openings and closings, and that hot weather “can drive increased purchases of installation and repair services.”

Three things follow for a service company:

• The start date moves with the weather. A warm week in late March can pull openings forward and a cold April can push them back. Your opening page and booking link need to be ready before either happens.
• Heat brings repair work. The hottest weeks are the ones when pumps and motors run longest, and repair calls rise with them.
• Competition is thickest where the pools are. The same report names California, Texas, Florida and Arizona as the states with the largest installed pool bases.

The report also sizes the market you sell into: about 9.0 million residential pools, with do-it-for-me services at roughly 35% of a $7.0 billion aftermarket. The other 65% is owners doing it themselves, and some of them will be searching for help by July.

What the payroll numbers say about the ramp

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish pool cleaning on its own, but pool cleaning sits inside NAICS 561790, other services to buildings and dwellings, and that series shows the shape of the year. Not seasonally adjusted, payrolls in the category ran:

• 104,900 in January 2025
• 110,900 in April
• 117,700 in May
• 129,200 in June
• 129,600 in July, the high point

That is a climb of about 23.5% from January to July, and 2024 looked almost the same, from 104,200 in January to 127,800 in July. The category covers other building services too, so treat it as a proxy rather than a head count of pool techs. It still says something useful: the trade adds roughly a quarter more workers between winter and midsummer, and each new tech needs stops to drive to. If the marketing switches on in May, the extra trucks are already on the road with half-empty routes.

Openings in the North, repair calls in the South

The same season looks different depending on where the route is.

In the North, March is booking month. Owners who closed their pool last fall want a date for the opening, and the company that makes booking easy fills its calendar first. A dedicated openings page with the towns you cover, what an opening includes and a way to pick a week will do more right now than any ad. Ask last fall’s closing customers directly before spending a dollar on anyone new.

In the Sun Belt, the weekly route never stopped, so what changes is the mix of calls. Green pools after a winter of neglect, filter cleans and equipment that did not survive the cooler months all turn into repair work, and that work deserves its own page and its own ads, apart from weekly service. In Florida, replacing equipment takes a license that cleaning does not, and once you hold it the number belongs in every ad.

The setup that takes longer than you think

Some of this cannot be done in a weekend, which is why March matters.

• Local Services Ads. Google puts screening at an average of three to four weeks after documents are submitted. Its Pool cleaner category requires business and owner background checks for every advertiser, and both pool categories ask for liability insurance, a state license where the law calls for one, and a verified Business Profile. Submit now and you are showing in April. Submit in May and you are showing in June, after the opening rush.
• Reviews. BrightLocal’s 2026 consumer review survey, published last month, found 74% of consumers only care about reviews from the last three months, and 47% will not use a business with fewer than 20. A pool company whose newest review is from September looks half closed to someone searching in April. A review request sent with each visit report through the spring fixes that within weeks.
• Your Business Profile. Hours that match the season, each service listed on its own (weekly service, openings, repairs, filter cleans, acid washes), service areas trimmed to the ZIP codes on your route, and recent photos of your trucks and the pools you look after.
• The phone. In the first hot week, calls come in while every tech is in a backyard. Decide now who answers, or what does, and what happens to a call nobody picks up.

What to do this month

• Put an openings page (in the North) or a repair page (in the Sun Belt) live, with a booking link, before the first warm weekend.
• Submit your Local Services Ads documents this week, in the pool category that matches the work you are licensed to do.
• Send a review request to every customer you serviced this winter, with the direct link to your profile.
• Update Business Profile hours, services and photos for the season, and cut service areas back to the ZIP codes your routes cover.
• Ask last year’s closing customers to book their opening now, before they start searching.
• Check every ad, page and truck for the license number your state requires.

The season starts when the weather says it does, and the companies that are ready a few weeks early take the calls everyone else misses. Our page for pool service companies lays out how we plan a route company’s year, and our Google Business Profile work covers the profile side in detail.