Starting a pool service business in Georgia: the paperwork and the two-visit rule

Georgia splits this between the state and your local government. Do it in this order and nothing waits on anything else.

Georgia's pool rule doesn't license the person who cleans the pool. Chapter 511-3-5 puts its demands on the pool itself. A covered pool needs an operating permit from the health department, good for 12 months at most, and a trained operator.

Repairs are another matter. Before you bid a heater install, new plumbing, or any wiring, call the Georgia State Licensing Board for Residential and General Contractors and ask whether the job needs a license.

Next door works the other way. Read how licensing works next door in Florida before you take a route across the state line. Florida's rules for pool service work are not Georgia's.

The rule names the pools it skips and the ones it covers. Check the pool against this list before you write a price.

Rule .22 says the trained operator must make at least two visits a week. That person also needs a current certificate from a course the Georgia Department of Public Health approves. Take the trained-operator job on a covered pool and those two visits are yours.

Our position is simple. Don't quote a covered pool at your weekly backyard rate. Price it as two stops from the first bid.

Here is the gap. At 40 minutes a visit and $60 an hour of tech time, one visit costs you $40. A weekly quote pays for 52 visits, or $2,080 a year. The rule's minimum is 104 visits, or $4,160 a year. Quote it weekly and you give away $2,080 a year on one pool.

The testing log is bigger too. Free chlorine and pH get tested at least twice a day. Alkalinity gets tested weekly and calcium hardness monthly. When the facility has no trained operator on site, it names a responsible person to cover the days between your visits.

The rule asks for an approved course, and it doesn't name one brand. Read whether the CPO credential is worth it before you bid commercial work.

Georgia taxes goods and a short list of services, and pool cleaning isn't on that list. The Department of Revenue lists lodging, rides, admissions, and amusement fees. A weekly service charge sits outside it.

The chemicals are a different story. A service company is the end user of the goods it uses on the job. So you pay sales tax on chlorine and acid at the supply house, and nobody collects it again from your customer. Build it into your rate. At $35 of chemicals per pool a month, the 4% state share is $1.40 a pool. Your county adds its own rate on top.

Selling a part is another sale. Sell a customer a pump motor or a filter cartridge and you collect sales tax on it and send it to the state.

Hypothetical example: 9 backyard pools on weekly service and 1 condo pool at two visits a week. Over 4 weeks that's 36 backyard visits and 8 condo visits, 44 stops in all. The condo is 1 pool of 10 and 8 of the 44 stops.

Put the condo's two days where your route already runs. A Monday and Thursday condo pool fits best when backyard stops sit near it on both days.

Keep a record of every visit from day one. Pool service management software like PoolBoss saves the readings with the time and the tech, and sends the report after each stop. When someone asks what you tested at the condo and when, the answer is already there.

The rest of the startup work is the same in every state. The national playbook for starting a pool service business covers equipment, pricing, and the first customers.