Small gear & consumables
The consumables a pool goes through
30 categories of things that wear out, get used up and are bought again, judged the same way as the equipment: by what they change, and whether the cheaper option already does the job. A part only helps if it matches what you own exactly — a hose is 32 mm or 38 mm and never both, a liner is cut to one diameter and one wall height, and a cartridge is ordered by its size code rather than from a photograph.
Browse by category
- Replacement liners Four tenths of a millimetre, and a seam that has to match the wall 7
- Pool ladders A load rating, a step count, and a wall height that has to agree 7
- Ground cloths The cheapest insurance the liner will ever get 7
- Pool covers Deniers, eyelets and a cover measured larger than the pool 7
- Solar covers 120 µm against 400 µm, and the side that faces up 7
- Winter covers Built for snow load, ice movement and four months of nobody looking 7
- Winterising products One dose in October, against four months of algae in the dark 7
- Repair kits Patches that go on wet, and the ones that do not 7
- Filter glass Recycled glass, a finer cut, and a bed that lasts longer 7
- Filter sand A grain size, a purity, and a bed that rounds off with time 7
- Filter cartridges A letter that is a shape, not a quality 7
- Multiport valves Six positions or seven, and a gasket that is the whole failure mode 7
- Pool hoses Thirty-two or thirty-eight, and nothing in between 7
- Skimmers The surface film is the whole job, and the water level sets it 7
- Inlet fittings Where the filtered water re-enters decides whether the pool mixes 7
- Chlorine tablets Twenty grams or two hundred, and a stabiliser that accumulates 7
- Chlorine granules Fast-acting, pre-dissolved, and the tool for a pool that has gone wrong 7
- Bromine Works hot, smells less, and needs to be started rather than dosed 7
- Active oxygen No smell, no stabiliser, and a residual that does not last 7
- Algaecide Three chemistries, and one of them foams 7
- Flocculant Makes fine particles big enough for a filter that cannot see them 7
- pH regulators The number that decides whether the chlorine works at all 7
- Pool salt Purity, grain and the several hundred kilograms a first fill needs 7
- Dosing floats A vented ball that meters a tablet, and keeps it off the liner 7
- Test strips Three pads or seven, and a cost per test that decides the habit 7
- Pool thermometers Surface temperature is not pool temperature 7
- Leaf nets and brushes A flat net for the floor, a bag net for the surface 7
- Telescopic poles Inches at the clip, metres at the reach, and a clamp that slips 7
- Solar mats Square metres of absorber against cubic metres of pool 7
- Vacuum heads The head the filter pump pulls, for the pool a robot cannot justify 7