What a GTA pool closing costs, and what it should include

The firmest number in this market comes from a company that prints its prices. PF Pools, which works across the GTA from Mississauga, lists a pool closing at $530 plus HST for one visit. HST is Ontario's 13 percent harmonized sales tax, so that is $598.90 before any extras. Mayascapes Pools, a GTA pool contractor, says hiring out a closing costs around $500 here.

The Ontario-wide guides come in lower. John C Young Design, a pool company in London, Ontario, puts a hired fall closing at $250 to $450. Project Landscaping, an Ontario landscaping and pool company, prices professional winterization of an inground pool at $200 to $450. Neither figure is wrong. They describe a province, and PF Pools and Mayascapes describe the GTA.

Many companies sell the closing inside a package with the spring opening, so check whether a quote covers one visit or two. Ontario Pool Services lists a package covering an opening and a closing at $550. Its smaller package, for above-ground pools and small plunge pools, is $425, and a fuller one that adds cover cleaning and storage is $650. Toronto Pool cites $250 to $500 per season for an opening and closing package. John C Young Design puts the two together at $500 to $800 a year.

The pool maintenance cost guide sets these rows out side by side with weekly service prices.

A closing is not a tarp and a bottle of chlorine. Project Landscaping lists six steps. The water is lowered below the return lines, the pipes that carry filtered water back into the pool. The plumbing lines are blown out, antifreeze goes into the lines and skimmers, and the equipment is removed and stored. Then the winter cover goes on and winterizing chemicals are added. John C Young Design describes the same visit, adding that the water chemistry is balanced first.

The step that matters most is the blow-out. Mayascapes Pools explains why: the water has to come out of the lines so the pipes do not crack in deep winter. Project Landscaping says frost reaches 3 to 4 feet deep across most of Ontario, and pool lines and equipment have to be protected from it.

Ask for these steps in writing before you book. A quote that says only "closing" leaves you guessing about what was done to the plumbing. A quote that lists the blow-out, the plugs, the antifreeze and the equipment removal gives you something to check in April. If the pool has a heater, ask whether it is winterized too, because it can be a separate job (see the add-ons below).

The base price assumes a plain pool. PF Pools prices each extra on its list. An attached spa or hot tub adds $100 plus HST. So does a negative edge, where water spills over one wall into a catch basin. A double pool cover, a pool with more than 800 sq ft of surface and an additional visit each add $100 plus HST too. An attached waterfall adds $50 plus HST.

These add up quickly. A pool with an attached spa and a double cover comes to $530 plus $100 plus $100, which is $730 before tax and $824.90 with 13 percent HST. That is the same company and the same visit, $200 above its base price before tax. Before comparing two quotes, list the pool's features and ask each company to price them.

A heater can be its own trade. Apex Electric Mechanical, which services pool heaters in Toronto, prices a winterization service at $150 to $300 and schedules it for October and November. It also says incomplete winterization is a common cause of heat exchanger failure in Toronto. The heat exchanger is the part of the heater that passes heat into the water, and Apex prices replacing it at $1,500 to $3,500. If your service company does not handle the heater, the companies filed under pool heating are listed separately.

The last step is the cover, and there are two kinds. Precision Landscaping, working in Toronto and the GTA, prices a winter cover at $650 to $1,000 and a safety cover at $3,000 to $5,000. A winter cover keeps out leaves and debris and blocks the sunlight that feeds algae. A safety cover is anchored into the deck and is sold for child and pet safety.

Precision Landscaping also says a safety cover is not a substitute for a winter cover in a hard Ontario winter. It suggests a winter cover underneath for dust and algae control. That is how a pool ends up with the double cover PF Pools charges an extra $100 plus HST to handle.

If you are replacing a worn winter cover yourself, retail prices start much lower. Pool Supplies Canada lists above-ground winter covers from $27.99, and its Eliminator Xtreme line starts at $229.00. Neither kind of cover replaces the pool fence: in Toronto a cover only exempts a hot tub or spa from the enclosure rules, which the pool fence guide explains. For safety covers against automatic ones, see the cover comparison.

Project Landscaping gives the numbers. A badly winterized pool can need $2,000 to $10,000 and up in repairs for burst pipes, cracked pool shells and equipment damage. A professional closing costs $200 to $450. Even at PF Pools' full GTA price with tax, the closing costs less than the bottom of that repair range.

John C Young Design calls the closing the more critical of the two seasonal visits, because a mistake leads to freeze damage in the plumbing or equipment. Anything that breaks over the winter becomes a repair job in spring, and the pool repair companies in this index are the ones that take it on.

If a line does leak after the winter, the leak detection guide sets out what GTA specialists charge to find a leak and then to fix it.

John C Young Design says closing usually happens in October, and Apex Electric Mechanical schedules heater winterization for October and November. Most pools in the region close in those same weeks, so booking in September leaves room to choose a date.

Doing it yourself is cheaper if you have the kit and the time. John C Young Design prices a DIY opening or closing at $50 to $100 each, against $250 to $450 to hire one. It says learning to do both saves $500 to $800 a year. It also notes that the professional job uses equipment most owners do not own, and that most first-time owners hire the work out for a year or two first. PF Pools sells a two to three hour pool school for $400 plus HST.

The pool service or DIY guide works through that trade-off for the whole season. For the spring side, the pool opening cost calculator prices an opening.

The spring opening undoes the closing. Project Landscaping says it reverses the process and adds system checks, reinstalling the equipment, balancing the water and a first shock, and prices a professional opening at $150 to $350. John C Young Design places it in late April or May.

GTA price lists sit higher, as they do for closings. PF Pools charges $630 plus HST for a two-visit opening, where the second visit is a start-up and a vacuum. Swim Clean Pool Service, which serves Toronto and York Region, starts its standard residential opening at $500 plus HST. Budgeting for the pair at PF Pools' list prices means $1,160 plus HST, or $1,310.80 with tax, before any add-ons.

The two visits depend on each other. Equipment removed in the fall is reinstalled in the spring, and lines plugged in the fall are opened again. Keep the closing company's written list of what it did, and hand it to whoever opens the pool if that is a different company.

Of the 442 companies in this index, 157 are filed under pool maintenance. The stored Google reviews of 69 of those 157 mention opening and closing work, the most common review theme in the category. Across the whole index, 91 companies carry that theme. A review theme shows that customers wrote about the job. It does not show how well it was done, and this index holds no inspection or workmanship data.

The maintenance companies are spread unevenly. Oakville holds 20 of them, Willowdale 19, Burlington 15 and Agincourt 13. The pool maintenance hub lists them all, and area pages such as pool maintenance in Oakville and pool maintenance in Toronto narrow the list.

The records hold a website for 148 of the 157 maintenance companies, and no email address for any company in the index. You can reach a company through its own site, or send one request through the site's request form. When you do, give the pool's size and list its features, so the add-ons are priced up front.

This guide is written by The Pool Trade Desk, the team that compiles PoolBuilderIndex. For this closing guide, the desk read the published price lists and cost guides of the GTA and Ontario pool companies named above, and checked each page on 17 September 2026. Nearly every price source in this trade is a company that sells the work it prices. Each one is named in the sentence that uses its figure and linked in the source list below. Company counts come from the index's own records, and the methodology page explains how those records are built.

No listed company owns or funds PoolBuilderIndex, and no company can pay for a better position. The index earns nothing today. The request form passes a job to one of the highest-scoring companies listed in the area. The site is also building a paid route for work it passes on, which a company would have to agree to separately, as the page for contractors explains. Corrections go to corrections@poolbuilderindex.ca.