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Robot ou humain ?

Pool cleaning

Weekly pool service vs Robotic pool cleaner (you still do chemistry)

Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits. Méthodologie · Bilan des prévisions

Humain · Par an1 500 $USPool service
Robot · Par an1 156 $USBuy a robotic cleaner
Délai de retour sur investissement22 mois
Année de basculedéjàBase-case year (earliest to latest across scenarios)

On these numbers the robot option is clearly cheaper.

États-Unis · USD · BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians by SOC occupation

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Charge de travail
Hypothèse

One month of pool care.

Hypothèse

Robot cycle hours per day it runs.

Hypothèse

Cleaning cycles per month.

Hypothèse

Months the pool is open.

Personnel
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

BLS OEWS May 2025 national median hourly wage, SOC 37-2011.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Wages and salaries were 70.0% of total employer compensation cost for private industry workers in June 2026 (ECEC), so total cost = wage / 0.70.

ilostat.ilo.org

Nominal 4.4% a year, 2015-2025 (ILOSTAT hourly earnings).

Prix
Calculé PoolRobots.com

Midpoint of $100-$150/month weekly professional service.

Robot
Hypothèse

A month of cleaning needs about 24 robot-hours (8 cycles of 3 hours).

Calculé Maytronics US store

Midpoint of $849-$1,449 mid-range Dolphin models.

Hypothèse

Plug it in.

Hypothèse

Yearly parts (filters, brushes, eventually a motor) as a share of price.

Hypothèse

Useful life in years.

Hypothèse

Availability.

Hypothèse

Months lost to faults.

Hypothèse

Share of the service you still need: water chemistry, filter and equipment checks. Many owners do these themselves (then set 0).

Hypothèse

Your time is not costed.

Hypothèse

kWh per robot-hour.

Hypothèse

Electricity price per kWh (USD). Check your bill; energy is rarely a big line.

Finances
Hypothèse

Annual financing / discount rate. Nobody publishes yours; 8% is a round mid-2026 commercial borrowing guess.

Hypothèse

Years in the NPV comparison.

Hypothèse

Share of a human service price that is labour (rises with wages). Used to escalate and to adjust US service prices to other countries.

Hypothèse

Share of a robot service price that is labour (pilot, technician). The rest is equipment, which learning curves make cheaper.

Hypothèse

Share of a lease or RaaS fee that pays for hardware (learns down). The rest is service and support (moves with wages).

Download these results (CSV)

Résultats

OptionPar moisPar anPer unit (month of service)Coût initialDélai de retour sur investissementBreak-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
Humain Pool service Référence 125 $US1 500 $US125 $US— — — —
Robot Buy a robotic cleaner 96,37 $US1 156 $US96,37 $US1 149 $US 22 mois 27 %
Utilisation 52 %
 1 596 $US

What moves the answer most

Each bar shows the 5-year NPV of the best robot option when one input moves to the low or high end of its range, with the rest held at your values.

5-year NPV vs baseline: Buy a robotic cleaner5-year NPV vs baseline: Buy a robotic cleanerRobot purchase pricelow value: 849 → 1 994 $UShigh value: 2999 → -863 $USWork that stays humanlow value: 0 → 3 191 $UShigh value: 0.7 → 347 $USActive months per yearlow value: 5 → -226 $UShigh value: 12 → 1 596 $USPool servicelow value: 100 → 968 $UShigh value: 150 → 2 224 $USUseful life or contractlow value: 3 → 948 $UShigh value: 7 → 1 816 $USMaintenance per yearlow value: 0.04 → 1 785 $UShigh value: 0.15 → 1 265 $USFinancing and discount ratelow value: 0.05 → 1 805 $UShigh value: 0.12 → 1 347 $USWage growth per yearlow value: 0.0236 → 1 525 $UShigh value: 0.0636 → 1 669 $USElectricity price per kWhlow value: 0.08 → 1 604 $UShigh value: 0.3 → 1 578 $US1 596 $US0low valuehigh valueSource: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/pool-cleaning/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.

Cost per unit to 2035

Real terms (today's money). Robot hardware follows Wright's law; wages follow each country's history. Shaded band: robots-slow to robots-fast scenarios. Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits.

ChartCoût humain par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès rapide), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès lent). Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/pool-cleaning/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.0,00 $US50,00 $US100 $US2026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / month of servicescenario rangeCoût humain par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/pool-cleaning/). Modelled estimate, n…

Année de bascule: déjà

What the spreadsheet misses

Sécurité
Wrong water chemistry is the real risk; a cleaning robot does not test water.
Qualité
Robots scrub walls and floors well; leaves and debris loads vary.
Flexibilité
A service catches failing pumps and leaks early.
Edge cases
Oddly shaped pools and steps defeat cheaper models.
Customer experience
No strangers in the garden every week.
Jobs and redeployment
Pool technicians keep chemistry and repairs; cleaning visits shrink.
Réglementation
None for private pools; public pools have water-testing rules.

Voir aussi

Sources de cette page

Les notes et les sources sont en anglais ; la version anglaise fait foi.

  1. Weekly professional pool service $100-$150 per month PoolRobots.com, 2026-10 · vendor
  2. Maytronics Dolphin residential robotic pool cleaners $849-$1,449 (mid-range models) Maytronics US store, 2026-10-25 · vendor
  3. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (median hourly wage by occupation) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025-05
  4. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026: wages and salaries 70.0% of private-industry compensation (series CMU2020000000000P) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026-06
  5. Mean nominal hourly earnings of employees by sex and occupation (ISCO-08), DF_EAR_EHRA_SEX_OCU_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), from national labour force and earnings surveys, 2025
  6. Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity (lc_lci_lev): Germany 2022-2025, total labour cost vs wages and salaries per hour Eurostat, 2025
  7. Rates and thresholds for employers 2025 to 2026 (employer Class 1 NIC 15% above £5,000) HM Revenue & Customs, 2025-04-06
  8. 令和6年賃金構造基本統計調査 (Basic Survey on Wage Structure 2024), table 1 by occupation Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (via e-Stat), 2024-06
  9. Average monthly earnings of employees by sex and economic activity, DF_EAR_EMTA_SEX_ECO_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), 2022
  10. Average annual wage of employed persons in urban units in 2024 (by position and by region) National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2025-05-20
  11. Euro foreign exchange reference rates (cross rates to USD), via Frankfurter European Central Bank, 2026-10-23
  12. Wright, T. P. (1936). Factors affecting the cost of airplanes. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 3(4), 122-128 Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 1936
  13. Nagy, B., Farmer, J. D., Bui, Q. M., & Trancik, J. E. (2013). Statistical basis for predicting technological progress. PLoS ONE, 8(2), e52669 (62 technologies; Wright's law among the best hindcasters; errors grow with horizon) PLoS ONE, 2013