Soak Up The Sunscreen And Bodily Oils
I just saw a program on the tee vee about this enormous sponge that soaks up crude oil above and below the water after a catastrophic spill.
This Scumbug oil-sucking sponge must use the same technology. It absorbs 40 times its weight in sunscreen oils, so if you slather your kid like I slather mine, this handy, bug-shaped sponge will suck it out of the water to help keep the kiddie pool clean and the water clear.
Pool Walls And Surfaces
With your pool water clean, you have to turn your attention to that tiling. The walls and surfaces of your pools can cause real structural problems if neglected.
Physically cleaning these parts of your pool down is a long and thankless task! Your weekly pool maintenance here is going to be different depending on how youre approaching the job.
If you use a robotic pool cleaner, this part of your schedule should be a lot easier! It isnt quite as convenient as a full clean from a pool maintenance company, but it gets the job done.
Otherwise, having a good scrub at the surfaces and walls of your pool that are exposed is going to make a big difference in keeping them in good shape. Leaks, damages to tiling, and algae can all grow if these areas are left untreated.
Use a cleaning brush on a long pool cleaning pole to get into those hard to reach places. If this is done weekly, then there shouldnt be much time for dirt to build up.
Why Do Kiddie Pools Need Cleaning
Since backyard kiddie pools do not have a pump and filter or a skimmer like larger pools do, the water tends to get dirty and cloudy more often. Standing water is always going to get dirty, especially in the hot summer months, unless it is treated correctly. Tree debris, sunscreen buildup, and bugs in the water are just a few of the reasons that you need to clean kiddie pools often. Hopefully, with the tips you have learned in this article, you will have a cleaner kiddie pool this summer.
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Keep Kiddie Pool Water Clean
Kiddie pools are smaller versions of the bigger pools. Some kiddie pools can hold up to 700 gallons and may even come equipped with their own small filters. They are often inflatable with soft sides. They come in a variety of sizes and designs. The problem is they come with very mixed directions and little if any customer support. Learning how to keep a kiddie pool’s water clean is an important step to ensuring the safe and health of the children who use the kiddie pool.
Regularly Clean Out The Pump And Skimmer Baskets
A pump basket collects debris before it can reach the pump, while a pool skimmer pulls in water from the pools surface. A skimmer captures leaves and other debris in a basket before it enters the filtration system. Its important to clean out the pump and skimmer baskets at least once a week. Always turn off the pool pump and heater before you clean out the baskets.
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Keep The Kids Feet Clean Before Entering
How many times do the kids get in and out of the kiddie pool? Lots! And each time they exit and enter the pool they bring new debris on their feet. Simply set this feet cleaner outside the pool and have the kids step thru it before getting into the pool! Make it a pool party game!
- DEBRIS-FREE POOL: Get a debris-free pool with this foot bath, an essential accessory to wash off your feet prior to entering your pool and perfect for in-ground or above-ground pools
- 2.8-GALLON CAPACITY: Holds up to 2.8 gallons of water so you can be sure to wash off any unwanted grass, leaves, or sand
- NON-SLIP DESIGN: Textured, anti-slip embossed bottom provides stability and minimizes slips or falls
- HOOKS IN PLACE: Top portion hooks in-between pool ladder to keep in place while in use
Make A Skimming And Scrubbing A Part Of Life
Skimming the leaves and debris off of the surface of the water is a no-brainer, but it bears repeating. For a truly pristine pool, skimming should be done daily.If you have a bit of money to spend, consider buying a robot vacuum that will clean the bottom of the pool for you. This Polaris Pool 360 ranks middle-of-the-road in terms of pricing and consistently receives five-star performance reviewsIn addition to skimming, you need to scrub the sides of the pool to prevent algae build-up. Thankfully, that doesnt need to be done quite as often. You can get away with scrubbing once every other week. Just look for any growths and go at them with a scrub brush to keep your siding looking fresh and clean.For those particularly stubborn spots that wont go away with any amount of elbow grease? Repurpose an old sock. Fill it with chlorine and let it sit on top of the spot for a few hours before scrubbing once more. The chlorine will eat away at the algae and youll finally have a use for those socks without pairs. Its a win-win.
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Regularly Clean And Replace The Filter
There are several kinds of pool filters, but they all have the same job: capturing debris that can cloud and pollute your pool. Hardworking pool filters should be cleaned about once a week by removing and hosing down the cartridge. Its also important to replace the cartridge when its time, based on the manufacturers recommendation.
Sanitize Your Pool Water
Sanitizing your water means exterminating the bacteria and bad chloramines in your pool with the addition of chlorine or other chemicals. Chlorine is the primary additive in pool water and can be the best and only sanitizer you need. You can decide how you add the chlorine, but one of the most popular ways of adding chlorine to a pool in a safe way is to use chlorine tablets.
Chlorine tablets are efficient because of how compressed they are. They dont fully dissolve into the pool water right away, and instead, they help add small amounts of chlorine to your pool a little at a time. This slower approach gives you a longer-lasting chlorine treatment, so you dont have to keep adding chlorine or shocking your pool unnecessarily.
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What Is Breakpoint Oxidation
To reach breakpoint oxidation, the chlorine reading must be 10 ppm over your combined chlorine reading.
Your chlorine has two readings: free chlorine and combined chlorine . Free chlorine refers to the chlorine that is free and available to kill.
NOTE: Pool shock products are made with unstabilized chlorine or no chlorine at all. They will go in, do their job, and get eaten up by the suns UV rays very fast. Thats why its important to shock your pool at night or dusk, and let it work for 8 hours throughout the night.
How Long Can You Leave Water In An Inflatable Pool
This depends. If you put pool chemicals, then you can leave the water in your pool for a longer time. Make sure to cover your pool to prevent debris from entering your swimming pool.
If you decided not to use chemicals, then it is not advisable to leave water on your pool as algae and bacteria may thrive in it. Its recommended to drain and store your pool if youre not going to use it and if you dont want to use pool chemicals.
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Whats The Best Way To Clean The Kiddie Pool
Theres no one single way thats best for everyone when it comes to how to keep the kiddie pool water clean and safe to swim in. It depends on your unique circumstances, including your climate, how dirty the pool gets and with what and how much water the pool holds.
Pick and choose from these proven ways to keep the backyard pool clean.
Ph Level In Your Pool
The chemical composition of your pool is really important for keeping it in good health. To get this in order each week, you have to start with some tests.
Testing the pH Level in your pool needs to be done every week. Adjusting your pool to keep this result in the safe range has to be your first task in weekly pool maintenance.
Add the correct chemicals to correct your pH level if you notice that it has been altered throughout the week. While it is important to get this done once a week, any more is a bit much.
You should avoid adding additional pH altering chemicals to your pool any more often than once a week. Doing so excessively can have your water bouncing between one test result and another, making it harder to find what you actually need to do to get it back in the right level.
A once a week pH check should be more than enough to keep your pool in good condition.
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Learn How To Properly Winterize To Prevent Damage
As important as pool care is during the summer, its even more important to make sure that you properly secure it for winter. After all, no one wants to remove a pool cover at the start of summer only to find out that their pool has a leak or that their water is full of dangerous bacteria. Taking the right steps to properly winterize your pool can save you lots of time and money on repairs for next season.Before closing up shop in the fall, buy a water testing kit to ensure your chemicals are correctly balanced. Then, blow any excess water out of your plumbing lines, and invest in a cover to keep the pool free of debris.Keeping a pool in good shape does entail a certain amount of work, but it doesnt need to be a burden. By incorporating these pool maintenance tips into a regular cleaning routine, you can ensure that youll spend more time sunbathing than doing chores. Which is exactly how it should be. Do you have a great pool maintenance tip to share? Let usow in the comments below.
Balancing Your Water Chemistry
Step away from the Bunsen burner. Pool chemistry might sound intimidating and complicated, but you dont have to worry. While it is an essential part of effective pool maintenance and water care, basic pool chemistry is surprisingly straightforward.
The most important tool in your bag of water care tricks is your water testing kit. You wouldnt season your stew without tasting it. So before you reach for the chemicals, do some pool water testing. Understanding whats in your water, and what isnt, is the first step to balancing it.
The three most important parts of pool water chemistry are:
- pH levels: The measure of how acidic or basic your pool water is. Low pH levels are acidic, while high levels are basic. The ideal range for your pool is 7.4 to 7.6.
- Alkalinity: Works as a pH buffer and helps avoid huge spikes in basicity or acidity. The ideal range is 100 to 150 parts per million . And you can use baking soda to increase your pools alkalinity level.
- Sanitizer levels: The amount of chlorine, bromine, etc. in your pool water. Proper levels vary depending on which type of sanitizer you choose.
Once you know your pH, alkalinity, and sanitizer levels, you can start to add chemicals to tweak your water balance. Take your time, follow all the directions, and be sure you know what each chemical does and how itll affect the water, and the folks who swim in it, before you add it.
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Why Should You Clean The Kiddie Pool
When I set out to write this piece, I was blissfully ignorant of the horrific dangers that lurk in the kiddie pool. Cue the Jaws music, and zoom in to all the microscopic monsters that lurk in the depths: Cryptosporidium! E. coli! Shigella! Giarida! These germs can cause gastrointestinal, skin, ear, respiratory, eye, neurologic, and wound infections. And according to the Centers for Disease Control, the kiddie pool is positively rife with bacteria, especially if children from more than one family use it.
Now, the CDC, to me, is the ultimate authority on such matters, but Ive got to say, my sister and I swam in communal horse tanks and wash tubs and blow-up kiddie pools our whole childhood, and so has Ruby, and as far as I can recall, no swimmers ear, oozing rashes, or copious diarrhea ever resulted. But that obviously doesnt mean it cant or wont happen.
To help ensure it doesnt, the CDC recommends warning your children not to get pool water in their mouths. Good luck with that. Also: Give children a cleansing soap shower or bath before they swim. Um, yeah. Lady, the swim IS the bath.
Cleaning A Very Dirty Pool
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A Pool Cleaning Schedule
If it has proper circulation, youve already made cleaning your pool much easier. But youll still need to apply some good old-fashioned elbow grease. The basic tools youll need are:
Both Mother Nature and the folks using your pool bring all sorts of wild and wacky things into your pool, from leaves, mold, and the odd duck or frog to residues from shampoos, perfumes, and hair products. Add in the risks of bacterial contamination, and cleaning your pool becomes an absolutely essential part of safe swimming.
Skim, brush, and vacuum your pool weekly, at a minimum. This will keep debris out of your water, and your walls sparkling clean. Baking soda paste works particularly well as a basic scouring cleaner that wont damage delicate tile or a vinyl liner when you brush.
An automatic pool cleaner can significantly cut your pool cleaning time. It wont eliminate the need for regular skimming and brushing, but itll make both tasks easier, freeing you up to spend time enjoying your pool instead of cleaning it.
You can also make your cleaning life easier with a few unorthodox additions to your pool. Toss a few tennis balls into your skimmer basket, or even right into the pool, and theyll absorb surface oils left behind by suntan lotion, cosmetics, etc. You can also wrap your skimmer baskets with pantyhose to create an extra-fine filter thatll catch more contaminants than a skimmer alone.
How To Keep Your Kiddie Pool Clean Without A Pump
Wondering how you keep a kiddie pool clean without a pump? With these easy tips and tools, you can make the most out of an inflatable kiddie pool without having to always dump the water!
When I stumbled upon the fact that a pool float could easily fit in our 10 ft kiddie pool, everything about my summer relaxation changed.
The problem was, I kept finding myself having to dump the water every week because the water would get so slimy and stinky after a few days of super hot weather.
Talk about a health hazard and a giant waste of water!
Not only that, if kids were in the pool a lot they inevitably dragged in piles of grass and dirt. Despite having a foot rinse off bucket.
And THEN I got smart and finally learned how to turn my kiddie pool into an adult oasis with sparkling, clean water all summer long without a pump!
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