Monitor Your Ph Level Weekly
Your pool’s pH needs to be balanced, otherwise it can make your chlorine ineffective, can cause pool swimmer discomfort, and can greatly impact scaling and/or corrosion. When many people measure and maintain their pH balance, this comes down to regularly adding muriatic acid to lower the pH. If you want consistent pH balance, there’s nothing more convenient than a pH balance system.
Check Filter And Backwash As Needed
The three most popular types of filters – sand, cartridge and vertical grid DE – screen out debris and particles from your pool water. You should clean and maintain your filter according to the manufacturer’s directions.
Check your pool filter weekly, removing any debris that has gathered within.
Backwash the pool filter as needed .
Pool Maintenance For First Time Pool Owners
Welcome to the pool lifestyle! Along with the hours of fitness, fun and family togetherness, there comes the hours of pool maintenance.
Every single day of summer, your pool pump must circulate the water, your filter must clean the water and the feeder must dispense enough chlorine to kill the ever present bacteria and algae.
In addition to that, you may also have automatic cleaners or pool heaters that require monitoring and cleaning or adjustment.
And you or someone like you, will be called upon to empty skimmer baskets, brush and skim the pool, test the water and make sure all systems are operating as intended.
Pool maintenance cannot be ignored either, if tasks are skipped or delayed, it can cause more problems, like cloudy water or a green pool!
Heres how I like to explain pool maintenance to a first time pool owner, something I have done hundreds of times!
Understanding Circulation, Filtration and Sanitation
- Circulation: every pool has a looped plumbing system, designed to circulate all of the water in the pool every day. Swimming pool pumps pull water from the pool, and then return it to the pool after the water has been filtered, treated and heated.
- Sanitation: every pool must also have a chemical sanitizer to destroy algae, bacteria and other particles which can make swimmers sick and make pool water cloudy and green. Chlorine is the most popular pool sanitizer.
Maintaining Pool Circulation
Maintaining Pool Filtration
Maintaining Pool Sanitation
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Install A Sump Pump In Your House
This tip isnt so much for your pool as it is for your house, but its an important one. Chuck Naish, founder of City Residential Foundation Repair, says many people neglect to install a sump pump in their basement when they buy an above ground pool. If any leak were to spring, a sump pump would prevent all kinds of water damage and hazardous mold and mildew growth, he explains.
Keep It Clean: How To Maintain A Saltwater Pool
by Katy-TX-Pool-Builder Katy-TX-Pool-Builder | Feb 1, 2019 | Pool Care
A swimming pool can enhance your outdoor living space and provide fun for the whole family. It can even add about 7.7% to your homes value.
Its an excellent home addition for those who live in a hot sunny climate. Many homeowners choose to go with a saltwater pool, as its a better option for your skin and hair. It also needs less upkeep than a standard chlorine pool.
Here is your guide on how to maintain a saltwater pool.
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Find A Neighbor Or A Friend
This is the key to success when it comes to keeping your swimming pool clean while youre away.
The ideal candidate is someone who owns a pool themselves. They should already know what to do. Tell your friend or neighbor to check on the pool once a day and provide them with a simple checklist, including:
- Empty the skimmer basket
- Skim the surface of the pool
- Check the filter pressure
- Test the water with a test kit or test strips
- Add any necessary chemicals
Shocking Your Swimming Pool During The Day
Chlorine in your pool water attaches itself to particles it wants to kill, leaving behind chemical compounds called chloramines. Since they irritate the eyes and skin and generally make life miserable, chloramines dont belong in your pool.
Shocking gets rid of chloramines and helps bring your pools chlorine levels to a well-balanced 3 parts per million .
But while daytime is great for enjoying your pool, its the wrong time to shock. See, shock is unstabilized chlorine. The sun, which is not kind to pool shock at all, will burn off 1 ppm each hour, reducing the efficiency of your chemicals, and wasting your money.
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Schedule A Yearly Service Appointment Whether You Think You Need It Or Not
Sometimes you need to trust an expert. Especially when it comes to your pools mechanical equipment pumps, filters, heating systems you may not have the proper knowledge for care. At least once a year, have a pool service professional come out to check your devices.Before your appointment, take a thorough look at your pool as a whole, making sure to use all of your senses. Compile a list of any leaks you see in the piping, holes you notice in the linear, loud sounds coming from the mechanisms, or odd smells coming from the water. Mention them to your serviceperson in oder to give him or her an idea of where to start.In the event that there is noting amiss with your pool, the yearly service appointment may seem like a waste of money and it can be tempting to cancel. But remember: Detecting and fixing a small problem now can save you from having to fix a huge crisis later down the road.
Pool Skimmers And Returns
If your pools filter is its liver, then your skimmers and returns are its veins and arteries. Your skimmersnot to be confused with a net skimmer, the cleaning tool attached to a telescoping polepull water into the filter for cleaning, while the returns push the cleaned water back into your pool. And like your veins and arteries, they work best when theyre clean and clear of obstructions.
No two pools are alike, and youll no doubt encounter pool maintenance challenges specific to your pool as time goes on. But if youve got a firm grasp on these four pool components, youll be well equipped to face down most upkeep challenges.
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How To Keep Above Ground Pools Clean: Tips For New Pool Owners
Owning an above ground pool comes with responsibilities, and the most significant responsibility is keeping your pool clean. After all, how can you enjoy fun & games in your pool if it is not clean?
Maintaining the cleanliness of your pool happens on a daily, weekly, and monthly period, and knowing how to keep your pool clean is vital to help avoid more expensive maintenance or dangerous swimming conditions. In this article, we discuss the main reasons for cleaning your pool and the variety of ways how to keep above ground pools clean.
Find Your Inner Swimmer
Remember why you wanted a pool in the first place?
It probably started when you were a kid, going to pool parties at your friends house and declaring that someday you too would own a pool.
Was it for status? Okay, maybe a little, but more than that, it was about fun.
When you had this pool installed, you were probably imagining all those hot days that your kids would spend splashing around with their friends, filling your backyard with noise and laughter.
Or you imagined the pool parties you would have, grilling out and eating poolside with your neighbors and friends.
Dont lose that.
On days when your water is cloudy and youre ankle-deep in algae and leaves, you’ll need to remember why youre still cleaning this thing and not filling it in with cement.
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Keep Your Water Clear
Keeping your pool water clear can become a massive task if you dont take care of it before it happens. You want water that you can see through, and at the very least, you dont want your pool water to be colored with a green or brown tint. Any tint of yellow, brown, green, or even shades of blue can be a sign of algae formation, and you will have to purchase additional algaecides to remove already-formed algae.
The best thing you can do is get a pool clarifier liquid that you add to your pool to help maintain its clarity and clearness. These pool clarifiers help remove substances like hairspray, makeup, natural oils, and lotions so that algae and other bacteria dont form as quickly.
If you already have a formation of algae in your pool, you will have to use an algaecide to get rid of the algae and wait until the algae is removed before entering your pool safely again.
Use A Good Pool Vacuum Cleaner
There are many good pool cleaners on the market, as well as a variety of pool vacuums that can clean multiple areas of your pool. Some vacuums require you to manually position and clean the different areas of your pool, while others can work autonomously. Cleaning your pool thoroughly with a pool vacuum cleaner will help maintain cleanliness and avoid having to perform significant cleanings in the future.
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Get Your Water Checked Before You Go
Take a sample of your pool water to your local pool store and get it professionally checked.
Make sure when you get it checked that you correct any issues before you go. You want to make sure that your pH and alkalinity are properly balanced and your sanitizers levels are correct.
- pH: 7.4 to 7.6
- Alkalinity: 100 parts per million to 150 ppm, with 125 ppm being ideal
- Calcium Hardness: 175 ppm to 225 ppm, or 200 ppm to 275 ppm for concrete and plaster pools
- For Chlorine Pools: 1 ppm to 3 ppm
- For Bromine Pools: 3 ppm to 5 ppm
- For Biguanide Pools: 30 ppm to 50 ppm
- For Salt Water Pools: 0.5 ppm of chlorine
- For Mineral System Pools: 0.5 ppm of chlorine
Also, make sure your pool is clean and crystal clear before you leave.
Why Are Pool Clarifiers Needed
Over time, dirt and oils from sunscreen, lotions, body fluids, and bacteria build up in your pools water, making it cloudy. This is why regular pool maintenance is essential. If left unattended, the build-up will reach a point where your filter can no longer vacuum up all the debris and particles, resulting in cloudy pool water.
Pool clarifiers help to reduce the build-up of dirt and oils in your pools water, making it crystal clear again. It also helps to improve your pools filter efficiency and extend its lifespan by making it easier for dirt and algae particles to be caught and cleaned by your pool filter.
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Reasons For Cleaning Your Pool
Its beneficial to understand why you need to clean your pool. Before discussing everything you can do to keep your above ground pool clean, here are the top 5 reasons for cleaning your pool:
When To Add Clarifier To Pool
The best time to add a pool clarifier is at the beginning of the swimming season. When you close your swimming pool during winter, the water becomes murky and cloudy as many dirt and oil particles from sunscreens, body fluids, and cosmetics sink to the bottom of your pool.
To restore it to sparkling clear water, youll need to add a concentrated pool clarifier. You can also add a pool clarifier to clear up cloudy water caused by heavy rains, too much organic matter in the water, high pH levels, or saltwater pools with too much chlorinating.
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Balance Your Hot Tub Water Chemistry
Balancing your hot tubs water is similar to balancing pool water, but a bit trickier due to the drastic size difference. But before you add anything to your spa, you need a baseline reading on your water chemistry. Once your hot tubs full, test your water to determine the pH and alkalinity levels.
Why Is My Water Cloudy
Your pool water becomes cloudy for several reasons, including faulty or clogged filters, algae, oils, sunscreen from the swimmers, very high calcium hardness levels, chemical imbalance, and imbalanced pH and alkalinity. Adding a pool clarifier will leave you with sparkling crystal clear and clean water.
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Pools Need Consistent Chemical Levels
Chemical levels are arguably one of the most important facets of pool maintenance. Improperly balanced water looks murky, irritates skin and eyes, and can cause your pool to become a breeding ground for bacteria.Ideally, you should test the water at least once a week. According to the Center for Disease Control , there are six chemical levels that need to be considered:
- Cyanuric Acid Protects chlorine from sunlight and determines the required Free Chlorine level. An ideal reading for outdoor pools is 30- 50.
- Free Chlorine A sanitizer which keeps your pool water safe and free of germs.
- Acidity/Alkalinity Also known as the PH level, acidity needs to be kept between 7.5 and 7.8 to prevent irritation and protect the pool equipment from eroding.
- Total Alkalinity Helps keep the PH in balance. Levels should be within range of 60-120.
- Calcium Hardness Appropriate levels help prevent plaster damage. Aim for 220-350, but lower for pools with vinyl siding.
Create A Pool Maintenance Schedule
The implementation of a pool maintenance schedule will help you keep your pool as clean as it should be. Adhering to your schedule can also help avoid larger maintenance costs in the future. There are three pool maintenance schedules you can create a before each use schedule, a weekly schedule, and a monthly schedule. Based on the maintenance tasks you learned about previously, here we discuss each schedule and list the maintenance tasks that should be included.
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Is A Hot Tub High Maintenance
Not really. It just requires a basic understanding of water chemistry and a simple schedule , but its not expensive. All you really need is some chemicals and testing supplies which is about a $20/month investment.
Before we dive in, stop fussing with hot tub chemistry and maintenance right now and invest in our hot tub care video course. Youll learn how to keep your hot tub chemistry in check so you never have to deal with messy spa again.
Smart Tips To Contending With 6 Common Pool Issues
While there are dozens of issues that could give you trouble with your pool, here are six of the most common you should be familiar with.
1. Cloudy Pool Water
If you have cloudy pool water, first you’ll need to figure out what is causing the pool water to be murky, and testing the pool chemistry is a good place to start.
If any of the levels are off, they can cause cloudy water for various reasons. Get those levels balanced.
If that doesnt fix the problem, check your filters.
If they are clogged or the pump isnt running right, they wont be cleaning the water like they should. If your filters need to be cleaned, hose them off well and use the appropriate chemicals when necessary.
If you’re having regular issues with cloudy water, but everything seems to be working right and your chemicals are balanced, you might need to use a pool clarifier every week after cleaning.
This product will clump tiny particles of debris together so they can be more easily filtered out.
2. Algae
Algae can usually be controlled by consistently shocking your pool.
You’ll also need to use a pool brush to scrub the surface so that you are removing any algae spores from the sides that you might not be able to see. Using an algaecide after shocking the pool is also key to keeping it under control.
But if you are still having problems with it, you may need to double shock your pool, brushing and vacuuming after each treatment.
3. Green Pool Water
4. Pool Foam
5. Stains
6. Leaks
Thank You
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Power Wash To Make The Pool Deck Shine
The area that surrounds your pool is just as important as the physical structure itself. You can help keep your pool deck shining by power washing.Power washing, also known as pressure washing, will help get rid of any rust or weather stains that occur over time. You can rent a power washer at any home improvement store.Start the process by sweeping the deck free of any errant dirt or leaves first, so you dont end up spreading them all over during the cleaning process. Then, put the power washer together according to the directions. Set the machine on a weak to medium power spray and remove the surface debris in layers, repeating the process until the surface is clean.As you spray, be sure to overlap the areas youve cleaned in order to help prevent streaks. Youll want the nozzle of the power washer several feet off the surface of the pool deck and maintain this height to prevent gouging.
