Five Easy Steps To Pool Maintenance
Pools are a ton of fun, but they can be a ton of work if you’ve never owned one and are trying to figure out how to take care of one! If you’re thinking of buying a house that has a pool, don’t be intimidated. Anyone can learn pool maintenance with a little practice and troubleshooting. Over the course of years of pool ownership, you will encounter some problems at some point – liners get holes, Ph gets off, or some other issue occurs. When it happens, remember that there’s a solution for almost every problem, but a little maintenance goes a long way to avoid many problems in the first place.
Five Easy Steps To Pool Maintenance
- Balance
- Chlorinate
- Shock
- Control
- Clarify
Your pool’s Ph Level is vital to health – the health of the pool and yours. It should be 7.4 – 7.6 to assist chlorine to be able to do its job correctly. If the Ph is off, is cause significant damage to your pool, and can be harmful to your skin and eyes. Ideally, you should test everyday with test strips, but certainly when things are “off” or you are trying to resolve a problem.
Unless you have a saltwater pool, you need to chlorinate. Chlorine kills bacteria and delays growth of algae. Chlorine is a dangerous chemical and should be treated as such – it is possible to have too much! It will burn your skin, eyes, and damage your hair. Too much chlorine will destroy swimsuits quickly as well. Too little will leave you with a swampy, smelly pool. The idea is to keep free chlorine in the range of 1.0-1.5 ppm, which can also be tested. But take a critical look at your water. Smell it. Is it green? Does it smell bad? It should have a faint bleach smell and should be clear.
Shocking your pool helps to make it clear and get rid of byproducts that chlorine has killed (such as dead algae). It also removes sunscreen, oil from hair and bodies, and other organic products. This helps make your water clear. It is possible for your water to be clean without being clear, but it won’t be very pretty. That’s why shocking helps.
When you get your pool where you want it, the key is control. This is not easy because you constantly have factors to consider – those two weeks where it is 105 degrees everyday, storms, etc. This can throw off Ph and wreak havoc. Controllers help with algae prevention during these special situations.
Clarifiers are a final step to get your pool brilliant, clear, and sparkling. This is a step that is not absolutely necessary, but nice to have, especially if you regularly host pool parties. Remember that after parties, your pool needs to be carefully monitored. The more people that have been in the pool, the more chance that the Ph could be off.
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