Pool Maintenance for First-Time Pool Owners
Tips to keep your pool this clean
Pools are delightful, fun, and relaxing. They bring tons of quality time with the family and are an excellent fitness activity too.
But they also demand their share of maintenance.
The filter, the pump, the feeder, heaters, cleaners, and other pool accessories require regular care. Ignore them, and you’ll find yourself swimming in green, dirty, and even potentially disease-causing water.
So, you obviously love your pool and want to keep it in its best shape. Now, the only question is – how to do it?
Before we jump to maintaining the pool, let’s understand how swimming pool systems work.
Understanding Swimming Pool Systems
Although swimming pools are pretty big, there’s not much happening there. They are simple systems and work flawlessly most of the time, with a little bit of maintenance. Here’s a quick and easy way to understand pool cleaning for the first-time pool cleaners.
There are 3 things to take into account:
Circulation
Filtration
Sanitation
Let’s take a look at what each of these does.
Circulation
Swimming pool water gets dirty for numerous reasons. So, a circulation system is used to take the water out from the pool, filter it, treat it, and then feed it back to the pool. In colder regions or during winter, the circulation system also heats up the water to an acceptable temperature.
Filtration
Pool water collects dirt, dust, dry leaves, and other small particles. A filter is used to remove these suspended particles. The water should be filtered at least once per day using sand, cartridge, or diatomaceous earth (DE) powder filters.
Sanitation
While filtration cleans away all suspended particles, the sanitation system treats the water chemically to kill the microbes – algae, bacteria, and other disease-causing germs. Typically, chlorine is used to kill the germs and render the pool water clean and clear.
Maintaining Swimming Pools
Swimming pool maintenance is essentially taking care of the three systems we discussed above. Here’s how it works:
Pool Circulation Maintenance
Pool pump draws the water out of the pool, feeds it to the filter, and then redirects it to the pool. Its performance is critical for the sanitation of your pool. Therefore, check its operation every day by running it for at least 8-12 hours. Perhaps, even 24 hours a day when water is dirty.
Pumps often lose their prime due to air leakage or low levels of water in the pool. To prevent air leakage, the pump lid must be lubricated well and tightened firmly.
Pay special attention to the pump basket. It must be clean and properly installed. Improper installation can cause a clogged impeller.
Verify that the water pump is pumping a regular amount of water daily. Also, check for any abnormal sounds to identify a pump in distress. Swirling water, ripples from the returning water, and other unusual signs of water flow indicate a potential pump issue.
Pool Filtration Maintenance
Filtration maintenance boils down to the cleaning of the filter when the pool filter pressure reaches above normal levels, usually every 3-6 months. Therefore, it’s important to know the normal pool filter pressure. It is generally in the area of 10-20 psi, but it can be different for your pool filter. So, check the manual.
Filter cleaning involves a specific set of steps that depends on the type of filtration material used. Swimming pools typically use 3 types of filtration materials – sand filters, cartridge, and diatomaceous earth powder.
Sand filters typically use a specific type of quartz filter sand, although they can also use FilterBalls, ZeoSand, or FilterGlass too. When the sand filter’s pressure gauge jumps 10 psi over the normal, it’s time to clean the filters by shutting off the pump and backwashing the filter.
Cartridge filters use special-purpose pleated polyester fabric to trap suspended particles in water. Here too, when the pressure gauge goes 10 psi higher than it was when it was new or freshly cleaned, it’s time to clean the filter. Cartridge filters can be cleaned by removing them from the tank and hosing them down.
powder filters typically use diatomaceous earth powder to filtration, although they can also use Perlite or cellulose fiber. As with the other filters, the filter must be cleaned when the pressure gauge shows an above-normal reading. The filter is backwashed, the dirt and filter powder are flushed out, and fresh powder is added to the filter.
Pool Sanitation Maintenance
A daily dose of sanitizer is critical for killing all bacteria, algae, and other disease-causing germs.
The most common sanitizer used is chlorine. Use chlorine tablets to maintain a chlorine level of 1 – 5 ppm for your regular cleaning. From time to time, perform a thorough clean by increasing chlorine levels to 10 ppm or more. This kills all the germs and even combined chlorine molecules.
To prevent chlorine from degrading in the sunlight, you may have to use a chlorine stabilizer, also known as the conditioner. A popular conditioner is cyanuric acid stabilizer.
Chlorine works effectively only in water with a pH level between 7.4 and 7.6. A pH increaser or decreaser can be used to adjust the pH accordingly.
To test the chlorine levels in the water or its pH levels, a suitable test kit or test strip may be used.
Final Thoughts
All of these may sound like a lot of work to maintain the pool. But, once you get the hang of it, pool maintenance is an easy task. Just pay attention to the various systems, and you can prevent most damages even before they happen, saving a lot of effort at a later point.
Of course, we supply everything you need to do it effortlessly and quickly. If you’d like to setup a consultation please use the contact form and we will get a technician out to your home at no cost.
