Balance Your Pool

With your swimming pool, it’s important to ensure that your water is properly balanced. This will help your pool stay clean and stay in the best shape for many years to come. This will also to ensure that your family and anyone else who swims in your pool is safe. Here are our best tips on how to balance your pool.

Balancing

Before you add chemicals into your pool, you should turn on your pump. This will circulate the chemicals you add throughout the whole pool.

When working with chemicals, you can only add a certain amount of each chemical per 10,000 gallons of water at one time. The amount depends on the chemical and your pool size.

If you need to add more than the maximum amount, add it slowly. You should add the max, then wait 6 hours before adding any more.

Alkalinity

Total alkalinity refers to the amount of alkaline in the water.

Adding alkaline material into your water first is the best method. It will act as a buffer for your pH scale.

pH

This is the acidity of the water. Ideally, you will want your water between 7.4-7.6.

Keeping your PH balanced will ensure the structure of your pool and equipment are not damaged from low or high levels.

Do you have questions about which chemicals you need for your pool, or how to balance your pool properly? Don’t hesitate to contact us!

How To Keep Your Pool Healthy in Summer

The Dog Days of Summer. The hottest time of the year and the busiest time of the year for pool owners. It’s also the time of year when your pool water is exposed to higher bather loads, intense temperatures, and prolonged sunlight. Here is our list of things you should do to keep your pool healthy in summer.

Run The Filter More

July and August are the time when you need the most filtering of the season. Set that pool filter timer a few extra hours longer each day. What you spend on electricity you will save in chemicals which can really add up. Your water is warm enough to shut off the pool heater and the combination of warm water, bright sunshine, and frequent rainstorms, all call for more filtering time each day.

Add More Chlorine

Warmer water, more swimmers and longer sunlight hours mean that your chlorine will deplete or burn-up faster. Add extra 3″ tabs to your chlorinator, and/or turn the dial higher to maintain chlorine levels. Pool shock frequency may also rise during the hottest parts of the summer, to fight algae, bacteria, chloramines, and cloudy water.

Keep Calm & Stay Stable

Sunlight is an enemy of all pool chemicals on some levels. Long hours of daily sunlight means that stabilizer levels are even more important, to prevent degradation of chlorine when you need it most. Keep your stabilizer level between 20-50 ppm, and reduce or dilute if over 100 ppm.

More important than stabilizer, however, is to consistently test your pool water balance during July and August. Your pool water is ever-changing, but never more than during the hottest summer months, when pH, Alkalinity, and stabilizer levels can rise and cause water balance problems.

Stay Cool, Beat the Heat

Hot temperatures, long sunlight exposure, and more pool parties mean more friends and family with more sunblock and oil. This can lead to a ring around your waterline, more organic solids dissolved in your water, and cloudy or hazy pool water.

Enzymes are natural oil-eaters that also clean the pool filter of trapped oils and greasy gunk, and reduce chlorine demand by removing organics from the pool and pool system.

Have any questions on keeping your pool in tip-top shape? Contact us here!

Keep Your Pool Safe

Pool Safety is an important topic to discuss when considering getting a pool for your home. Here is our list of important precautions to take to keep your pool safe this summer.

Supervise at all times

When the little ones head to the pool, be sure to apply sunscreen and remind them not to run. The most important pool safety factor is supervision. Someone with CPR/first-aid knowledge is also important in case of emergencies. Training can be obtained via classes at your local hospital, YMCA or through the Red Cross, to name a few options.

When the pool isn’t in use, a pool safety cover can be used to prevent any accidents from occurring.

Know the facts about flotation devices

Flotation devices can help kids mobility in the pool and give parents peace of mind, but they don’t ensure safety, so be sure to remain watchful. Some swim experts even discourage the use of “floaties,” noting that they may give children false confidence. Water wings and other floatation devices can be dangerous.

Ramp up pool party security

When it comes to pool parties, hiring a lifeguard can add a layer of safety. A lifeguard can make up for that reduced caution. To find one for hire, inquire at your local community pool or call a private lifeguard company.

Be aware of dry/secondary drowning

Lately, there’s been a push in awareness of dry drowning and secondary drowning. Dry drowning happens when water a child has breathed in causes their vocal cords to spasm and close up. Secondary drowning occurs after swimming or bathing from water inhaled into the lungs, causing trouble breathing.

Have any questions about pools or pool safety? Contact us here!

Conserve Pool Water

Swimming pools can be water wasters, but they don’t have to be. With some simple practices like turning down the heat, and prohibiting cannonballs, your pool doesn’t need to be a water hog.

Reducing your swimming pool water needs is easy, but it can cost a few dollars. With some simple steps, you can conserve pool water and be able to tell anyone who asks how your pool actually saves water!

Backwash Less

Many pool owners backwash too often, every week for example. Let your pressure gauge be your guide – backwash when the pressure is 9-10 lbs above the clean pressure. Bumping a DE Filter (backwashing only for 10 seconds) will extend the time between backwashing. Using a Sand Filter Cleaner will help to extend sand filter cycles or time between backwashes.

Use Pool Covers

Any type of pool cover will reduce evaporation, heat loss and will save pool water. Even mesh safety covers reduce evaporation water loss by nearly 50%. Solar blankets are an easy way to both add heat to the pool (up to 10° for a sunny pool), and also reduce evaporation by over 80%. The best way to stop pool evaporative water loss is to use an automatic pool cover.

Sun Shades

Adding some shade to your pool can drastically reduce the sun’s evaporative effects. Shade can come from installing a Pergola or pool house on one end, planting fast-growing evergreens, or installing Sun Sail type shades to keep your water from evaporating so fast. Especially in the sunny south, shading the pool for at least a portion of the day is one way to conserve pool water.

Wind Blocks

The wind is the largest heat thief of your pool, and when it takes heat off the surface, it takes some water along with it. Hedges, fences, windscreens and such can make a big difference if you have prevailing winds, mostly coming from one direction. You can’t completely shield your pool from wind, but every little bit will help to prevent pool water loss.

Have any questions about how to save money on your pool? Contact us here!

Saltwater Pools

Getting a pool always comes with the big question, saltwater or chlorine?

Today we’ll be discussing the pros and cons of specifically using saltwater in your pools versus only chlorine.

Saltwater Pools use the Exact Same Chlorine

Saltwater systems make chlorine, the exact same chlorine that is released from pool chlorine products. In a saltwater pool, when H2O + NaOCl are run through the salt cell, the electric charge breaks apart molecules to create chlorine (Cl) and a few other byproducts, which are generally reabsorbed. The chlorine that is instantly created, hypochlorous acid, is the same exact chlorine that is released from chlorine tablets, liquid chlorine, or granular chlorine.

Saltwater Pools do have Benefits

• You can’t taste the salt, but it can make the water feel softer
• Less storage and handling of hazardous chlorine products
• Breakpoint chlorination inside the cell reduces chloramines constantly
• Easily raise or lower chlorine levels, and view status on a digital display

Saltwater Pools are not Maintenance Free Pools

• You still have to monitor the system, and test for salt, chlorine and stabilizer levels
• You still have to maintain good water balance; saltwater pool pH and Alkalinity rises rapidly
• Salt cells need cleaning to remove scale, although some systems do it automatically
• Salt cells last about 5 yrs; salt system parts like boards, sensors and switches may last longer

You may Still Need to Use Chlorine Products

• To raise the chlorine level very fast for shock treatments
• To maintain chlorine level during pump, filter or salt system equipment problems
• To clear the water during opening or closing the pool, or for treating various water problems

Saltwater can attack Soft & Shiny Surfaces

• Galvanic corrosion can oxidize chrome surfaces in the pool, although sacrificial anodes can be used
• Salt residue can slowly corrode soft coping stones or stone decks, although sealers can be used

Have any more questions about saltwater pools? Contact us here!