Are you concerned that you might not be taking care of your pool properly?
If you aren’t keeping your pool in check, you’re putting the people swimming there at risk. A CDC study found that close to 5,000 people in 2012 visited the emergency room because of harm caused by pool chemicals.
While it seems like it takes a lot of work to take care of your pool, it doesn’t have to be. There are several things you can do to keep it clean.
Follow the eight pool maintenance tasks below to make your pool ready for the summer.
1. Skim the Surface of Your Pool
There’s only a little debris on the surface of the pool. You can wait until later to get it off, right?
Try to avoid this kind of thinking. Even if there is debris on the top of your pool, it can cause problems if you let it sit for too long.
Debris won’t stay on the top of your pool forever. Eventually, it will sink to the bottom. Once there, it becomes much more challenging to get rid of.
2. Keep Watch of Your Water Level
If you want your skimmer to work correctly, you need to keep the water level in your pool at the right level. If it’s not, your skimmer won’t be able to grab debris that’s floating around.
You can have both too much and too little water.
If you don’t have enough, then debris won’t be able to get into the skimmer. The more debris that stays in your pool, the more bacteria buildup there is.
Likewise, you don’t want too much water either. Even if your water level isn’t above your skimmer, it can still stop it from catching debris.
If possible, try to keep your water level around the half-way point of your skimmer.
3. Clean Your Filter Once and a While
If you have ever used an air purifier, you know what it’s like to clean a filter. You need to check it every once in a while so it will continue working correctly.
You need to do the same thing with your pool filter. You don’t need to check it all the time. But you do need to clean it every couple of months.
Doing this will keep it clean of debris so it will continue to keep your pool clean.
4. Check Your Chemical Levels
If you want your pool to be safe to swim in, you need to keep your pool chemicals at certain levels. It doesn’t take much to throw them off, so it pays to keep an eye on them. Here are the chemicals you need to monitor in inground pools.
Calcium Hardness
If you have plaster exposed in your pool, this chemical will help preserve the plaster. The material of your pool sides will tell you how much of this chemical you need to use.
Alkalinity / Acidity
You need to keep the pH level of your pool between 7.2 and 7.8. These chemicals are what keeps this in check.
Free Chlorine
Bacteria gets into your pool when it’s out in the open. Without chlorine, there is nothing to destroy it. Make sure you keep enough in your pool.
Cyanuric Acid
It would be a great world if chlorine could just do its job, but that doesn’t always happen. If your pool is exposed to a lot of sunlight, it could end up destroyed. Cyanuric acid will help protect your chlorine.
5. Get Oils Out of Your Pool
The chances are that people get into your pool with sunscreen, hair gel, and makeup. The problem is that the oils from these products come off people and will stay on the surface of your pool water.
If you don’t get the oil cleaned out, it can start to build up and cause problems. Instead of jumping through hoops to get rid of the oil, try tossing in a tennis ball.
The fibers on a tennis ball will soak up the oils in the water. It’s a simple way to solve the problem.
6. Make Use of Shock
If your chlorine isn’t doing its job and bacteria continues to get into your pool, it will start to appear cloudy. When this happens, your standard chlorine treatment might not be enough to fix the problem.
Instead of wasting time with your regular cleaning methods, use shock to fix the problem. When you shock your pool, you introduce more chlorine than you usually do.
The excess chlorine should be enough to kill off any bacteria in your pool. Just don’t jump straight into your pool after doing it.
7. Invest in a Vacuum
If you don’t want to spend your time cleaning out the bottom of your pool, a vacuum is a good option. Just stand at the edge of your pool and run it across the bottom to get rid of debris.
If you want to automate things a bit, a robot vacuum is another option. It will do the work on its own while you sit back and relax.
8. Prepare Your Pool for Winter
Luckily, you don’t have to take care of your pool during the winter. But there are things you can do to help prepare for it.
Before you close up your pool, give the chemicals one last balance. Doing this will help make sure that your chemicals stay balanced during the winter. There will be less of a chance of a cloudy pool when you open it up again next summer.
You also need to check your plumbing to see if there is any excess water in it. Flush it out, so it doesn’t freeze over during the winter months.
Once you do these tasks, you can end things by putting on the winter cover.
Take Pool Maintenance Seriously
Don’t forget about your pool during the summer. If you don’t want your pool to get cloudy and filled with bacteria, you need to perform the proper pool maintenance tasks to take care of it.
Keep your pool sparkling blue so you can enjoy it throughout the whole summer. You only get a few months, so make the most of them.
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