Get more from your swim pool by avoiding these costly mistakes when cleaning and maintaining your pool.
As a pool owner, you know that keeping your above-ground pool clean and clear can be quite a chore.
This becomes an even bigger task if you make some mistakes in the way that you go about trying to keep your swimming pool clean.
Some of these mistakes can end up creating headaches for you when it comes to keeping your pool water crystal clear and they can even end up being quite costly in terms of equipment and pool structure repairs.
This is why I thought it would be a great idea to write an article that goes over some of the common mistakes pool owners make when cleaning their swimming pools with lifeguard class.
That way you can learn how to avoid them instead of dealing with the headaches and expense that results from making these mistakes yourself.
Let’s jump right in.
1. Infrequent Pool Water Testing
While your swimming pool water may look clean and clear, the balance of the chemicals inside of it is constantly changing.
That’s because as environmental factors impact your pool water (think acid rain, sunlight, suntan lotion) and bathers swim in it, the chemicals that you added to it will start to get used up. The warmer the temperature and the more people that swim in your pool, the less time that your added pool chemicals remain effective.
Frequent water testing (at least bi-weekly) helps you to avoid conditions where your swimming pool can quickly turn from being clear to being cloudy or green.
You also want to make sure to test your swimming pool’s water for more parameters than are found on typical pool test strips at least once a swim season. Preferably after you first open your swimming pool for the season. This will help you balance your pool water as perfectly as possible to begin with and make it easier to maintain throughout the season.
The best way to do this is to purchase a mail-in laboratory test kit or take a sample of your pool water to a local water testing company or pool supply store.
There are also some great digital pool test kits and the less-expensive options of pool test strips to give you an idea of where the pool chemistry is at.
2. Neglecting to Regularly Brush the Sides and Bottom of Your Pool
One of the most neglected pieces of swimming pool cleaning equipment is pool brushes. I have talked to many pool owners who don’t even use them at all except when opening up their swimming pool for the season.
This is a big mistake that will cause you to have to put in more effort to keep your swimming pool clean.
What’s the reason for this?
Whether you own a fiberglass, concrete, or vinyl liner pool, the sides of it routinely become the resting place for algae, dirt, and other pool water contaminants. Just because you can’t see them does not mean they are not there.
Since pool circulation does not impact the cleanliness of the bottom of your pool and its sidewalls very much, brushing your pool walls and bottom regularly (bi-monthly) helps to keep them cleaner and improve the overall cleanliness of your swimming pool.
3. Using Less Pure Forms of Chlorine as a Sanitizer:
I would strongly recommend against using liquid chlorine and other alternative forms of chlorine (use only chlorine sticks and pucks) as your main pool sanitizer.
This is because this type of chlorine is usually only about 70% pure. That remaining 30% is inert ingredients will make it more difficult to keep your pool water clean and it does not contain stabilizers, so the chlorine in your pool water gets used up faster and needs to be added more often.
This is a practice that can also be devastating if you own an above-ground pool or an inground pool with a vinyl liner too. That’s because less pure forms of chlorine contain many inert ingredients.
These inert ingredients tend to form scale on the surface of vinyl liners that starts to dry them out and take their elasticity away.
Once a vinyl swimming pool liner loses its ability to stretch, it will often start to rip or tear near the top of the pool necessitating its replacement with lifeguard recertification usa
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4. Failure to Follow Instructions when Adding Pool Chemicals
Have you ever added a bag of shock directly into your swimming pool after you noticed it getting a little cloudy?
You are not alone by any means if you have. That’s because this is a common but highly unrecommended practice of pool owners.
This can have severe consequences such as throwing your pool chemical balance out of whack, damaging your swimming pool, ruining pool equipment, and this can even cause harm to bathers that go into your pool water.
That’s why you should never add any chemicals to your swimming pool before reading the directions on the label as to how to best do it. This applies even to pool chemicals that you believe are fairly harmless including algaecides, soda ash, clarifiers, and more.
5. Putting Chlorine Tablets in Your Pool Skimmer Basket
This is among the most common mistakes that pool owners make in an effort to keep their pools cleaner. While placing chlorine in a pool skimmer basket may seem like an easy way to get the chlorine into your pool that helps keep the water clean this can backfire on you too.
That’s because when the water is not circulating, the chlorine that’s in the skimmer will continue to dissolve and become a powerful chemical force that will weaken plastic skimmer parts and become highly corrosive when it reaches your pool pump and other water filtration equipment.
I have also witnessed occasions where skimmer tablets have floated out of skimmer baskets and ended up on the pool floor. This can discolor fiberglass and concrete pool bottoms and potentially ruin a vinyl pool liner.
So, place chlorine tablets and sticks in a properly installed chlorine feeder next to your pool filtration equipment. These are very inexpensive devices that work well and are simple to operate.
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