Laying poolside is the quintessential way to spend a scorching summer day. It’s easy to imagine the fun that comes with owning a pool—floating in a tube on Caribbean blue waters, family poolside volleyball, romantic moonlit dips—without considering the responsibility that comes with it.
The truth is, owning a pool requires regular maintenance: weekly vacuuming, chemical testing, and inspecting filters, pumps, heaters, and more. But, by understanding the cost of owning a pool and how to care for it, you can learn to avoid the common and costly mistakes.
Here are six easy ways to keep your pool ready for fun this summer:
1. Chemicals
An poorly maintained pool doesn’t just look bad, it can also contain dangerous bacteria. On the flip side, over-chlorinating can cause rash and eye irritation.
Fortunately, you don’t have to be a expert to maintain proper chemical levels in your pool. Using chlorine and pH testing strips to clean your pool is easy with modern testing kits.
The colors on a testing kit chart represent your pH level, which tells you if you added too much or not enough chlorine. The ideal amount of chlorine and pH is:
- a free chlorine concentration of at least 1 ppm and
- pH 7.2–7.8
If your pool doesn’t match these standards, simply adjust the chemicals or water levels.
Test your pool’s chemical levels at leastly weekly to keep maintenance low and the pool ready for swimming.
2. Practice Daily Pool Cleaning
Doing little chores everyday can prevent a cleaning problems.
Easily skim the top of the pool every day for leaves, bugs, and dirt. This helps your water circulate correctly and keeps you from having to add chlorine too often, improving pool feel.
Make sure to clean out the strainer basket and scrub the sides of the pool with a brush about once a week to prevent algae buildup. These tiny chores go a long way in keeping your pool clear and bacteria free.
3. Use Your Pool Vacuum
How often you have to vacuum depends on how persistant you are about daily skimming, since dirt and leaves left on the surface eventually sink to the bottom.
Pool vacuums come in a wide variety of styles and prices, from automated robotic cleaners to handheld systems with telescopic poles.
Vacuuming the pool is a key ingredient to a healthy pool. And, the process can be about as fast and simple once you’re familiar with the equipment.
4. Shock Your Pool
Shocking your pool means is adding a high volume of chemicals all at once in order to “shock” the system and kill bacteria. You only have to shock your pool about twice a season.
For safety, make sure to wear protective eye goggles and rubber gloves when shocking the pool. Here are a few tips to help get you started:
- Use one pound of shock per 10,000 gallons of water.
- Dissolve one pound of shock solution in a five-gallon bucket of warm water before adding it to the pool.
- Once the shock is dissolved, slowly pour the solution around the pool.
- Shocking the pool works best at evenings or night. Not only can sunlight dissolve some chemicals and make them less effective, but the chlorine levels can balance out while you’re sleeping.
Just be sure to wait until chlorine levels are back to normal (anywhere from 15 minutes to 8 hours depending on the kind of shock you used) before going for a swim or you risk serious skin irritation.
5. Water Level
Everyday summer play can cause major fluctuations in your pool’s water level. The perfect water level is halfway up the skimmer line.
If your water level gets too low it could reduce safety and ruin your pool’s pump.
6. Professional Advice
With the above tips, you can take care of most summer pool maintenance yourself. But, a pool is still a complex system: chemicals, heaters, filters, pipes—and sometimes even the best pool owners need an expert adsvice.