Pool Maintenance Tips: How to Clean a Pool
How to Maintain and Clean Your Pool Effectively
How often do you maintain and clean your pool? You may or may not be doing it regularly. You do not want to face an embarrassing situation when you throw a nice party. The guests cannot swim since your pool is dirty, or they come out of the water scratching their skins. Here are some useful pool maintenance tips and cleaning tips.
Schedule Routine Professional Care for your Pool
It would help if you did not ignore the need to have a professional pool technician checking your pool. Make it a routine, at least once or twice a year. The inspection checks the vital aspects of the pool, such as:
- Pumps and pipe system to ensure there are no leaks and pumps are functional
- The filter system
- The heater: It rarely requires regular servicing. Heaters can go for about three years without any noticeable fault. If it has stayed for that period, however, you must get a professional to inspect. You may do the other maintenance activities yourself, but do not attempt this one.
The pro gets to look into everything else and correct where there are faults. Hiring professional pool services is costly. If you don’t want to pay for regular maintenance you should at least have it inspected once a year. You may realize that this can be an avoidable situation if you take maintenance of your pool as a duty and routine.
For instance, the filters may not need professional checks if you get rid of debris in the pool. Pipes, too, may not experience regular leakages if you keep checking the water pH. Too much acidity in the pool water may bring about a corrosive effect after some time.
Always Maintain Pool Water at Optimal Level
In your daily or weekly cleaning, you may be using a leaf skimmer to remove leaves from your pool. The skimmer is the right tool for telling the correct water level. If the water level is too low, it will not rise to the middle of the skimmer. If it were too much, the overflow would show above the top of the skimmer.
You would need to correct this situation and attain the correct level. Increasing the water level is easier since you only need to connect a hose to the nearest tap and add water. Reducing the level is not as straightforward, although not too hard. You will need a draining pump- you do not have to buy one. You can hire a pump, or enlist a professional pool technician to pump out the excess water.
Maintain the Right Level of pH and Essential Pool Chemical
The right water pH must not be above 7.8 or below 7.2. The neutral level is necessary because you need to protect the pool from corrosion. Besides, swimmers may experience skin and eye irritation if the water is too acidic.
Are you wondering how you can tell the pH levels? Well, it is not rocket science since you can buy a pH tester or pH strips. The test reading should fall around seven to confirm the water is neutral.
This is not an exhaustive list of pool maintenance tips. Here are the other things that you must do to keep your pool in good condition:
- Winterize the pool by draining all the water using an appropriate pump. Any home improvement store can allow you to rent one.
- Invest in a pool cover throughout winter, or fall to keep the pool free from anything unwanted (debris)
- Add enzyme formula into the water during the swimming season to remove oily deposits. You can buy enzyme formulas from any pool maintenance or home improvement store
Cleaning a Pool
Every pool owner must be having the right tips on how to clean a pool. Unlike maintenance, cleaning your pool should be a daily routine. Otherwise, you will find yourself spending a lot of money on professional support. So what should you do while cleaning your pool? Follow this information.
It is essential to look at pool cleaning in three spectrums, and these are:
- Skimming and Brushing
- Vacuum cleaning
- Use of chemicals to clean
Despite dividing pool-cleaning activities into three groups, they are all complimentary. No action should exclude the other. In any case, it is best to perform all of them in the order that they appear above.
Skimming and Brushing
Things that you may need:
- A telescopic pole. The pole is where you attach the skimmer or the brush at its end during cleaning
- Leaf skimmer – use it to collect leaves, twigs, hair and other things that float on the surface, or just beneath it
- Pool brush that will clean the walls, the floor, and the steps among other areas where you can scrub
Those who know how to clean a pool will tell you that you should do skimming daily or at least any moment you notice debris at the water surface. You use the skimmer net attached to the telescopic pole to pick up trash and empty it at the relevant dumping site.
You can get advice on a good quality skimmer from your nearest pool cleaning service provider. Brushing requires you to scrub the intended areas with the brush again attached to the pole. The use of a pool brush does not have to be daily. You can do it every other week or fortnightly.
Vacuum Cleaning
You can attach a manual vacuum cleaner to the telescopic pole. Alternatively, use an automatic one, which is more expensive. The type of automatic vacuum that you select is critical since. There are different suction principles that some of them apply.
Yet you can avoid all that uncertainty by using a manual vacuum cleaner. You will need to invest in a lot of energy-draining manual activity. Still, you will have saved yourself some money, and your pool from damage while cleaning.
Use of Chemicals
Chlorine tablets will help you disinfect your pool from harmful bacteria. You can also use other chemicals like trisodium phosphate (TSP). Use this with the pool brush to clean and disinfect the pool walls.
You now have useful pool maintenance tips and some practical knowledge of how to clean a pool. Use this knowledge to keep your pool clean and safe for swimmers at all times. You notice that if you do not take care of your pool, you are posing health hazards to you and your guests.
Besides, complacency may be to be too costly in the end. Do not worry since you can hire professional pool cleaners from Clear Water Pools of Atlanta. These professionals will give you exemplary pool cleaning services.