Pool Maintenance: Common Mistakes & How to Avoid Them
While pools are a beautiful and wonderful thing to own, they can become unsightly and unhygienic if not properly maintained. Maintaining a pool may seem like a time-consuming chore or hard work, but regularly and correctly performing maintenance can help avoid major issues. Here are some of the most common mistakes made during at-home pool maintenance, so that you can do your best to avoid them.
- Adding pool shock directly into the water
Pool shock is ultra-concentrated chlorine, and it’s necessary for the cleanliness of your pool. However, putting shock directly into the water will bleach anything that it goes into. It can damage vinyl linings in pools, causing them to leak. This problem can be avoided by dissolving the shock into a separate container before adding it to your pool and brushing any shock that settles in the pool to disperse it.
- Shocking directly through a skimmer
Many of these mistakes lead to small consequences, but this is not the case for adding pool shock through a skimmer. Doing this can cause your filter system to explode. The chemical combination between the filter system and the pool shock creates a toxic gas, expanding in the small space that is the filter. Do not do this!
- Not brushing your pool clean
While most people know to vacuum their pools, you also have to brush them to keep them clean. Always follow up a vacuuming with brushing to get rid of debris and algae build-up in your pool.
- Using an automatic cleaner to deal with algae
It can be tempting to pull out the automatic pool cleaner. However, pool cleaners are not useful for algae problems, as the mesh bag clogs up quickly and then all they do is pull the algae around the pool instead of removing it. It’s better to clean your pool manually.
- Ignoring pH levels and failing to test pool water
It’s important to test your pool water weekly. This way, you can keep an eye on the pH and alkaline levels, as well as the levels of calcium hardness, cyanuric acid, salt, copper, and iron.
- Backwashing your pool filter too often
Backwashing is a way to clean your filter to free it from the gunk it’s been removing from the pool water. However, it is possible to do this too often. A little build-up actually allows the filter to work better, so keep an eye on your pressure gauge, which should normally be around 10-15psi. Only backwash when it reaches around 20psi.
- Not running the circulation long enough
If you’re running your pool water circulation and filtration system for less than eight hours a day, your pool is not getting cleaned fully. Different pools need different lengths of time, but eight hours should allow most pools to have the water filtered several times a day, clearing it of algae and other contaminants.
If you’re looking for a great new pool, or for better cleaning systems for the one you’ve got, contact Pools of Fun today! We can help get you a healthy and beautiful pool.