Here are our top 8 pro-tips to maintaining your swimming pool for clean and clear water.
Before you can do your pool service, first and foremost, always ensure that your pool water level is correctly maintained. How full should my pool be? Swimming pools can evaporate as much as 2.5cm a week in the hot summer months.
It can be hard to know if your pool water is simply evaporating or actually leaking though, so never assume. Here is a quick Bucket test idea to help you check if your pool is leaking.
Check and empty your skimmer basket regularly. These can sometimes split when they get over full, or brittle, which can allow debris to flow through to your pool pump. Turn your pool pump off before trying to take the skimmer basket out, this will ease the need for muscle power and also reduces the risk of something falling into the skimmer and being sucked straight to the pump.
Check and empty the pump basket as well. This is a second 'safety point' to ensure that debris doesn't flow through and damage your actual pool pump.
Brush your pool walls - cleaning your pool is all part of pool maintenance.
Scoop the surface leaves before vacuuming, as often scooping causes leaves to fall to the ground.
Whilst we always recommend that you end off with backwashing your pool to clean out the filter, it's a good idea to do this before you vacuum the pool too, to ensure maximum suction pressure and limited backpressure. How to backwash my pool
If you have a cartridge filter rather than a sand filter, here is how to clean a cartridge filter.
Vacuum your pool for dirt and debris. If your pool has an automatic cleaner, you will need to remove this first. Take the end of the hose that is connected to the cleaner and attach it to your vacuum head. Ensure that you do this under the water to avoid sucking in air as you run the risk of your pump suc
ng air and even losing prime.
Priming a pool pump can be tricky, but sometimes it just takes a little bit of patience.
Check your pool chemicals.
It's important to understand your chlorine and salt levels, why stabilizer levels matter and why phosphates should be removed.
Remember to increase your pool pump running times during the hot summer months when chlorine is easily evaporated and used up during extra swimming.
Top Tip : Shut the gate
