Swimming Pool Tips and Reviews

Keeping your swimming pool's water chemistry balanced is essential for clear water and easy maintenance. One key factor is total alkalinity (TA), which, if too high, can lead to cloudy water and trouble maintaining the pH level. This quick guide shows how to lower alkalinity using muriatic acid and aeration. What is Total Alkalinity (TA) and Why It Matters TA measures the concentration of alkaline substances in the water, like bicarbonates and carbonates, which act as a buffer for pH levels. Ideally, your pool's TA should be between 80-120 ppm. When TA gets too high (above 120 ppm), it can cause cloudy water, scaling, and difficulty adjusting pH. Lowering TA will help bring everything back into balance. Why Use Muriatic Acid? Muriatic acid is commonly used to lower both alkalinity and pH in pools. The trick is that while it lowers both, it affects TA more, so the pH can be adjusted separately using aeration. Step-by-Step: Lowering Alkalinity 1. Test Your Water: Before adding an

Here is how a photometer works: "Most photometers detect the light with photoresistors, photodiodes or photomultipliers. To analyze the light, the photometer may measure the light after it has passed through a filter or a monochromator for determination at defined wavelengths or for analysis of the spectral distribution of the light." -Wikipedia. The water sample is blanked or zeroed out so that the photometer tester gets an accurate reading of the state of the water sample before the reagent is introduced. Once the reagent is put in the water sample, the photometer tester will read the color change of the water sample. For example, in the pH testing, the lighter the color, the lower the pH, just like in a reagent test kit or the tabs on a test strip. The darker the color, the higher the pH. The thing about the digital photometer is that it will read the color exactly and give you a digital readout of the pH based on the color spectrum. This eliminates user error and the need

Measuring Swimming Pool Volume: A Quick Guide Maintaining your swimming pool starts with knowing its volume. Understanding your pool's volume helps you calculate the right amount of chemicals, determine pump flow rates, and manage heating requirements. Let’s explore how to measure your pool volume effectively. Why Measure Your Pool Volume? 1. Chemical Balancing: Accurate dosing of chlorine and other chemicals is essential for water quality. 2. Pump and Filter Sizing: Pool volume helps determine the right size and flow rate for your pump and filter. 3. Heating Requirements: Knowing your pool's volume aids in calculating heating time for your desired temperature. How to Measure Your Pool Volume 1. Rectangular or Square Pools • Formula: Volume (gallons) = Length (ft) × Width (ft) × Average Depth (ft) × 7.48 • Steps: 1. Measure length and width in feet. 2. Determine average depth (add shallow and deep depths, then divide by two). 3. Plug the numbers into the formula

The pool service industry has evolved over the years, and this current pool pros has the most resources at their disposal. I started before cell phones were invented and way before YouTube. If you didn’t know how to do something, you learned quickly.  There are many reasons pool service is a legit business and a great one to get into. The fact that you set your hours and are essentially your boss is probably the biggest reason people start a pool service business. Second is the flexible hours you can put into the industry. You can work as much or as little as you like.  That brings me to the scalability of pool service. You can be a single poler with 80 accounts and make a good living out there just running a small route and putting in 30-40 hours per week. Or you can bring on an employee or maybe 2-to 3, get 300 accounts, and start to grow a more extensive service company. You can get as big as you want or stay small and use that income to invest in future passive income sources. It i

 A vinyl pool in-ground or above-ground differs from your traditional plaster or concrete pool. The differences don’t stop on the actual vinyl material but on many different levels, including which chemicals to use in the pool, how to clean a vinyl pool, and which automatic cleaner is safe. A vinyl pool’s surface is a piece of plastic. Unlike a cement plaster pool, a vinyl pool can be easily stained by chemicals. You can stain a plaster pool with chemicals, but it is much more resistant than a vinyl surface. You cannot put Cal-Hypo, Trichlor, or other granular chlorine directly onto the vinyl surface. Liquid chlorine and Cal Hypo Tablets are safe in the skimmer, and Cal Hypo directly in the pool skimmer. Caution is the keyword here, so think whenever you add anything, will this stain the surface?” Since the vinyl pool surface is a piece of plastic, it will have a lower acid demand. This means that the pH in the pool will tend to drift down and not up. This means you should have Soda As

 The Madimack GT Freedom i45 was impressive in many ways. I got a little over 4 hours of run time in floor/wall/waterline mode, whereas the manual stats 2.5 hours in a vinyl pool. I think the pool surface type was the real difference in my testing, as it was in a plaster pool with less resistance. That is an incredible run time! It is also a truly smart cleaner with a great cleaning pattern. Many of these cordless cleaners can’t clean the entire pool, but this one does with ease. The 100-micron debris basket works just fine. I know many will want a 60-micron option, but I am unsure how that will affect the cleaning ability. It looks like it has the power for a finer micron basket. They have a 180-micron and 100-micron basket available, but nothing finer. That is actually the only real negative aspect of this cleaner coming from the Australian market to the US market. We prefer finer micron debris baskets, but this one did a great job with the finer dirt and silt.  It has a great, easy-