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How I Started My Pool Business — 2,000 Episodes Later

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Hitting a milestone like episode 2000 is a good excuse to get brutally practical about what really makes a pool service business work. The clearest lesson from decades in the field is that most early struggles come from one root problem: pricing that does not match time, effort, and chemical cost. When your pool service pricing is too low, you end up “spinning your wheels” with long days, heavy driving, and little profit. A pool route is only valuable if it produces steady margin, not just busywork. If a job pays less than a basic hourly wage after fuel, supplies, and travel, the business model is broken, even if the calendar looks full. Profit also depends on choosing the right services. Weekly residential pool service accounts are the bread and butter because they create recurring revenue and predictable scheduling. By contrast, one-time pool cleanups often turn into a dead end: you show up for a pool party rush job, do the work, get paid once, and never see the customer again. Filte...
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Pool Guy’s Guide to Choosing the RIGHT Pool Pole

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Picking the right telescopic pool pole sounds simple until you live with the decision every day on route. We break down what actually matters for pool service pros and serious homeowners: storage length, backyard maneuvering, reach for vacuuming, and how the locking system feels after hundreds of cycles. A three-piece pool pole often wins when you drive a compact or mid-size truck because it collapses closer to six feet instead of leaving a long section sticking out of the bed. That shorter collapsed length also helps in tight side yards and crowded pool pads where an eight-foot pole can bang walls, planters, screens, or even windows.   A long-time go-to aluminum option is the SkimLite Dually 9018, a three-piece pole that collapses to about 6 feet 8 inches and extends to roughly 17 feet 6 inches. That extra reach sounds small on paper, but it can be the difference between vacuuming a 16-foot-wide pool from one side of the deck versus having to reposition and redo passes. For l...
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The Most UNDERRATED Pool Cleaner? Polaris 360

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If your pool vacuum keeps clogging and your floor never stays clean, the problem may not be your effort, it may be the wrong type of automatic pool cleaner for your debris load. The Polaris 360 return side pool cleaner is one of the most underrated options for pools that get heavy leaf debris, seed pods, and clustered plant waste that overwhelms a suction side cleaner. It runs from a standard return line, so you do not need a booster pump like a traditional pressure side cleaner. That one detail opens a niche solution for homeowners and pool service techs who want pressure-cleaner style pickup without rebuilding the equipment pad. The key benefit is simple: a larger debris opening and a top-mounted bag that can handle the messy stuff that plugs the throat of most suction pool cleaners. To choose the right cleaner, it helps to understand the difference between pressure side cleaners with a booster pump and return side cleaners like the Polaris 360. A booster pump pressure cleaner uses a...
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Simple Math = BIGGER Profits

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Pool service is one of the simplest service businesses to run by the numbers because the core revenue is recurring. When you clean pools weekly or monthly, you can forecast cash flow far more easily than trades that rely on one-time calls. That predictability is power, but it also creates risk: losing accounts hits immediately. The smartest way to think about pool route growth is not complicated accounting, it is clear business math you can do on a calculator. Start with a baseline monthly service price, multiply by your total accounts, then multiply by 12 to see annual gross revenue. Once you see the number, you can make practical moves that increase pool service income without guessing, and you can track results with a simple profit and loss spreadsheet.   The fastest lever for increasing pool service revenue is adding service accounts. If your average pool service pricing is around $180 per month, 70 accounts creates $12,600 in monthly revenue and $151,200 per year before e...
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Getting In WAY Over Your Head in the Pool Business!

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Pool service work has a sneaky way of pulling you into tasks that feel “close enough” to what you already do, until the risk and complexity spike. A smart pool service business is not built on doing everything yourself; it is built on knowing your limits, protecting the customer’s pool, and choosing the safest path to results. This episode focuses on the real-world learning curve in pool maintenance and pool repairs, including the Catch-22 problem: you gain skill by doing the work, but you cannot do the work well without skill. The practical answer is to partner, shadow, and selectively refer jobs out while you grow. Two repairs that often deserve immediate partnering are acid washing a pool and pulling a pool or spa light, especially combo pool and spa light systems. Acid washing requires finesse, safety awareness, and the ability to predict outcomes before you start, including what the plaster will look like when finished, how long it will take, and how to price the job. Pool light r...
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Getting the Most Out of Your Pool Test Strips

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Test strips are one of the most argued-about tools in pool water testing because they feel both convenient and unreliable at the same time. The core issue is not always the chemistry on the strip, but the human step where we interpret color. When you dip a strip and compare it to the chart, you are making a judgment call under whatever lighting you have, with whatever color sensitivity you were born with, and at whatever speed you are trying to finish the job. That is why test strips often deliver a “ballpark” pool chemical reading, even if the strip itself is manufactured consistently. For pool owners and pool service pros, the win is speed: fast pool testing for free chlorine, total chlorine, pH, total alkalinity, hardness, and cyanuric acid in one dip. The risk is false confidence when a number needs to be precise, or when the range blocks on the bottle are too wide for the decision you are trying to make.  Digital test strip readers and phone-linked pool water monitors try to s...
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Is the Pool Boom Over? What 2026 Means for Pool Pros

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The pool industry in 2026 feels uneven: strong demand in the pool service business, but clear softness in pool construction and pool remodeling. Higher interest rates reshape everything because so many backyard projects rely on borrowed money. When financing jumps from the low-rate era to 8% territory, homeowners rethink big upgrades, builders see fewer signed contracts, and manufacturers feel the slowdown. This shift is showing up in equipment sales expectations, contractor backlogs, and the overall pace of new pool permits. For pool service pros, the key is reading these signals early so you can plan staffing, inventory, and pricing for a tighter consumer mindset. On the manufacturing side, a construction slowdown hits orders fast. When retailers and wholesale distributors are overstocked, they stop ordering, and that pressure rolls uphill to brands like Pentair, Hayward, and Fluidra. Overstock can create occasional promotional pricing, but it does not guarantee cheaper equipment acr...
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