Swimming Pool Tips and Reviews

Pool stains can be the hardest things to deal with and they can be hard to treat and identify. It can be very discouraging to see your beautiful pool surface marred by a large rust stain.  But don’t panic just yet, it might not be as bad as it looks. I will cover some remedies for both rust stains and organic stains that you will find in your pool as well as how to tell them apart. Rust stains usually come from an object that is dropped in your pool. It can be a screw in a toy that junior left in the pool all week. Recently I found two nerf guns on the bottom of a pool and when I moved one of them, sure enough, there was a nice sized rust mark on the plaster. The screw in the gun was the source of the staining. It can be from toy cars with metal rods in the wheel or any other toy with metal parts. I highly suggest only allowing pool toys in your pool, toys made specifically to be in the water. I’ve also seen batteries explode in the pool. I suppose it is from t...

One thing about above ground pools is that almost all of the kit pools ship with very small filters. This is mainly because of the price point of the entire pool to keep the price affordable. But you wouldn’t run your in-ground 10,000 gallon pool on a small 35 sq ft filter so why would it be acceptable to run the same size body of water with such a small filter? Fortunately, Raypak has the answer with their SF Above Ground Sand Filters which are sold in 6 different sizes. For an after market filter the SF Sand Filter is a simple plug and play filter. It comes with both standard 1.5” fittings and hose connector fittings. All you need to do is open the top and add the recommended amount of sand or alternate filter media. Here is more about the SF Series Filter: The Raypak Protege SF Sand Filter without pump, is an easy to operate, reliable sand pool filter. Constructed of a one-piece rotomolded tank of high-impact resistant polymers that is unaffected by UV rays or temp...

When it comes to any product in any industry it is hard to tell if it will work or not until you use it or enough people use it to leave reliable feedback and reviews. The same is true for many swimming pool products for sale on the market today. Do they work as they claim or are they just a gimmick, snake oil? Let me start with a few categories and go down the list. Stain Removers: These are always hit and miss just by the nature of staining. You need to know what kind of stain it is first to know which product will be effective. For example, you would treat an organic stain differently than a metal stain and a rust stain different from a metal stain or discoloration. I find that the best three products I have used for stains are, Bio-Dex Aquadex 50, HASA Super Stain out, and United Chemical Pool Stain Treat. But I have also had failures with them so none of these are bullet-proof. Pool Surface Scale Remover: Until I find something better Beautec by Easy Care h...

Removing pool stains with a topical chemical can be done in a lot of cases. You just need to know what is normal plaster mottling (discoloration) and what may be a stain that only a drain and acid wash or replaster will remove. I have had good success removing the stain on pool surfaces with Bio Dex Aquadex 50 Stain-Off. If you look at the reviews of just about any stain removing product you will see a mix of 5-star reviews and 1-star reviews. Of course, the 5-star reviews are that the product worked. The 1-star reviews that it did not. And again, that is the nature of stain removing products. Some stains are just not going to lift off. So is it worth spend $20-$50 on a product that may lift a stain off? I think so and I often tell my customers I will try this or that product with a disclaimer that it may not work. For the price and the possibility that a stain will be removed or dramatically improved it is worth it. The alternative is to just live with the stain without tr...

There are so many aspects to pool care that you may get lost and confused and not know where to start. The key to everything you do with your pool should be focused on the #1 goal of pool care. To put it simply you are making sure the pool is safe to swim in. Basically, no one will get sick by going into your pool or a pool on your service route. To achieve this goal you need to have these three elements working together at all times. Filtration, Circulation and Sanitizer. This sounds pretty basic but there are a lot of factors that go into making sure all three of these are working together. If anyone of these three is out of the equation, chances are the pool will not be safe to swim in. Filtration: Your pool' filter is often overlooked and in fact, it is the key to the entire equation. If your filter is undersized, dirty or in poor working order circulation and sanitizer are affected negatively. You can run your pool for 24 hours with a dirty filter and have ...

If you are a pool service pro you may not know that Leslie’s Pool Supplies has a Wholesale Division. This means if you are a pool service provider you can open an account at Leslie’s and receive your products at wholesale pricing. But the benefits only begin at that point and there are actually a number of reasons to open a Wholesale account. As mentioned with a Leslie’s Wholesale account you will receive the same or very similar pricing that you would get from your local wholesale distributor. To open a wholesale account you can simply walk into a Leslie’s location and fill out a form with the manager. All you need is a business card. It is that simple! You can also apply online at this link here: https://www.lesliespool.com/commercial-sales.htm/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=spll&utm_campaign=spll If you also carry at least $1 million dollars in General Liability Insurance you can be added to their referral list. What does that mean? Since Leslie’s does not...

There are a few steps to go through if your pool is not holding chlorine week to week and there are also several things you can do to ensure you have a consistent chlorine level each week. I go over some common reasons why your pool may not be holding chlorine and some remedies for you. One of the biggest problems that you can run into with your swimming pool is that it stops holding chlorine. We refer to this in the industry is as the chlorine zeroing out. There are a number of reasons for this and it is more noticeable in the Spring and Summer when the weather starts heating up and the Sun’s UV Rays become stronger. I will touch on the most common reasons why your pool is not holding chlorine week to week. One of the first things to look at is the pool’s filtration system in run time. This is often overlooked and is crucial to the pool holding chlorine. If the skimmer basket is clogged with debris or the pump basket is clogged the pool will not circulate well. The fil...

The Hayward pHin is marketed as a Smart Water Monitor so what exactly does that mean? There are a slew of these devices now and in a nutshell, these are floating devices that have digital probe/sensor which will read the pool’s pH, ORP (Sanitation) and Temperature. Some will also do salinity but the pHin only does those three parameters. The pHin will send you the results from the probe directly to your smartphone and recommend the adjustment needed to balance your pool water. Of course none of these floating digital water monitors can currently do Alkalinity, Calcium Hardness (or Total Hardness) and CYA and the pHin has a pretty nice workaround for this so that you can get a true idea if your pool is balanced. Included are 25 test strips that you scan into the pHin app by taking a photo of said test strip after dipping it into your pool. The pHin then records the Total Alkalinity, Total Hardness, and CYA and will let you know if they are in range. Back to the three tests...