Swimming Pool Tips and Reviews

What is the best method for clearing up a green pool? Shock it, Floc it or drain it? Let me touch on each of these for you here. Draining a green pool sounds easy and logical but there are a great many hoops you will need to jump through to even do this successfully without getting a ticket from your county or city. Here in my area of California, it is illegal to drain a green pool into the street. You must first turn it milky blue and even then draining into the street is illegal and you must drain it into the main sewer line. After draining it the walls might still have dead algae on them and the empty basin will be an ugly swamplike slimy mess that you will have to clean up. You may have to do a chlorine wash as well before you refill the pool. So draining is not a simple process.  FLOC Method: Using a pool Floc has its benefits and you might want to purchase a bottle or dry container of Aluminum Sulphate (Floc) to help accelerate your pools recovery. Basically, the Floc will he...

 West Coast Pool Tile Cleaning uses an environmentally safe, non-toxic low-pressure process to remove calcium deposits from your pool's tile and flagstone without damage. P.O. Box 1365 Murietta, CA 92564 info@wcptc.co m 1-800-603-0996 www.westcoastpooltilecleaning.com Serving San Bernardino & Riverside County California. Remove Calcium From Your Pool Safely! West Coast Pool Tile Cleaning uses an environmentally safe, non-toxic low-pressure process to remove calcium deposits from your pool's tile and flagstone without damage. Calcium Removal From: Ceramic Pool Tile Glass Pool Tile Flagstone Coping & Brick Pebble Tec Real & Artificial Rock Fountains What Causes Calcium Scale Deposits on Your Pool Tile? Scale deposits can form along the waterline of your swimming pool. This is usually caused by a high calcium concentration. Constant temperature changes along with rapid evaporation will cause deposits to settle along the side of your pool wall. West Coast Pool Tile Clea...

Some of the best reasons to upgrade a pool to a saltwater pool are the consistency of having chlorine delivered each day in a measured dose. This will prevent the need to shock a pool and treat it for algae and other issues that arise when a pool zeros out on chlorine. Does the customer save any money by having you install a saltwater generator? Yes and no.   If you charge them for tablets and shock it may indeed add up to a cost savings if you add up 5 years of chemicals and the cost of a replacement salt cell. The initial system should last 15 years or more and the only real wear part is the salt cell itself. They are typically rated for 10,000-20,000 hours of use. Prices for a replacement cell are system dependent and they can be as little as $500 to as much as $1,400. So there is no real cost savings but there is a hassle-saving factor that makes a SWG more than pay for itself.   One drawback is the constantly rising pH. It’s partly due to the process itself and the chemic...

The Polaris VRX IQ+ Robotic Pool Cleaner is the most innovative robotic cleaner on the market today. The fact that you can use the iAqualink app to control it, turn it on and off, and set a weekly schedule makes it a techie’s dream machine! The software in the VRX IQ+ features pool mapping and advanced navigation making it the smartest robot out there. Here are some of the features of the VRX IQ+: Robotic Pool Cleaner with Full Featured Wi-Fi Connectivity 70 ft Double Insulated Floating Cable. Filtration Method: Illuminated Extra Large All Purpose Filter Canister Remote Control: In-App with Targeted Spot Cleaning Action Cleaning Modes: SMART Cycle, Quick Clean, Deep Clean, Waterline Only, and Custom Cleaning Schedules: Schedule Recurring Programming. Dirty Canister Indicator: In-App and On Control Box Drive: 4WD Navigates Obstacles Vortex Vacuum Technology Easy Lift System Dynamic Bladed Brushes Includes Powder Coated Alloy Caddy Suitable for In-Ground Pools up to 60 ft. Monitor cleani...

Getting Algae constantly in your pool each week can be very frustrating. Below are several methods to prevent algae from forming in your pool and all of these methods are tested and proven to work. BORATES: Adding Borates to your pool to achieve a level of 30-50 ppm has many benefits. I have a series of videos on Borates and highly recommend adding Borates to your pool. I have added Borates to my pool and couldn't be happier. The results are well worth it.  Here are the proven benefits of having a Borate level of 30-50 ppm: Lower Chlorine usage: The Borate helps reduce chlorine usage by eliminating Carbon Dioxide and also by keeping the pH stable. Chlorine last longer when the pH is right at 7.6-7.8. When the chlorine is in the ideal range the killing element in chlorine the HOCI is at the most balanced percentage so the chlorine in a pool with a pH of 7.4 is 30% more effective than in a pool with a pH of 8.0. This is a big factor in creating the safest swim environment and the bor...

  The Aiper Seagull Pro is a cordless robotic pool cleaner and they have improved it over the last generation that I tested. It still has a few quirks like getting stuck on raised flat main drains and a rather different pre-programmed cleaning pattern. Aiper claims it is designed to clean a pool up to 3,200 sq ft but that doesn’t make sense when you are trying to figure out if it is right for your pool size. A 3,200 sq ft pool is an Olympic-sized pool (40’x80’) which to me is very bold. I would say it will excel at a standard 15’x30 ft medium to a small backyard pool. 15,000 gallons or less and nothing larger because of the unique cleaning pattern.  More on the cleaning pattern. If you set it for floors and walls it will spend time on the pool floor going in a back-and-forth pattern and then pivot to move across the entire pool floor until it reaches a wall or sloping area. Then it will switch to cleaning the walls. With a run time of about 3 hours, this pattern is better suit...

Cloudy pool water is a very common issue and it can be both easy to fix as well as complicated depending on the cause. Often it can be a combination of things causing the cloudy water and this will require a combination of things to clear up the pool. Here is a common scenario that you may run into if it is multiple issues causing the cloudy water. Say there was a pool party over the weekend and the pool is very cloudy on Monday. It could be a combination of the heavy bather load plus the pool running out of chlorine or the chlorine combining with the organics in the water creating Combined Chlorine or the filter being dirty due to the suntan lotion and organics in the water. You can see how all of this comes together and how each of these can contribute to the cloudy water. So, it is not always as simple as the causes and solutions below. If it is a combination of things it may take longer to correct it, or you may need to do more steps. For example, in the above combination, you can ...

The Advantage Manufacturing Super Vac II is a plug-in-and-play Portable Clean-up pump. No need to hunt for adapters or build your pump. Simply order the Super Vac II and you are all set to go. It features a capable 1.5 HP pump and will give you plenty of power for your clean-up jobs. It has included hose adapters with unions and it also comes with standard 2” unions if you need to use the Super Vac II as a spare pump or temporary pump. It also has a 9 ft cord so you can easily plug it into a GFI outlet and vacuum out a pool. What would be some of the uses of this pump? For green pool clean-ups at service accounts with cartridge filters or D.E and sand filters with the push-pull piston type backwash valves. In my area, very few filters have a multiport valve with a “Waste” mode. So in situations where you need to vacuum to waste this pump would be ideal. If you use the Floc method for your green to clean this pump is more than capable of pumping out all of the dead algae and floc fr...

 The Jandy SpeedSet controller is the next generation in VS pump control. It is the direct replacement for the Jandy JEP-R and it has many great new features. It has a large display which comes in super handy while programming and adjusting the schedules. Compared to any pump display currently on the market the screen is 10x larger. If you don’t think the larger screen is a big deal, after using the SpeedSet you will wonder how you ever survived on those tiny slices of a screen on other pumps.  The FlyWheel has to be the best upgrade in my opinion. Those left, right, up, and down arrow keys are a real pain on most VS pumps.  You can easily get lost in a menu and forget how to exit it. Not so with the FlyWheel. It is a dial that you spin and the menu items just scroll left or right and up or down depending on where you are in the menu.  It takes about 5 seconds to get used to and after that, you will want it on every VS Pump. I should mention that the SpeedSet control...

Advantage Service Casrt 2.0 is perfect for carrying your professional supplies to all of your service stops. With its rugged wall construction and New hard plastic large tires, you will never have to worry about lugging around your unorganized heap of chemicals and supplies again. If you are looking to save time and more importantly save wear and tear on your body, a service cart is a way to go. The new safety blue color is eye-catching and so professional looking! The concept of a service cart is to save back-and-forth trips. If you are tired of going back and forth to your service truck a service cart is the way to go. Advantage Manufacturing has been making these carts for several years now and I recently got my hands on one to test out. I must say that the service cart is a solid product with lots of great features. You can order online or call them to get a cart custom-made for you. The turnaround time for a custom cart is less than a week. For example, if you wanted the test kit ...