Swimming Pool Tips and Reviews

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-

 Here are some common failures and things to avoid with your swimming pool, and of course, cover these and more in the podcast.  Failure to add water This is the #1 failure I see daily. Many pools do not have an in-deck Autofill system, so it is up to the pool owner to add water to the pool each week. Newer pools have a safety feature in the skimmer to prevent the pump from running dry, but older pools do not. If the water is left low for a short period, leaks will happen, and the pool motor can burn out. This is one of the easiest things to correct, check, and add water to the pool weekly. In the Summer, most regions lose one to two inches of water each from evaporation. The ideal pool water level is right before the skimmer opening. The pool will stay much cleaner with the correct water level, and you will avoid expensive repairs. On the flip side is failing to turn the water off while filling the pool. This happens to almost every customer. Try setting your phone alarm or turning on

The PORTAVAC 2.0 HAMMERED by Advantage Manufacturing is their most advanced and most DURABLE portable filtration system to date. It can be used for a great many swimming pool applications, including green pool clean-ups, one-time clean-ups, dirt evacuation, portable pads for non-functioning equipment, and more. The best way to describe it is that the PORTAVAC 2.0 HAMMERED is like having your pool equipment on a dolly that you can move around. This means you do not need to rely on the pool equipment at your house, resort, or pool route.  Hammertone Paint: Hammer paint, also known as hammered paint or hammertone, is a specialized lacquer that creates a surface resembling hammered metal once it dries.  This effect is achieved through slightly iridescent patches caused by tiny reflective particles suspended in the lacquer, typically made from mica. Mica, known for being resilient, reflective, refractive, dielectric, chemically inert, insulating, lightweight, and hydrophilic, gives the pain

Several issues can come about with your swimming pool filter. It can be challenging, from low filter pressure to high filter pressure and other problems.  The pool filter also looks intimidating to the new owner, and many don’t feel comfortable cleaning and maintaining it. One of the first things I do when I get a new service account is to inspect and clean the pool filter. About 80% of all problems you will encounter with your pool care are filter-related. So, the filter may be the issue if your pool has constant cloudy water and algae or the chemicals do not hold weekly. Interestingly, many pool builders skimp on the filter size when they install a pool. It can’t cost them more than $200-$300 more in the pool price to install a full-size filter. What I mean by full size is that if your pool is 15,000 gallons, you should have a 300-400 sq. ft. Cartridge filter of a 48 sq. ft. D.E. Filter installed. For a 20,000 to 25,000-gallon pool, a 500 sq ft cartridge filter or a 60-100 sq. ft. D.