Swimming Pool Tips and Reviews

 Field work looks glamorous only from a distance. Up close it is noise, dust, barking dogs, locked gates, and equipment that refuses to cooperate. This episode pulls back the curtain on what pool service really takes, using vivid stories as the backbone for practical lessons. We walk through the risks of servicing equipment housed inside living spaces, the challenges of odd pool designs like center islands, and the constant negotiation between what a builder imagined and what a technician can safely maintain. Along the way, there is honest talk about liability, boundaries, and why a clean invoice starts with a clean path to the equipment pad. The converted-garage tale sets the tone: a D.E. filter and heater built into a garage that later became a bedroom, leaving the tech to knock on a tenant’s door each week just to reach the timer. That scenario raises real safety and insurance questions—combustion appliances in occupied rooms, ventilation, access rights, and contamination risks ...

Pool pros face a strange paradox: the products that make pools easier and cheaper to maintain are often the hardest to find at local stores. Boric acid is a prime example. Add it to 50 ppm and you stabilize pH drift in saltwater pools, use less chlorine, reduce muriatic acid demand, and deter algae. Yet many retailers don’t stock it or even test for it. The reason isn’t a mystery. Borates reduce sales of profitable consumables like algaecide and acid. That short-term logic clashes with how customers actually buy. If a client can order boric acid online and test it with strips from LaMotte or Hach, the store loses both the sale and the relationship, along with future big-ticket items. The smarter move is to meet demand, win trust, and become the default source for parts, repairs, and gear. When sourcing boric acid, pros often skip the supply drought and order directly from reputable online vendors. Duda Diesel ships boric acid powder quickly at fair prices, and test strips on Amazon mak...

Running a profitable pool service route is about intention, not intensity. Many of us overwork simple stops and underprice complex ones, creating long days and thin margins. The solution starts with service tiers. Chemical-only suits clients who can net, brush, and empty baskets but don’t want to manage dosing or water balance. Step up to chemicals plus skim and baskets for light debris pools, then add brushing for a noticeable upgrade in clarity and algae prevention. Full service remains the premium tier: brush, skim, vacuum, and tile care. Clear tiers set clear expectations, prevent scope creep, and let you scale with employees while preserving quality and consistency. A reliable weekly workflow anchors every tier, even chemical-only. Begin with a visual scan: look for cloudy water, surface sheen, clogged skimmers, or unusual debris. Head to the pad, power the system if needed, and inspect for leaks, air in the pump, irregular pressure, and valve issues. This habit catches failures e...

Rain changes pool service from routine to triage, especially during the first storms of the season. The initial rains knock oil off roads and debris from trees, and that same mix ends up in pools. Water turns murky, skimming stalls, and scheduling gets messy. The instinct is to throw chemicals at the problem or pre-drain water, but that often wastes money and creates risk. A smarter approach starts with understanding local rain patterns, planning route flexibility, and using clear customer policies. With a simple rainy-day rule and a focus on chemistry checks, you can move fast, avoid unsafe work, and keep clients happy without overpromising in impossible conditions. Superchlorination is the most common pre-storm question. The practical answer is “sometimes.” If forecasts show multiple storms landing on your service days, preemptive chlorine on debris-heavy pools can prevent organic staining and help chlorine demand. But forecasts miss, and blanket superchlorination burns budget and ra...

 Growing a pool service business comes down to clear choices and honest math: buy a route, build organically, or blend both. Each path has tradeoffs in cash, time, and risk. Buying through a trusted broker can deliver instant revenue and a safety net, but it requires real capital and commitment. Building through ads and local outreach can be cheaper per account, but it demands relentless effort and tight tracking. The right choice depends on your market’s competition, your cash access, and how quickly you need dependable monthly revenue. Route purchases can be a smart investment when you treat them like an asset, not a gamble. Most brokered routes trade near 12 times monthly billing, which implies a one-year payback if retention holds. You’re not waiting a year to see money—cash flow starts day one—but mentally assigning that revenue to repay the purchase keeps you disciplined. Brokers add value with short safety periods and seller training, which matters when some sellers vanish a...

Too many pool service pros quietly give away time, chemicals, and return visits in the name of great service, then wonder why profits vanish. The truth is simple: most homeowners aren’t thinking about their pool as much as you are. If it’s blue, clean, and running, they move on with life. That mindset gap can push us into over-servicing, especially when we project our standards onto clients who rarely step outside in winter. Sustainable, high-quality service comes from clear policies and boundaries, not from being on-call for every minor hiccup. The goal is to stay helpful while protecting time, costs, and energy across the entire route. A common leak is the free return visit. The cleaner stalls, the timer is off, or a minor issue pops up a day after service, and you swing back “just this once.” Do it twice and you’ve trained the client. Instead, use a courtesy-invoice method: confirm you can stop by, bill your normal service call, then zero it out with a note that future non-emergency...

The work of maintaining pools rewards grit, skill, and consistency, yet it also comes with a hard truth: your body has a timeline. Knees ache, sun takes its tax, and long weeks compound. That finiteness is not a reason to panic; it is a reason to plan. The smartest move is to convert today’s active income into tomorrow’s durable income. You can pursue a few paths: expand your business into a managed operation, invest in markets, or build a real estate portfolio that pays while you sleep. Each path has tradeoffs, and the right fit depends on temperament, timing, and goals, but the destination is the same—income that is less tied to daily labor. A useful mindset comes from John D. Rockefeller. He didn’t spread bets broadly at first; he reinvested into what he understood and controlled. Pool pros can mirror that logic by building a small empire: trucks, techs, and managers with systems that scale. This can work well if you enjoy hiring, training, and solving people problems. It is never 1...

Pool service looks simple from the curb, but the real work lives in the details you can’t see: water paths, deck materials, code quirks, and chemistry that never stops changing. The three biggest loss drivers for pool pros—water damage, chemical spills, and water chemistry—show up in predictable ways yet carry unpredictable price tags. One hose left running becomes a river to the living room. One open fill valve on a rooftop spa tests gravity and grace. One rushed pour near stamped concrete starts a fight your insurer has to finish. Understanding why these incidents spiral and how to change the habits that precede them is the difference between a flat premium and a closed business. Water damage is the heavyweight. Claims spike when techs “help” by adding water or by draining without a plan. Elevated pools and spas raise the stakes because water always wins and height multiplies loss. The lesson isn’t heartless; it’s disciplined. Stop setting the precedent of filling customers’ pools. T...

The pool service market heads into 2026 with calm waters and steady currents. Growth has cooled to a stable 2–3% annually after the COVID surge, and new pool construction no longer fuels a rush of fresh accounts. Yet service remains resilient because convenience, safety, and equipment complexity keep homeowners outsourcing. The bigger shift arrives from outside the waterline: AI compresses white-collar job openings and nudges more workers toward trades, raising competition for routes without expanding the residential pool base. The result is a market that rewards operators who run tight pricing, sharpen operations, and pivot to where demand is growing. Commercial opportunities stand out, especially in regions like Southern California where lot sizes shrink and townhomes and large apartment communities add shared pools and spas. Builders face high costs, limiting backyard pool growth, but multi-family projects still move forward with aquatic amenities tenants expect. For service compani...

The world of pool service looks simple from the sidewalk, but the work lives at the intersection of chemistry, plumbing, electricity, and customer trust. That mix can create rare but costly failures. Our conversation centers on why the usual, off-the-shelf insurance policy often leaves pool technicians exposed and how a trade group like the United Pool Association evolved to plug those gaps. We move from the UPA’s roots as a vacation-coverage network to the creation of group insurance designed around real field risks. Along the way, we use claim stories to explain exclusions, legal duties, and the practical habits that keep incidents from becoming disasters. UPA’s history matters because it shaped a coverage model built for how techs actually work. In the 1960s, single-polers formed local chapters to cover each other’s routes for vacations and sick days. By the 1970s, leaders pushed for economies of scale to negotiate a policy that reflected pool service realities: water chemistry over...

Pool pumps feel routine until they aren’t. The safest equipment pad still carries risk when electricity, water, and heat mix. The core of smart prevention is twofold: proper bonding that ties every metal component into one potential, and a functioning GFCI that trips in milliseconds when something goes wrong. Together they control stray voltage, prevent painful shocks at the pad or rail, and reduce the chances that a small failure becomes a fire. Many service pros inherit systems where a motor was swapped but the bonding wire was never reconnected. That single missed lug can turn a wet pad into a hazard. The fix is visual, simple, and vital: confirm the bonding wire lands on the pump, continues to the heater, and disappears to the grid at the pool. Stray voltage shows up as tingling in water or a buzz when you touch metal. It’s not common, but when bonding fails, it can be dramatic. A wet pad amplifies risk; standing water plus an unbonded motor can deliver a jolt strong enough to knoc...

Clear agreements turn a pool route into a stable business. When expectations live in your head or on a handshake, every storm, schedule slip, or billing snag becomes personal. We explore how a simple one-page service agreement sets boundaries both sides understand. It explains scope, timelines, and the customer’s role. It also helps you present as a professional vendor, like pest control or plumbing, where paperwork is standard. The goal is not to intimidate clients; it is to protect trust by defining work, payments, and what happens when the unexpected hits. Adopting an agreement with existing clients can feel awkward, especially if you already service dozens of pools. The key is framing: you are not changing prices or trapping anyone. You are clarifying what you do, what they do, and how to handle edge cases. A calm script helps: explain that a recent issue highlighted the need for written policies, reassure them it is not about them, and underscore the benefits to both parties. Most...

Pool filter safety sounds simple until you see what pressure can do. A filter tank behaves a lot like a kitchen pressure cooker: contained force, steam or air trapped inside, and a critical need for controlled release. Most days, things work fine. Problems begin when clamps are loose, air has nowhere to escape, or the pump comes on at the wrong moment. That’s why the two danger points are so important: when you remove the lid and when you put it back on. Treat the system as hazardous during these steps and make caution your default. If you take your time, follow a checklist, and keep your distance during startup, you reduce risk to near zero while protecting yourself, your team, and your clients’ equipment. Different filter types carry different risk profiles. Sand filters are generally safer because they are one-piece vessels that you rarely open. Cartridge and DE filters, by design, come apart for cleaning and rely on clamps or locking rings to hold pressure. That’s where mistakes ha...

Copper shows up everywhere in pool care under new names like mineral systems or ionizers, and brands promise clearer water with less work. The appeal is real: copper inhibits algae growth and, at higher levels, can suppress some bacteria. But chemistry does not care about marketing, and copper’s effective range sits near its staining threshold. That means a narrow margin for error, constant attention to sequestrants, and a plan for oxidation, which copper simply does not provide. When lotions, sweat, and sunscreen enter the water, an oxidizer must break them down. Non-chlorine oxidizers often lack the power to crack complex sunscreen molecules, so you still rely on chlorine to do the heavy lifting while copper only tackles part of the biological load. Disinfection speed is the next trap. Pool safety hinges on preventing bather-to-bather disease transmission, where fresh contaminants move from one swimmer to another in minutes. Copper is too slow to interrupt that path. Even regulators ...

Many pool service calls go sideways for the same simple reason: the equipment sits below the waterline and gravity takes over. When the pump shuts off and you open the lid, water floods the pad as the pool drains through the open system. The fix begins with awareness. If you walk down stairs to reach the pad, or the ground has even a small grade, assume the equipment is “below sea level.” Before removing any lids, close both suction and return lines together. Cutting only suction isn’t enough because water backflows from the returns. If the pad has no working valves, improvise: plug the skimmer with a tennis ball and stuff an absorbent synthetic chamois in the return stubs to slow the surge long enough to reseal. Carrying a couple of those expanding car-wash chamois cloths is a cheap, reliable failsafe for emergencies. Dual skimmer pools create their own challenges when you need to vacuum or attach a cleaner to one port. Builders often skip individual valves, leaving both skimmers draw...

Many new pool pros learn the hard way that filtration time is not the same as filtration success. Running a pump for four hours on a 15,000-gallon pool often fails to deliver even a single turnover, which leaves the water cloudy and undermines sanitizer performance. The key concept is turnover: one full pool volume through the filter. From a filtration standpoint, one turnover captures roughly 65 percent of suspended particles, two turnovers about 85 percent, and three turnovers around 92 to 95 percent. The jump from three to four turnovers is small, so three is the sweet spot. To plan it properly, you need the actual flow rate, not a guess. Install a flow meter after the pump and before return to get gallons per minute, then divide pool volume by that number to find minutes per turnover and schedule accordingly. Circulation does more than move water through the filter; it also keeps sanitizer moving to where it is needed. When a pump is off twenty hours a day, any developing biofilm o...

Pool pros and owners often trust the two-to-four ppm chlorine guideline, then wonder why algae returns week after week. The hard truth is that cyanuric acid (CYA) drastically changes how much active sanitizer you actually have in the water. Most of the free chlorine binds to CYA, leaving only a small fraction available as hypochlorous acid (HOCl), the form that kills algae and pathogens. At typical pH values, and even at modest CYA like 30 ppm, roughly 97 percent of chlorine is tied up. That doesn’t mean it’s useless, but it does mean only about three percent is ready to work at any moment, and pH further shifts the HOCl to less potent OCl−. This is why “I have six ppm free chlorine” can still coexist with green walls. The fix is a practical rule that reverses the math: set free chlorine as a percentage of CYA. Rather than chasing a static two-to-four ppm, target seven and a half percent of CYA as your free chlorine level to reliably prevent algae. If CYA is 100 ppm, aim for 7.5 ppm FC...

Winter changes the rules for pool care, and the smartest pros shift with it. As water temperatures fall below 60 degrees, biological activity slows and the familiar algae pressure that dominates summer nearly disappears around 55 degrees. That lull tempts many owners to ignore the water, but chemistry never sleeps. Lower temperature pushes the Langelier Saturation Index downward, nudging water from balanced toward corrosive. When LSI slips, surfaces become the source, and plaster, grout, and heaters can pay the price. The goal in winter is not more chemicals; it is smarter balance with fewer inputs. Less demand does not mean zero demand. It means adjusting set points so the water stays gentle on the vessel while remaining sanitary and clear. The first lever is understanding how temperature affects LSI. A rough field rule is that every 15-degree drop pulls the index by about 0.1. Fall from 90 to 60 and you lose roughly 0.2, enough to turn a barely balanced pool into a surface eater. You...