Water Level Test

An accurate water level test is a great way to detect if you have a leak. Make a mark at the water level in the skimmer with a pen or grease pencil. Wait one day and check the mark. A pool should not lose more than .25 inches per day. If the water level goes down by more, you probably have a leak. 

Visual Tests

You can check for water leaks by walking the perimeter of the pool, and walking the path between the pool and the pool equipment. Do you hit a sloshy, wet area? That may indicate a leak. Obviously, don’t bother doing this visual test right after a rain. Also, you’ll want to do this test after the pool filter has been running for at least an hour. Some leaks only occur when the plumbing lines are pressurized (when the filter is running).

Visually inspect the pool for loose tiles or cracks in the pool deck as well as check the bond beam (the “shell” of the pool). 

If you detect a leak, you’ll need to call a pro. Don’t assume the worst, many leaks are easy fixes.

Did you know? Using a pool cover can reduce evaporation by 90 to 95 percent. In fact, a pool with no cover (a fairly average size of 16 feet x 32 feet loses about 1 inch of water in a week in the heat of summer. This can add up to a loss of 7,000 gallons annually.

Pool covers can also heat your pool in the spring and fall–when you are most likely to use the heater to squeeze a few extra weeks of the swimming season. 

Finally, though not a money saving tip, pool covers save lives. A pool cover can be a great safety feature.

How Does a Chlorine Generator Work?

The chlorine generator is a hollow housing with a mesh electical cell within it; the generator is installed inline with the pool circulation system, so water passes through the generator even when the generator is not on.

Pool water passes through the elecrified chlorine generator cell and the salt in the water is turned into a simple chlorine. The newly-chlorinated water returns to the pool where it prevents algae, kills bacteria, and all the other things that chlorine does in pool water. Now, as the chlorine does its “work” keeping your pool clean, it is ultimately transformed back into salt-a perfect cycle. And so, the salt, along with the chlorine generator form somewhat of a closed system; the salt is never really consumed, it simply cycles between salt and chlorine forever.

If your pool overflows in a rainstorm, or when you backwash your filter, you lose some salt. But for these instances, you would never need to add salt. In practical use, you’ll likely need to add salt once, maybe twice in a year. 

How About Water Quality and the Salt Water Experience

By all accounts, salt water systems offer a superior ownership and swimming experience. Once you get over the $1000 for the unit, you will save hundreds on chlorine tablets (or your chlorine medium of choice) in a year. And, the system is automated, to turn it up, just adjust it on the panel. And, the faintly salty water is slippery and pleasant on your skin and is “softer” than manually-treated pool water. Many swimmers also report a lack of strong “chlorine” odor in a salt water system pool. 

Salt levels will usually run about 2800 parts per million. At that level, the taste of salt is very faint on the tongue. 

How Do I Maintain the Equipment

The electrolytic cell should be inspected and cleaned once a year, spring is best. If the cell has deposits on it (mine hasn’t in 3 years of ownership) a simple solution of water and muriatic acid will clean it. 

How Much Salt Will I Need?

When you first set up the pool, you’ll need a few hundred pounds to get the PPM up to about 2800 parts per million of salt. After that, you won’t need much salt, perhaps 30 or 40 pounds in a year. Of course, salt is barely more expensive than dirt, so you won’t go broke with a salt system.

Defoamers are simply lipstick. Avoid using them and correct the source of the problem. 

Some algaecides, if overused, can cause pool and spa foam. Also, a leak in a return line can suck tiny bubbles into the pump system which can increase foam problems.

Chlorine’s job is to oxidize bacteria, sweat, soaps, suntan lotion, and whatever other contaminants enter your pool. Now, chlorine can do that job just fine overnight. However, if you add chlorine in the morning, a fair portion of the chlorine will be consumed by sunlight-rather than by doing something useful. 

So, add chlorine to your pool water at night; you won’t use as much, and your pool water will be cleaner. 

Happy swimming!

At about 40 bucks for a 50 pound bag, I thought I’d do some digging on this topic to see where the absolute best price was on this necessary chemical. 

It turns out, the best price on sodium bicarbonate-by a country mile-is a costco 12-pound bag of Arm & Hammer pure baking soda for about 6 bucks. It’s the same basic substance as the sodium bicarbonate sold at your pool store-and you can bake with it because its food-grade sodium bicarbonate! Don’t try that with the baking soda from your pool store-it may have additional chemicals in it to reduce caking.

How does the bulk Arm & Hammer price rank against the online pool supply houses? It’s WAY less than 1/2 the price.  A popular online pool supply store sells a 10-pound pail for $17.99.

Happy swimming!

The days of the old drab pool light are gone. The Color Logic uses an array of primary-color LEDs, and a simple microprocessor to generate combinations of those colors to produce effects from calm blue water to pulsating light shows. 

If you are building a pool, you’ll need some sort of light anyway. The Hayward Color Logic might add $600 to the entire price of your pool-and that’s on a bad day. We typically see it costing about $350 more than the bare-bones white light. And what you get is truly a million-dollar look. 

The light offer 7 color shows and five fixed colors. 

Added bonus: the LEDs are power-misers: you’ll save a pretty penny in electricity over the life of your pool.

There are several varieties of pool filters. All, however, serve the same function: to remove fine particulate matter from the water. A well-filtered pool is crystal-clear. A poorly filtered pool will appear cloudy.

The three most popular filters types are diatomaceous earth (called “DE”), sand filters, and cartridge filters.

To learn how each type works:

How sand filters work.

How DE filters work.

DE is cheap: a huge heavy bag is still only about 8 dollars at our local store. And, it’s a fantastic filtering medium for pool water. Water filtered through a DE filter is cleaned down to particulates of 5 to 8 microns in size. By comparison, a paper filter or sand filter removes only particulates of about 40 microns (or 30 microns once the sand gets a bit dirty).

Here’s how a DE filter works: A DE filter is comprised of an array of tubes which support a mesh fabric around them. The mesh is very fine, and so the DE introduced to the filter is pressed against the mesh fabric by the water pressure of the pump, but the DE does not pass through the mesh. The DE forms a shroud around the tubes, and together the system provides a very thorough and effective filtering system.

DE is changed every few weeks or months, depending on the season, the weather, how much rain or debris is introduced to the pool, and how much use the pool gets.

Here are some tips:

Watch the pressure gauge on top of your filter. It’s there to let you know when the filter is dirty. When the DE is completely encrusted with debris, water does not pass through as easily, and the water pressure rises. That’s when it’s time to clean the filter.

You clean a DE filter by backwashing, and forcing all the DE and debris out the exit pipe on your filter.

If you get cloudy water entering your pool through the return lines (the pipes that return water from the filter) you might have a torn filter (the mesh on the filter can rip or degrade over time). Don’t worry, you won’t need to replace the whole filter, just the fabric mesh.

Pressurized water enters the top of the filter tank through a diffuser. A diffuser simply diffuses the water, much like your shower at home. As the water passes downward, by the force of gravity and pressure, particulates are trapped in the sand. When the water passes to the bottom of the filter, it is returned to the pool.

Sand filters filter out debris down to about 40 microns in size-this is actually quite large in the world of particulate matter. DE filters trap much smaller sizes.

So why would someone want a sand filter over a DE filter? It’s simple: sand filters cost less to operate because the sand only needs to be replaced every few years. DE filters must be fairly regularly emptied and refilled with fresh DE.