What You Should Know About Pool Cleaning: Pool pH, Filtration, and Pool Maintenance
Cleaning your pool can be a hassle if you don’t have the right guidance to go about it. Thankfully, we brought together the main highlights of pool maintenance and prepared this to guide you. We’ll talk about your pool pH and managing and also how to handle your pool filtration. We added a checklist to guide you on your Saturday pool cleaning.
Swimming Pool pH Balance
The water in your swimming pool contains an extremely complex balancing system. When we talk about water balance in a swimming pool, we are referring to 3 parameters: pH – TAC (alkalinity) – TH (limestone).
Focus primarily on pH. It should be between 7.2 and 7.4. You measure it with an electronic pH meter, strips, or liquid tests.
The pH should be checked at least once a week (or even twice a week, or even every day in the event of exceptional climatic conditions). And correct it if necessary with pH less or pH more.
Note: The pH conditions the effectiveness of treatment products, in particular, that of chlorine. Too high a ph strongly harms the action of chlorine.
A poorly balanced pH is very often the cause of swimming pool water problems (cloudy, green, etc.).
If you often have pH problems, you will need to go a little further in the analysis and control the TAC and TH.
Easy cleaning of the pool
Filtration and disinfection (associated with a good water balance) are the essential steps in the routine maintenance of the swimming pool. Now we have to clean the pool in order to maintain our hydraulic circuit and our pond.
Filtration cleaning
Filtration consists of the swimming pool water renewal circuit. The main players are the pump which sets the water in motion and the filter which will clean the pool water. All of this is connected by pipelines. The skimmer sucks in the water and the delivery nozzles return the previously filtered water.
It is therefore important:
- To have a filter and a pump adapted to the volume of water in your swimming pool (to be determined with a professional)
- To filter your water on a daily basis and to regulate the filtration time efficiently (never “under-filter”)
- To clean its filtration regularly
If these settings are ok, you will save yourself a lot of trouble.
Regarding the filtration time, think about the rule:
Filtration time = water temperature divided by 2
Water problems are often caused by an under-filtered pool.
Also, be careful: Do not filter your pool at night. It must be filtered during the day when UV rays are most active.
Consider helping your filtration. In order for it to run smoothly, you must avoid asking it indiscriminately. You should also monitor the level of clogging of the filter and clean it as necessary. For a filter to clean properly, the filter load must still be clean.
When your pool is too dirty, clean it with your vacuum cleaner by putting the water directly into the sewer so as not to require filtration unnecessarily.
The use of an electric swimming pool robot makes it possible not to put too much strain on the filtration of the swimming pool (autonomous robot not connected to the filtration circuit of the swimming pool).
Remember to regularly empty the skimmer baskets and the pump prefilter. This will help your filtration to run optimally.
Tip: There are socks or pre-filters that you can put on your skimmer baskets. This limits the clogging of the filter.
Monitor the filter pressure via the pressure gauge (which gives you an indication of the level of clogging of the filter). It is necessary to clean its filter very frequently.
For sand filters, a backwash (or backwash) + rinsing is carried out in order to clean the filter material which retains all the impurities.
You will then send water to the sewer. You will then need to refill your pool with new water. Rely on the turbidity indicator to determine the duration of the backwash. When the water becomes clear again, you can stop. And above all, think about rinsing (a very often forgotten step).
Pool surveillance
Every day, take a quick look at your pool and the general water quality. The faster you act, the easier and faster the corrective action will be.
Also, check the water level in your pool. It must never go below half of the skimmers (optimal level = ¾ top of the skimmers). Otherwise, you will suck air into your hydraulic circuit.
It is also important to renew your water regularly, this will allow you to avoid many problems (at least 1/3 of the total volume of water every year).
The Saturday Check List: For Easy Maintenance of your pool
I advise you to choose a “pool maintenance” day during the week, it will be easier to use. Saturday is generally a good day because it marks the start of the weekend.
I give you a list of weekly tasks (knowing that some tasks can be bi-weekly, even daily, depending on weather conditions).
Clean the pool with a landing net and a vacuum cleaner or robot
- Scrub the walls and clean the waterline
- Empty the pump pre-filter and the skimmer baskets
- Backwash + rinse the sand filter
- Check the water level and refill the pool if necessary
- Check the level of disinfectant / Disinfect your pool with your usual product
- Check the pH and correct it if necessary (pH less or pH more)
- Control the water temperature and adjust your filtration time if necessary
Normally, the maintenance of a swimming pool does not take more than 30 minutes per week.
Note: Following a thunderstorm or heavy rains, check your water well. Indeed, the storm deteriorates the quality of the water more quickly. The hotter it is, the more vigilant you have to be and regularly check the water.
In Summary
The comfort of your swimming pool depends on good organization. The goal of the game is to do some corrective actions in order to avoid a big curative action, long, expensive, and… irritating!
You can also get help from automatic devices (electrolyzer, auto regulator, chlorinator, etc.). Once installed and configured, they bring you a certain comfort. It will still be necessary to ensure the proper functioning of these devices.
Happy swimming!