By Sharon Hiebing
When becoming a swimming pool owner, a lot of people erroneously believe that all they have to do is add a few chemicals to the water and skim out some of the leaves once in a while. Then, one day, they walk into their backyard and see the creature from the green lagoon has taken up residence in their pool. Or, they find that their equipment is leaking or not working at all.
Avoid the following mistakes, and this won’t happen to you:
1. Not checking water chemistry enough. At a minimum, you should test and balance your water at least once a week – more if it’s really hot out or you are doing a lot of swimming – since these factors make chlorine dissipate faster.
2. Never testing your alkalinity. Swimming pool owners tend to focus only on their chlorine levels, completely ignoring the ph. To properly balance the water, test the alkalinity reading first (found on any test strip), add the necessary amount of sodium bicarbonate, test again, and then balance your sanitizer. This will give you the best possible.
3. Turning your equipment off completely. If you are not using your pool a lot of are going out of town, do not turn your equipment off! Your equipment is like a car – it needs to be taken out for a spin once in a while. If it’s not, the seals can dry out and the motor can freeze. Now, instead of saving a few bucks on your electrical bill, you’ll be spending a lot of money replacing your equipment. Instead, reduce your run time to the minimum four hours and just accept as a swimming pool owner, you are going to have higher energy costs.
Stay tuned next week we’ll share more mistakes we commonly see homeowners making that cost them time and money.
