Guidance to Keep Your Swimming Pool Clean and Hygienic

Having a swimming pool in your backyard is not only the lavish of your house, gives fun moments for the family members, but it is also a huge responsibility to the house owners. 

Understand that owning a swimming pool is great but having to keep the maintenance part in check makes it a daunting responsibility.

Most of the homeowners choose to outsource to maintain or clean their pool but the associated cost inclines when the service is taken from the swimming pool removal company.

If you want to save more on the frequent maintenance of your swimming pool then you can inspect, maintain, clean your pool by yourself by using the DIY process. You may not have an idea of DIY swimming pool cleaning but with professional advice, you can do it safely.  

In this article, you’ll get to know all about DIY pool cleaning. Trust us, it will wholly change your concept of hectic pool cleaning service to a quick pool cleaning service and make your DIY swimming pool cleaning project successful. 

Necessary equipment for pool cleaning 

To begin the swimming pool cleaning process, you should have the basic equipment for the right treatment for your pool. So, here is the equipment that you’ll need regularly to maintain your pool.

1. Telescopic Pole: A telescopic pole is a versatile tool, it joins all kinds of pool cleaning tools like vacuum head, skimmer net, brushes, and a combination of them. This pole features an extendable length which helps you to clean in the depth of the pool easily.

2. Skimmer Net: Skiller Net can be used with the Telescopic Pole. This tool will help you to gather leaves and other debris floating on or under the surface of pool water. A skimmer net comes in two types: a flat skimmer and a bad skimmer. Ensure their capacity to clean before getting one and don’t forget to clean your skimmer net after each cleaning.

3. Pool Brush: Pool Brush helps you to clean the wall of the pool, ladders, floors which are filled with dirt and algae. You can use it with a telescoping pole.  You need to wash your pool brush after each clean to eliminate the debris that gets stuck in the bristle of the brush.  While purchasing ensure that they would last long and endure the heavy work.

4. Manual Vacuum: Brush, skimmer only can’t clean your swimming pool entirely. You also need a manual vacuum, this tool helps you to eliminate dirt, certainly those that have settled at the bottom of the pool. You can join the vacuum head with the telescopic pole for the depth cleaning. 

5. Automatic Pool Cleaner: It is also known as a robotic pool cleaner and is more expensive than a manual pool vacuum. This tool goes to the bottom of the pool and collects the dirt. 

6. Water pH Tester: To keep the pool water clean, the pool’s water carries some chemical active on it. Components like weather and other debris can impact the actual chemical level of the pool’s water. The tools water pH tester helps to check your pool’s water chemical level and show if it is safe or not.

7. pH reducer and increaser: It helps to bring your pool’s pH range within the agreeable level. What’s essential is that you buy from a trustworthy store and brand.

8. Chlorine: It is the chemical that is used to sterilize water in the pool for swimming. You can find it in different forms such as liquid, powder, and dissolved tablets. However tablets are more convenient, it comes in a disk of 1 or 2 inches. It can be used on small pools and bigger pools too. 

The DIY process to clean your swimming pool

The above mentioned are all the essential or basic tools to clean your pool. Now, here is a DIY process of cleaning your swimming pool with the needed tools. 

With the help of a leaf, the skimmer skims the outward of your pool: First of all, skim its outer surface or under the pool with the leaf skimmer. It is important to do this process on a daily basis to avoid the heavy dirt on your pool. 

• This is the very first and easy way to pool cleaning. To skim underwater you can use a telescopic pole. A skimmer with a telescopic pole will help you to drag out most of the debris from your pool. 

Brush the walls of the pool and the pool ladders:

Once you have cleared out any plain debris, use a pool brush to clean the sides of the pool and its ladder or stair. This should be done every week. 

Calmly attach the pool brush to the telescopic pole and walk it over these places, using some force to remove dirt when needed. 

Remember that the places with poor water circulation, such as stairs, may need more brushing and cleaning.

Set up the vacuum:

Once you have chosen the pool vacuum that best suits your expectations and needs, set the vacuum for your pool. Most pool vacuum comes with some types of instructions.

• For a manual vacuum, you need to join the vacuum’s head on the telescopic pole. You must slightly lower the vacuum head towards the pool and then carry on with the pool cleaning process.
• You should then lean the hose towards the pool. Ensure all air is a pulled out from the hose before joining it to the pump. Join the pump that comes with most manual vacuum cleaners. Be careful as while joining the pump when its puff is turned out can damage the pump.
• Vacuums when purchased comes with related product instructions. If you are not sure how to use a vacuum pump, there is a customer care number with whom you can always consult.

Vacuum the pool as you would do to a carpet:

you need to use the pool vacuum in the same way as you would vacuum a carpet.

Move the vacuum across the bottom line of the pool, making it stay longer in a spot.

Vacuum your pool at least once a week:

A lot of dirt and bacteria’s pile up on the bottom of a pool. 

You should make sure to vacuum your pool at least once a week to keep it free from contamination and safe for swimming.

Test pool’s water pH levels:

There are chemicals in pool water that tends to maintain a pool’s cleanliness. Components like weather and use can impact chemical levels. You should test the PH range at least three times a week to ensure pool safety.

• You can buy a pH tester at a local supermarket. Before buying, you should read reviews of different brands before deciding to buy a good brand. Once you have chosen a tester, use this to check your pool’s pH levels.

• The pH level of your pool should be in between 7.2 and 7.8 based on how users chlorinate their pool, they may find that trying to maintain a pool with a low pH will be an acid addition. If you are involved in acid, you may need to look into lowering your TA (Total Alkalinity) level. If your pH level s is outside these levels, use either pH increase or pH reducers.

Check the pool filter:

You should keep the place around your pool filter-free of dirt and debris. Check the pool filter for grime, debris, and other things. If you point out anything blocking the filter, remove it.

Mixing sanitizing chlorine tablets:

Sanitizing tablets are tablets you can buy at any online or at hardware stores. 

They dissolve slowly and expel out chlorine to kill any bacteria on your pool water. You should add tablets to your pool as given on the label. 

You should also include tablets to your floater, skimmer, or manual cleaner to ensure this equipment are bacteria-free too.

Take a look at the pool shock:

Pool shock is a kind of pool cleaner that aims to clean the released bacteria such as urine, hair, and sweat. If you are worried about the contamination, consider using pool shock.

The cleaning process for very dirty pool

The process is different when you are dealing with a pool that has been left unused for months. A dirty pool seeks for attention and high-end effort. Even though it will take longer and more effort, it can still be cleaned using the same basic steps.

Use leaf net to remove leaf:

If your pool is fully green, full of the dirt, then it will take a little more effort to clean. 

If you use skimmer for this, then the dirt gets mixed up to the worst level. So, do not use it! instead, use a leaf net to pull out scums from the pool surface. If you do not have a leaf net, you can buy one at a local hardware store.

Adjust and test chemicals levels:

Plunging into a dirty pool is like swimming with unneeded bacteria. You want to weight up the chemical evaluation until the pool water is safe for use.

• Stabilize and examine the water levels. While working on the green pool you may find it best to lower your pH to 7.2. 

This is in part cause many pH tests are unwell ar high chlorine levels. It will possibly take some days and some trials and errors with pH increaser and reducer, to get pH level to a safe level. 

•  You want to shock the pool. It is more like very dirty and may need some gallons of pool shock, works over a few days, to get the water back to a safe range for swimming. Begin by mixing 3 or 4 quarts.

Observe if the pool water has, by morning, changed cloudy white, light green, or clear. If it doesn’t work, add another 3 to 4 gallons and wait until 24 hours. Repeat this process until the water has changed color.

Run the filter for a whole day:

you’ll want to run the pool filter a whole day for a few days. This is the removal of unwanted bacteria and debris that have collected in the pool.

• Ensure to backwash your filter 3 to 4 times a day. Green water can block a filter and cause damage. It is very normal to have to backwash the filter often during cleaning a very dirty pool.

• Have a filtration system checked if the pool does not clear up in 4 to 5 days. This could be a signal to something wrong with the filtration system. 

Clean the pool floor:

Once the pool water is clear and the pH range is balanced, clean the pool floor using your pool vacuum. 

There is a lot of dirt collected on the pool floor so it may take some more time and effort to vacuum the pool. 

Remember if a pile of debris on the floor, take professional helping you’re not experienced with pool cleaning yourself. Dirt could get blocked in your pool pipe making damage, and it can also cause tear and wear to your pool filtration system.

Reasons to clean your swimming pool

It’s advantageous to understand why you need to clean your pool. Here are the top five reasons for cleaning your pool.

1. Keeping your pool water circulated: One of the main reasons for cleaning your pool is to keep your pool water flowing. Water circulation is important when cleaning your poo; because it reduces the possibility of unwanted debris from accumulating.

2. One-time debris cleaning: You may need to clean huge debris from your pool that you can visibly notice before swimming. 

3. Pool water chemistry: You need to clean and stabilize your pool chemistry so that your swimming water that is in an adjusted safe level. 

4. On-going maintenance: You may want to give on-going maintenance on routine wise like weekly, or monthly, or daily basis to keep your pool clean.

5. Interior surface cleaning: Even with clean water and no visible dirt in your pool, your walls, stairs, and floor of your pool may want extra cleaning.

 

Tips to maintain your swimming pool

You are cleaning dirt, chemical balance, cleaning surface, keep maintained, but there are also many ways to make this happen. The following list s the different actions you can apply to ensure keep your pool cleaner and maintained. 

Maintaining pool during winter

If you are closing your above-ground pool during winter or any cold months, there is a way to clean your pool and get it ready for the winter so that you don’t have to continue to maintain it as unwell as you would while the heat of summer and swimming season. The winter pool maintenance is known as ‘winterizing’ your pool.

Here are some main steps to follow when winterizing your pool:

• Remove machines: the first step is removing every equipment from your pool. Remove ladders, filters, hoses, and pumps from your pool. 

• Trash old filter pack: Get rid of the old filter package so you can use a new one at the beginning of the next pool season.  

•  Clean equipment: Entirely clean all of your pool equipment. Some equipment can be hosed off while other equipment like hoses may want to be an overflow in soapy water to remove chemicals and keep sanitized. 

• Drain filter tank and hoses: Ensure your hoses don’t have any leftover water in them and drain the whole filter tank to avoid sitting water. 

• Adjust pool water: Adjust your pool water as you would before you would safely swim in the pool. Test the water and includes chemicals until your water is balanced. 

• Include winter chemical kit: There are chemicals you can add to your pool when you won’t be using it or more than a month. These chemicals will help keep your pool’s water maintained while it is not in use without having to continue maintaining it. 

• Cover your pool: To avoid any specks of dirt, leaves from falling into your pool surface and the weather from affecting your pool’s water balanced and chemicals, using a pool cover to cover your pool is suggested by professionals.

Make a pool maintenance schedule on a weekly basis

Determined on the maintenance work you learned about previously, here we discuss each plan and list the maintenance task that should be done. 

“Before each use” pool maintenance schedule

1. Run the pool filter at least 12 hours a day continuously.

• Make sure the level of water is not too high or too low.

• Test the pH level to be sure it is within the safe level.

• Check the chlorine range to make sure it is under the safe zone.

• Empty the pump and the skimmer baskets if needed.

• Make sure filter pressure it’s within the safe level. 

• Make sure the pump is running effectively

Weekly pool maintenance schedule:

Monthly pool maintenance schedule:

• Inspect the calcium range and maintain it in a safe range.

• Inspect the cyanuric acid level and maintain it in a safe range. 

• In the pool water mix clarifier, algaecide, or chlorine shock if needed. 

• Keep checking all the machinery that is working or not.  

The above maintenance schedules can help to maintain your pool regularly and avoid the heavy expenses of the pool cleaning services. If it’s not working then your pool may have different needs you can take advice from experts.

Final tips: Your pool maintenance and cleanliness schedule will help save you money and avoid the big issues of the near future.

Conclusion:

Owning a swimming pool is a huge responsibility. I hope you take this responsibility as fun to maintain and clean your pool, to keep yourself free from spending a lot.

Do you have great pool maintenance and cleaning tips to share? Share with us in a comment.