How to Maintain a Swimming Pool

Having a pool during the summer months can be the perfect backyard getaway and party spot with friends and family. With any pool, keeping the water clear and safe requires regular swimming pool maintenance and attention.

Keep Water Balanced

Having correctly balanced water in your pool is essential to keeping your water safe, clean, and clear. To be more specific, make sure you have the appropriate sanitation levels in your pool at all times. Along with keeping your pool sanitized, it is important to balance and maintain the recommended pH and alkalinity levels. When it comes to balancing your water and knowing which chemicals to add, you can test your water with a colored test strip or bring in a water sample to be tested.

The recommended pool chemical levels are: 

• pH: 7.2-7.6
• Total Alkalinity: 80-120 ppm
• Calcium Hardness: 200-400 ppm
• Cyanuric Acid: 30-50 ppm
• Free Chlorine: 1-4 ppm

In addition to balancing your pool water, adding your weekly maintenance chemicals is also important when maintaining your pool for summer. Your weekly maintenance should include chlorine, shock, and algaecide. The needed amounts of these chemicals will be different depending on the size of your pool, it is important to read the back of the packages for recommendations and instructions.

As far as maintaining your pool on the cleaning end, this can include a number of different things. Cleaning your pool with a vacuum weekly or as needed is an important task when maintaining a clean and clear pool. Some of you may have a skimmer basket, keeping your skimmer basket clear of debris will provide better filtration and a direct path for the water heading to the pump and filter. Not all of the debris will sink to the bottom to get vacuumed up, this is when you can skim the top of your water with a net and pole to remove the unwanted debris before it brings unwanted bacteria into your pool.

Another working part of your pool that is used to keep your water clean is your filter. When it comes to rinsing your filter of particles that are resting within the filter media, back-washing once every week or two will release the particles, making room for more to be filtered. For those with a cartridge filter, you should be cleaning your filter(s) every 30 days with a filter cleaner/degreaser. For those with a sand or glass filter, regular maintenance for cleaning your filter media depends on use, chemicals, algae, and many other things. Some may go the entire summer without cleaning their filter media and still have a crystal-clean pool. However, when in doubt, you should clean your filter media about halfway through the summer and right before closing your pool for the winter.