As the world heats up for the summer season, your thoughts may be turning to using your backyard a little more than usual. You’re ready to trade in the fuzzy socks and start thinking about bringing out the swimmers, but what does your current outdoor entertainment area look like? When was the last time you cleaned the patio furniture or sorted the pool?
It doesn’t matter how long you get to use the pool for, you should consider calling in an expert to check it over before you start using it again. You might be competent enough to clean it properly yourself, but can you perform bore pump repairs? Probably not, right? That’s ok – that’s what the professionals are there for. So with that in mind, here are the ways that you can get your backyard pool ready for summer.
- Give the pool clean. Take off the pool cover and start skimming the surface for leaves and other debris that have collected over the winter. Pool nets are great for this and you can scoop that up before you vacuum out the pool. Don’t forget to clear the skimmer and pump baskets as well. Once you’ve removed that pool cover, drain any collected water on it too. The last thing you want is to have further contamination.
- Balance your water chemicals. If you don’t treat your pool throughout the colder weather, like most people don’t, the pool water can create viruses, bacteria, and other things that can stick to your skin. You don’t want to swim in dirty water, and it doesn’t matter how good your filtration system is, if the water balance isn’t correct, the pool will go green.
- Check to see if there are any possible thoughts. Take a look at the pool plumbing equipment. You might want to hire an expert for this one because once your pool has been clean of debris or leaves, you should visually inspect the entire thing to ensure there are no leaks. Check out your pump to note if there are any abnormal noises and call the experts in to fix it for you. Unless you are well versed on how to fix pool equipment, you shouldn’t do this on your own.
- Start increasing your filtration timer. With the warmer weather, your pump is going to be running for longer so that the entire volume of water in the pool will be turned over. This will happen at least once a day, and the proper pool pump run time can vary depending on the size of your pool. Increasing your filtration timer will mean that it turns over for every 10 hours.
- Top up the water. It does naturally tend to drop over the winter season, and that can happen with natural evaporation or even a lack of rain. However, you need to make sure that your pool is full to completion, so make sure you fill it to the right level. Overfilling or underfilling it will actually reduce the efficiency of the skimmer box on your pool, so don’t do that.
