Have you recently had a pool installed, or bought a house with a swimming pool, and you find yourself thinking that you feel completely overwhelmed with where to start? Caring for and maintaining a new swimming pool can certainly be intimidating to people unfamiliar with this process. The good news is that while there is a steep learning curve to swimming pool ownership, once you get some of the basics under control you will find that it is a fairly easy process after all.
Choosing to learn about your swimming pool is the best thing you can do to avoid costly problems and frustrations along the way. If you are not informed, or under informed about pool care, this is when you can really run into problems.
As a new pool owner you need to be aware of how there is a lot of conflicting information about swimming pools out there to find. Your neighbor, the local pool workers in your area, and advice from your friend at work about pool care will all be distinctly different. Seldom will you find clear instruction that is unanimously accepted as true. Normally you will find directly conflicting information. This is the result of a largely unregulated industry that is deceptively technical in nature. In short, pool owners need to do more research and vetting of information about their pool than they normally would apply to other issues that can arise around the home. The information contained here will help you to better understand your pool and how to care for it. As a starting point the page you are own now should be considered “must read” information to make sure that you have the basics right. You would be surprised to learn how often pool owners do not know what kind of pool they have, or get the pump and filter mixed up. This page will help resolve these mistakes by reviewing the fundamental information that you need to know.
Identifying Pool Equipment
As a new pool owner you will need to have regular interaction with the circulation and filtration system on your pool. In order to seek advice or research any individual component in greater detail you will need to be able to properly identify each component of the system. Every pool will have a pump and a filter of similar kind. This is the basic pool installation minimum for circulating and filtering the water. In addition to this common equipment will include gas heaters, solar heaters, salt water chlorinators, chlorine puck erosion feeders, ozone generators and UV lights.
Pool Pumps – The pump is the heart of the pool system. It is electrically powered and serves to suck water from the pool through skimmer and main drain pipes and push water through the filter and back to the pool. The pool pump has an electric motor one one end and a “wet end” chamber on the other end that has pipes going in and out of it. The pump requires regular maintenance in the form of cleaning out the strainer basket in the pump to avoid over-working the pump. If the pump gets too hot it can trip the electrical breaker or potentially develop internal damage in the form of short term and long term symptoms which is why the pump must never be run dry. If you want to learn more about pool pumps including how to figure out which one is the right one for your pool.
Pool Filters – The pool filter is the large tank that contains a filter media that removes particulate from the pool water. There are 3 common style of pool filter which are silica sand filters, cartridge filters and diatomaceous earth (D.E) filters. Sand filters are very heavy due to hundreds of pounds of sand media. Sand filters require periodic backwashing which rinses the debris that the filter has removed from the pool. Cartridge filters contain a paper cartridge, or series of paper cartridges, which filter the pool water. Cartridge filters are capable of filtering much finer material than sand filters but also cost considerably more than sand filters. D.E filters remove the finest amount of particulate from swimming pools but also require the greatest amount of maintenance and care which includes bumping, charging and periodic disassembly and cleaning of the internal grids. Regardless of which type of filter that you have, you will need to pay attention to the operating pressure of the system via the pressure gage. Increases in pressure are an indication that service is needed. A general rule of thumb is to determine the clean operating pressure of your pool system and perform service (backwashing, cleaning or disassembly) once the pressure of the pool system has increased by 7 psi. Each filter type has a recommended maximum operating pressure of 30 psi and a danger limit never to exceed 50 psi. These values are very important to know and remember.
Pool heaters – Gas powered pool heaters are the most common way of heating pool water. These are available to run off of propane or natural gas and range in size from 100,000 BTU to 400,000 BTU with the most common, by far, being 250,000 BTU. New pool owners are often surprised with how much money it costs to run a gas heater. Since gas billing is usually multiple months for billing cycles you can rack up quite a bill before you know it. It is possible to burn thousands of dollars of gas in a few months time. It is important to understand that a large BBQ might be 25,000 BTU so an average pool heater is like having 10 large BBQ’s running on full blast. Be sure to balance your pool water as poor chemistry is the #1 killer of gas heaters. To learn more about how to properly care for gas heaters, as well as how to size them for your pool
Pool heat pumps – A pool heat pump is different from a gas heater. Instead of using gas as a fuel source, a heat pump uses electricity combined with the technology similar to an air conditioner to create an energy transfer that can warm pool water. Ambient air temperature is heated and transferred to the pool water via a heat exchanger system. Similar to a rooftop solar heater more so than a gas heater, a heat pump can not simply heat the water at any time of day or night – it requires specific temperatures in order to work. Even still a heat pump has limitations of performance and will not, in most cases, extend the swimming season – only supplement the in season swimming temperatures. If you live in the right area where electrical costs are low and you have a large amount of warm sunny weather, then a heat pump might be the most efficient method to heat your pool water. If you would like to learn more about heat pumps, how they work and how to find out if one will work on your pool
Salt Water Chlorine Generators – Chlorine is a chemical sanitizer used to keep swimming pools clean, clean and safe to swim in. Chlorine comes in many forms from pucks, to powder to liquid to gas. Another form of chlorine is chlorine that you derive from sodium chlorine, or salt. If you add salt to the pool, usually around 3000 parts per million, an electrolysis cell passes a tiny current through the water inside the “salt cell” which causes the sodium to separate from the chlorine. The chlorine kills bacteria and turns back into salt ready to pass through the salt cell again. New pool owners often confuse salt water thinking it is something different from chlorine – it is not. A salt pool is a chlorine pool except you generate your own chlorine as opposed to buying chlorine already processed from salt and ready to go. There is much you should learn about salt water if you have this, or want this, for your pool.
