There’s nothing like having a pool in your own backyard. My wife and I find it a fantastic thing to be able to lay out in the sun, and when we get hot we jump in the pool. Or we can have the family over to play and teach the grandchildren how to swim, and it’s also fantastic exercise. I love having a pool.
The happiest day of the year for me is the day I open the pool. And the saddest day of the year is the day that I closed it.
However that’s not all fun and games. It does require maintenance. I’ve had the pool for 28 years that I’ve been in this house., and I’ve learned a few things which I’d like to pass along.
Now I’m not an expert, but this is what I do and if usually seems to work. First, pool needs to be cleaned. This requires vacuuming. Now I’m not a big fan of having Pole or the vacuum adamant and a hose and spending 20-30 minutes every 2-3 days Factory in the pool. So I got an automatic vacuum cleaner. I plugged it into the skimmer Court and forget about it. I run the filter and average of 3 hours per day, when the filter is running his automatically vacuuming. I really have to do anything else. The next thing is you need to keep for chemicals in line. Now I read articles about pool care, and I’ll be telling about all sorts chemical balance and everything else that you need to do. I find it actually be quite easy. You need to keep the pH of the pool up high enough. You can go to the pool store and get some pH increaser. I get baking soda in big bags, it cost 30% less than what would cost to buy the same exact chemical in a pool store.
And then you need chlorine. I have an automatic chlorinator on my filter. Every week and a half I drop in six or eight tabs of chlorine. And forgot about it until the next week and a half comes. And just having the chlorine automatically added into the pool while the filter is running, is usually enough. However I said usually.
There are times when it just gets hot and other factors come into play, and you’ll need to add more chlorine. This is called shocking. You can buy shock in liquid form. Liquid shock is essentially bleach. I find that rather than purchasing liquid shock, I go to Walmart and get their strongest bleach. It’s the same thing.
What works better is powdered shock. Now if you have a vinyl liner, if you just take a handful of powder shock and thrown in the pool, you have just contributed to losing the color on your liner. The color will fade when you do that. So what you do is you had the shock into a big bucket of water, and give it a good stir. Let it sit for a few minutes to dissolve, and then give it another story. If you can still see powder chlorine in the water, letter said for even longer. Once while the chlorine is dissolved, throw it into the pool. If my shock and small 2 lb bags, or you can buy a 50 lb bucket. As to the rest of the chemicals in a pool, I really have to touch them. When I open the pool in the spring, I throw in two bags of baking soda, then give it a good shocking, turn on the filter in the vacuum, and two days later it’s clean and ready to swim in.