Dealing with extra-heavy leaf days (2023 edition)

Have you even cleaned your pool and then the next day it’s filled with leaves again? Summer is almost over so it’s time to arm ourselves with the proper tools to combat the heavy leaf days that are on the horizon!

If you don't want to read through the entire guide on how to deal with extra heavy leaf days, here's the TLDR version of this guide and the products that our customers love when dealing with leaves in their pool.

• Water TechniX Leaf Skimmer - Light and agile, customers love it when there's floating leaves on your pool to deal with.
• Water TechniX Leaf Shovel - Ultra Heavy-Duty and perfect when there are mountains of leaves submerged in your pool. A few scoops and you're done!
• Water TechniX Leaf Canister - Attaches to most suction pool cleaners, the canister catches leaves before they get to your skimmers, eliminating clogs and slowdowns when using an automatic pool cleaner.
• Water TechniX Phosphate Remover - One dose after pool cleanup makes sure that any and all phosphate (algae food) left behind by leaves are destroyed. No algae food = dead algae.

Yes, these three tools all serve the same purpose and you might be thinking to yourself, why should I get different tools when they all serve the same purpose? The answer is quite simple, efficiency! Each type of leaf scooping device is built for a specific task and they’re designed to save you time and effort.

This is the slimmest and sleekest of all the leaf scoops. With a slim design, leaf skimmers are the most agile and are used to fish out floating leaves and debris. Leaf skimmers aren’t meant to deal with leaf deposits that have sunk to the bottom of your pool! Due to its shallow design, if you try to use a leaf skimmer to scoop out leaves from the bottom of your pool, they’ll just fall off on the way out! Not only that, even if you do succeed to scoop out leaves from the bottom of your pool with a leaf skimmer, you’ll need to do a LOT of repetitions, which is time and effort wasted.

Leaf Rakes have an edge along the front of the frame at 90 degrees which allows you to glide the net over debris and rake it towards you, allowing you to easily scoop up large amounts of leaves and debris easily, saving you both time and effort. Leaf Shovels have an angled edge along the frame to allow you to push and shovel debris up, which is a better way to deal with extra-heavy debris. So yeah, the difference may seem minor, but it’s all about saving you time and effort!

Manually vacuuming your pool is another way to deal with heavy leaf days. It’s a lot faster than scooping them out manually because you don’t have to scoop up, take the leaves out, tap them out, repeat. Manually vacuuming your pool can work, but if you’re in an area with large leaves then you might have a problem since the cleaning power of manual pool vacuums is limited by the diameter of your pool hose! For heavier/larger leaves, read on!

The Aussie Gold Leaf Bagger Venturi Vacuum Head is probably the ultimate tool you can get for dealing with extra-heavy leaf days! With an extra-large opening, it can suck up any type of leaf that may find itself at the bottom of your pool. It also has an extra-large bag attached to it so you don’t have to keep on emptying the vacuum head. And that’s not even the best thing! The venturi vacuum head doesn’t need to be attached to your pool pumping system! Saving your filter elements from the extra load of debris and saving you electricity at the same time! All you need to do is attach the vacuum head to a telepole and a standard garden hose and you’re good to go! It’s also a great tool to use after a storm when the power is out and you’ll need to clean out your pool!

For automatic pool cleaners like suction-side pool cleaners, you’ll need a leaf canister attachment to help you deal with extra-heavy leaf days. Robotic pool cleaners on the other hand will struggle with heavy leaf days because of the limited space on their debris compartments. Now before you say, why get a robotic pool cleaner if it can’t deal with heavy leaf days then? Well, the answer is simple, extra-heavy leaf days are rare occurrences while regular pool maintenance is something that you NEED to do all the time, and robotic pool cleaners are excellent for regular pool cleaning tasks. Read more about the benefits of owning a robotic pool cleaner here.

If you have a suction pool cleaner or robotic pool cleaner, it is advisable to use them AFTER you’ve scooped up the bulk of the leaves and debris in your pool to give it that final scrub and cleaning to ensure that every little bit of debris is taken out from your pool.

Preventing leaves and debris from entering your pool is actually one of the best selling points for pool covers. If the leaves and debris can’t enter your pool then there’s nothing to fish out right? Saves you a ton of time and effort! That’s just one of the many benefits of owning a pool cover that’s why we can’t stop recommending every pool owner in Australia to get one.

After making sure that all of the debris cleaned from your pool, it’s time to take care of the invisible junk that’s deposited in your pool. What are we talking about? Phosphates of course! Leaves contain massive amounts of phosphates, which is basically algae food! Whenever you’re done dealing with heavy leaf days, it’s always good to dose your pool with the recommended amounts of phosphate remover to ensure that your pool is not only visibly clean, but stays algae-free afterward as well!

Heavy leaf days shouldn't pose much of a problem if you're properly prepared for it! It takes a different kind of focus when compared to your regular cleaning routines but really, it's just more leaves, and having the right tools will make it easy and you really shouldn't be all that worried.