As you may already know, different seasons can bring with it different maintenance tasks when it comes to our swimming pools. In today’s post, we will be highlighting the most important tasks to remember depending on the season! Although it’s not saying that some tasks will become less important but more of how some tasks will become even MORE important.
Spring Swimming Pool Maintenance
Again, depending on if you live in an area where the temperature allows you to open the pool early or if you still have to wait for Summer for the pool to be opened, Spring pool maintenance tasks will involve a couple of things that we don’t usually do during the summer months. Don’t worry too much though, these tasks are one-offs which you will just do during the start of the season.
Removing the Pool Cover
If you’ve invested in a pool cover to protect your swimming pool over the winter then you may notice that there will be debris and water that have pooled on your pool cover. Don’t just yank the pool cover out and allow all of the pooled stuff on the cover to fall into your pool, that just defeats the entire purpose! Use a small submersible pump or a venturi pump to clear off the water first and sweep/scoop out all of the debris that has accumulated on your pool cover over the winter months
Check and Balance your pool chemical levels
Even if your pool water looks crystal clear after opening (good job btw!) it’s a great idea to actually hold off from jumping into the pool just yet! Your pool chemical levels are sure to have shifted during the winter months. Check that all of your chemical levels are up to point. If you’ve waited for months to use your pool, then a few more days of waiting won’t hurt to ensure that your pool is in top shape before using it.
General Equipment Maintenance
Since the pool won’t be seeing much action during the early spring days, it’s always a good idea to check all of your pool equipment for any damage that might have occurred with the cold weather and dormancy. Here are some things that are good to check when spring rolls in.
- Check all of your o-rings and seals - Check your pump lid o-ings, cartridge filter o-rings, sand filter o-rings, and union o-rings. Give them a once over and apply some silicone-based lubricants to keep them supple for the upcoming season. If you find any cracked or damaged o-rings then it’s best to replace them before starting the swimming season.
- Give your filter elements a thorough clean - using some Zodiac filter cleaning solution, give your cartridge filter elements a good soak or apply some directly to your sand filter elements to ensure that you’ll have maximum filtration power for the coming season.
- Give your pool surfaces a thorough scrubbing - This is part of how to properly open your pool for the season. The long period of dormancy may have caused some particles to settle at the bottom of your pool and have caused them to stick there. Although it’s not obvious, they’re there and a thorough scrubbing is needed to loosen them so that they can be vacuumed out with ease.
- Check your manual pool cleaning tools - This shouldn’t be a big problem if you have professional-grade tools, but there’s always that small chance of brush bristles becoming brittle over the break or some plastic parts breaking off over the off-season. If you find any that are damaged, replace them immediately before the season starts so that you won’t have interruptions to the coming swimming season.
- Do you have automatic pool cleaners or robotic pool cleaners? Spring is the best time to give your pool cleaners an overhaul while they’re not in full service yet. Things to check would be their wheels (if they have any), the pool hoses, their motors, and other moving parts. You can always check Mr Pool Man’s online shop for overhaul kits for some of the more popular automatic pool cleaner overhaul kits to bring your pool cleaners to life!
Summer Swimming Pool Maintenance
Once the swimming season starts then it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get ready for all the joys that pool maintenance brings with it! We’ve covered summer swimming pool maintenance extensively here on Mr Pool Man, in fact, almost all of the maintenance articles you can see here in our blog (unless labelled as something season specific) deal with summer swimming pool maintenance! Instead of going through all of them in this post, we’ll provide you with links to how to properly maintain your pool for the summer swimming season.
- The first thing you should do is to create your very own pool maintenance schedule.
- Ensure that you have the proper pool supplies to last you for the summer.
- Get your pool equipmets ready.
- Apply pool chlorine on a weekly basis or after heavy usage.
- On a weekly basis, test your pool water and balance accordingly.
- Apply some algaecide on a monthly basis to protect your pool from unwanted guests.
- Scrub and vacuum your pool on a weekly basis, or have a robotic pool cleaner do it for you.
- Backwash your sand filter or hose down your filter cartridges once your filter pressure gauge reads above your normal pressure range.
- And finally, although not a maintenance task, but it’s a great idea to throw a pool party every once in a while!
Autumn Pool Maintenance
Now Autumn pool maintenance sits in a strange place, especially in Australia. Either the pool is closed early, or the season is extended. So depending on what you do with your pool during autumn, the type of maintenance will vary. If you’re keeping your pool open, then follow the exact same summer maintenance tasks that you normally do. Just add bi-weekly scooping out of leaves and debris to your routine or increase your cleaning routines to account for the increase in leaves in the pool.
On the other hand, if you’re closing the pool for the season then simply follow our in-depth guides here:
Quick Australian pool winterizing guide
Maintaining your swimming pool during winter in Australia
P.S. Don’t forget to add some phosphate remove before closing your pool for the winter as an extra layer of protection to ensure that you don’t get a green surprise when you reopen your pool for the spring/summer! Read more on the importance of phosphate removers for winter here.
Winter Swimming Pool Maintenance
Depending on where you live, you may either shut down your pool completely during the winter months, or if you need some help with a pool heater to extend the swimming season, here are the things that we need to closely monitor during the winter months.
Since we’re using the pool less often during the winter months (unless you love swimming in freezing temperatures) then it’s worth noting that we can actually reduce the amount of balancing we do in the pool. Pool algae are semi-dormant in cooler temperatures and with the bather load down, we can get away with monitoring our chemical levels once every week or so.
For those that totally close the pool for the season, the thing to keep in mind is our LSI levels when the pool is closed as well as the projected LSI levels at the COLDEST temperature that your area gets. The reason why this is important is that LSI levels can swing due to the water temperature even if the pool isn’t being used. Swinging LSI levels can cause what is commonly known as “winter dust” where calcium scale seems to come from nowhere even if your calcium hardness levels look to be spot on before closing the pool and after opening the pool.
For more information on Winter Dust and the importance of properly anticipating LSI levels when closing your pool be sure to check this article out.
Conclusion
There you have it. Different maintenance tasks for different seasons. Knowing what to do and when to do it will not only ensure that you have a crystal clear pool the whole year round but this will ensure that we will have an easier time at it as well!
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Happy swimming :)