Practice water-smart pool maintenance year-round to help prevent costly repairs, improve equipment efficiency and conserve water in every season.
As a pool owner, few things are more frustrating than seeing your water bill spike during the summer months because your backyard oasis is using thousands of gallons of water.
Practicing water-smart pool maintenance year-round helps prevent costly repairs, improves equipment efficiency, and conserves water in every season.
As summer winds down and you’re topping off the pool level in extreme heat, don’t forget to also check your pool’s water chemistry and equipment performance to prevent bigger issues and unnecessary water loss.
Evaporation causes pools to lose chemicals and water. As a result, maintaining water levels requires additional chemical treatments and energy for reheating, increasing utility bills and routine maintenance costs.
These simple, effective pool maintenance tips can help keep the water in the pool and save money, too.
Invest in an appropriate child-safe pool cover.
- Evaporation is one of the biggest causes of water loss in a swimming pool and this process is amplified during the hottest months of the year. There are several types of pool covers, ranging from mesh/vinyl to bubble wrap — pick your preference!
Keep it clean.
It may seem obvious, but a dirty and unhealthy pool needs a lot of extra care and attention. Regularly skimming leaves and debris, cleaning skimmer baskets and brushing your pool tiles greatly reduce filter clogs. Fewer filter clogs mean less frequent backwashing. Helpful tip: Capture and recycle your pool’s backwash water to use for plants and lawn.
Maintain correct chemical balances.
Maintaining a pool’s water quality keeps water safe and clean for swimmers, but it can also reduce water loss. Balanced water prevents algae blooms, cloudy water and the need for partial/full draining events for poor water chemistry.- Test chemical levels with basic pool water testing kits found at pool supply stores. While you don’t need to be a chemist to understand your pool water, there are a few basics properties to know:
- Chlorine: The essential agent for water sanitation. Too much can cause corrosion, while too little allows algae and bacteria to grow. Keep at 1-3 ppm.
- pH: Affects swimmer comfort and sanitizer efficiency. If your eyes have ever burned while underwater, it’s because of low pH, not chlorine. The ideal pH range is 7.2-7.8 to avoid too acidic and too alkaline of a pool.
- Cyanuric acid: Stabilizes chlorine against sunlight. It it’s more than 100 ppm, “chlorine lock” can reduce the effectiveness of sanitizer and promote algae growth (that slimy green muck you see on pool walls). Too little allows for rapid chlorine loss. Aim for 30-50 ppm.
- Avoid over-treatment: When these chemicals exist in excess, they can cause metal corrosion, high chemical costs and more frequent draining events. Maintaining a healthy balance will save you lots of time, money and water.
Optimize your filtration system.
- Upgrade your sand or diatomaceous earth filter to a cartridge filter. SAWS offers a pool filter rebate to do this and you’ll get a $250 credit on your water bill when you replace your pool’s sand or diatomaceous earth filter(s) with a new high-efficiency cartridge filter system.
Cool it.
- If you can help it, keep your pool’s water temperature low. Warmer water evaporates faster. Run the pool pump at night when air temps are cooler to reduce water loss due to evaporation.
Of course, pools use more water than the average household. But managing a pool properly leaves you with more annual water savings, money in your pocket, and time to enjoy the water with your family!
Mia Garito is an intern with SAWS Conservation.
