Money Saving Tips from your Swimming Pool Contractor
Money Saving Tips for Your Swimming Pool
Over the years, I’ve come across some interesting money saving tips for your pool while working with swimming pool owners. These tips will help you cut back spending while actively trying to maintain a healthy, stress-free lifestyle, enjoying your pool.Store Your Vacuum Head Correctly
The number one reason pool owners replace their vacuum head is because the brushes on the bottom of it have either flattened out or completely fallen off. Store your vacuum head upside down and out of the sun. Over the winter, be sure you keep it away from any chlorine. If you do this, you will double the life of your vacuum head, which can be expensive to replace.Use A Solar Cover With Your Pool Heater
Solar pool covers capture the energy of the sun and transfer it directly into your pool water to keep it warm. Depending on where you live, a solar pool cover may not keep the water as warm as an electric or gas heater, but the tradeoff is that it can actually save you money by reducing evaporation.Keep Your Pool Cover Clean During The Winter
Most pools, when opened in the spring, look like the black lagoon. Debris, snow, and water must be removed immediately to avoid damage to reel components and liner caused by excess strain. A telescopic pole and brush can remove excess debris or snow. For water accumulation, place a cover pump on the cover to pump the water off.Run Your Filter Less In Mild Climates During the hottest part of the summer, I al
ways recommend owners run their pools for 10 to 12 hours a day. You need to keep that water clean and moving so that you don’t run into any problems, such as an algae growth. Algae loves warm water. When the water is colder, it’s harder for algae to grow. This is a good reason why you are able to get away with running your filter less when we have milder (cooler) weather.Buy Your Pool Chemicals Early and In Bulk
Your smaller pool stores generally run spring start-up specials to entice people to get in the door early to get a jump-start on the season. It’s a good move, especially if stores have some leftover chemicals from last year that they are trying to get rid of to make room for the new shipment of chemicals. Also, make sure you buy your pool chemicals in bulk at the beginning of the season whether it’s on sale or not. Stock up on chlorine (or whichever sanitizer you use) and shock since you’ll be using these chemicals all summer.Run Your Pool Pump At Night
The peak hours for most electric companies are from 7:00am to 7:00pm during the week. This is when it costs the most money to use electricity. To save some green, run your filter during the off peak hours.Shock Your Swimming Pool Every Week
Let’s say it’s the middle of the summer and you’ve been good at shocking your pool every week. Your pool has been crystal clear all summer long. You’ve been testing your water regularly and everything is going perfectly! Then, you decide that you’ve been so good that you’ll skip a week taking care of it. Remember, now it’s hot and your kids have been swimming in it. All of the sudden your pool turns green and/or cloudy. Now instead of following your normal routine and shocking it once a week, you are forced to triple shock it this week to get rid of the green. And you also have to run your filter system 24/7 to help clear up the cloudy water. Now you have just wasted all that extra money pumping more shock into your water and running the filter longer. In short, shocking your pool every week helps maintain a healthy and clear pool, which will prevent these kinds of things from happening.Use A Robotic Pool Cleaner
Robotic pool cleaners are self-contained units that run off of electricity and can clean an entire swimming pool faster than YOU. They drive around the pool on their own, climbing up walls and stairs and collecting all kinds of debris in their fine mesh filter bags. These filter bags also filter the water, so by running your robotic cleaner while the filter and pump ARE NOT running, you are actually saving money while keeping your pool clean. It costs much less to run a small pool cleaner than it does to run your filter system.Keep An Eye On Your Chlorine Stabilizer Level
For those of you who don’t know, chlorine stabilizer or cyanuric acid is a chemical that protects the sun from eating up the chlorine you put in your pool. When you add chlorine to your pool via shock or chlorine tablets, the chlorine is un-stabilized (for the most part). Meaning, it doesn’t last very long in the water to fight bacteria and other harmful contaminates.Limit Pool Water Evaporation
Evaporation is the silent, invisible water-waster that plagues every pool owner, but more so in some areas of the nation than others. An uncovered 18’ by 36’ pool loses about an inch of water a week, or 7,000 gallons annually. In particularly hot and dry places like Arizona, an average pool can lose up to 25,000 gallons- all from evaporation. Those numbers are nothing to sneeze at.If you follow the advice given here, you will save water in your swimming pool and, as a result save money, one drop at a time. Happy Swimming!
