Owning a swimming pool is part of the Australian dream… but spending hours cleaning it every week certainly isn’t! The good news is that a little regular maintenance can prevent small issues from turning into costly repairs and stop your sparkling oasis from becoming a cloudy green swamp.
Maintaining a clean and healthy pool doesn’t have to be complicated. By following a few simple routines, you can keep your pool water crystal clear, extend the life of your equipment and enjoy more time swimming instead of scrubbing. Here are 10 pool maintenance tips to help you save time, money and stress.
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1. Skim the surface every single day
Leaves, small twigs, drowned bugs, and flower petals love to float on top of your pool water. If you leave them there, they will eventually sink to the bottom, break down, and stain your pool floor. Plus, decaying organic matter feeds algae, which turns your water green.
Taking five minutes every day to use a long-handled skimmer net to scoop out these floating items makes a massive difference. It is the easiest way to keep your pool looking inviting, and it prevents your filtration system from getting overloaded right from the start.
2. Empty your skimmer and pump baskets
Your pool has built-in baskets designed to catch larger debris before it travels deep into your plumbing. You can usually find the skimmer baskets along the side of the pool at the water level, while the pump basket sits right next to your pool pump motor.
If these baskets get completely full of leaves and debris, your pump has to work twice as hard to pull water through. This lowers your water circulation and can even burn out your expensive pump motor. Pull these baskets out at least once or twice a week, empty the contents into your green waste, and rinse the basket with a garden hose.
3. Vacuum the pool floor and brush the walls
Even with regular skimming, tiny particles of dirt, sand and dust will settle on your pool floor, steps and walls. Algae also loves to cling to pool surfaces, particularly in areas where water circulation is limited.
An automatic pool cleaner (often called a ‘creepy crawly’) can help keep the pool floor clean, but it’s still important to brush the walls and steps weekly using a pool brush attached to a telescopic pole. This helps loosen dirt and algae before it has a chance to take hold.
If you’d rather spend your weekends swimming than maintaining your pool, a robotic pool cleaner can take much of the hard work off your hands. Many models automatically vacuum the floor, scrub the walls and climb steps, helping to keep your pool surfaces spotless without manual labor.
4. Test and balance your water chemistry
Water chemistry may appear daunting, but in reality, it’s much like cooking. You need to test your pool water at least once or twice a week using very basic test strips or test kits. The key things you need to monitor include:
- pH Level:Â This measures how acidic or basic your water is. You want your pH to stay between 7.2 and 7.6. If it is too low, the water can sting your eyes and damage your equipment. If it is too high, it can cause cloudy water and scale buildup.
- Total alkalinity:Â This acts as a shield for your pH level, keeping it stable. Keep this between 80 and 120 parts per million (ppm).
- Sanitiser (Chlorine):Â Chlorine kills bacteria and keeps algae away. Your free chlorine level should consistently stay between 1.0 and 3.0 ppm.
If any of these numbers are off, add the appropriate pool chemicals in small amounts, wait a few hours for the water to mix, and test it again.
5. Clean your pool filter regularly
Your pool’s filter plays a critical role in keeping your backyard oasis clean. It operates throughout the day to filter out particles, such as hair, body oils, dirt, and other tiny particles. There are three kinds of pool filters: cartridge, sand, and DE (diatomaceous earth) filters.
Over time, the trapped dirt clogs the filter, causing the pressure inside the filter tank to rise. Check the pressure gauge on top of your filter tank. When the pressure reads 8 to 10 pounds per square inch (psi) higher than its normal clean starting pressure, it is time to clean it. For sand and DE filters, this means backwashing the system. For cartridge filters, you need to turn off the system, pull the fabric cartridges out, and spray them down thoroughly with a garden hose.
6. Run your pump for enough hours daily
Water needs to move to stay clean. Stagnant water is an open invitation for mosquito breeding and rapid algae growth. Your pool pump should run long enough every single day to push all the water in your pool through the filter at least once. This process is called a turnover rate.
For most residential pools, this means running your pump for about 8 to 12 hours a day. If it is the middle of a hot summer or you just hosted a huge pool party, run it even longer. To save money on your electricity bill, consider using a variable-speed pump, which runs on a lower, highly efficient setting for longer periods.
7. Keep an eye on the water level
It is natural for water to be drained from your pool through evaporation, splashing, and backwashing of the filter. However, it should never fall more than halfway up the opening of the skimmer. If it does, the skimmer will suck in air into the pipes instead of water.
Sucking air can quickly ruin your pool pump motor because the motor relies on water to keep it cool. Check your water level weekly. If it gets low, simply fill it back up to the middle of the skimmer tile line with your garden hose.
8. Shock your pool every week
Even when you have ideal levels of chlorine throughout the day, factors such as sunblock, sweat, urine, and rain can accumulate over time. These substances combine with chlorine to form chloramines, which are responsible for the unpleasant pool smell and also irritate the eyes.
To fix this, you need to shock your pool once a week, preferably at night. Shocking means adding a large, concentrated dose of liquid or granular chlorine to break apart those chloramines and kill any hidden bacteria. Doing this at night ensures the hot sun won’t burn off the fresh chlorine before it has time to work.
9. Use the tennis ball trick for body oils
When people swim, they leave behind trace amounts of sunblock, tanning lotions, makeup, and natural body oils. These oils float on the surface and create a greasy ring around your pool tiles.
An easy, cheap trick to solve this is to drop a couple of clean, ordinary tennis balls into your skimmer basket or let them float freely around the pool. The fuzzy nylon material on the outside of a tennis ball naturally attracts and absorbs oils while ignoring the water. It is a simple hack that keeps your tile line sparkling clean.
10. Check for leaks early
If you notice that you are having to top up your pool with water every single week, you might have more than just normal evaporation. You might have a plumbing or liner leak.
An easy way to check this is the bucket test. Fill a plastic bucket with pool water and place it on a pool step so the water inside the bucket is at the exact same level as the pool water outside it. Mark the levels on both sides of the bucket with a marker. Wait 24 hours. If the pool water level drops significantly lower than the water inside the bucket, you likely have a leak that needs professional attention.
Maintaining a swimming pool doesn’t need to involve endless hours of exhausting manual labour. The key is consistency. Even a few minutes each day to remove leaves, monitor water chemistry, and allow automatic cleaning systems to run will keep your pool beautiful, safe and crystal clear. Plus it will help you save money long-term.Â
