Lisa Johnson's House and Home - Articles on Home, Family, and Living

Lisa Johnson on Buying a New Swimming Pool

Chapter 7: On Going Maintenance

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October 1, 2003

Once everything was put in place, the project manager from Mission Pools came over to do the "walk through".   He demonstrated how to operate the pumps, filter, and heater, and how to manage the water chemistry.   He went over the warrantee, and the routine maintenance.   We were given a operation manual.

He also did the "start up".   This involves adding all the necessary chemicals for proper water balance, and adjusting the levels on the pumps.   At that point, it was all done!

The entire process, from the start of construction to the start up, took about 4 months.   It was originally quoted to be 3 months.   The delay took place with the general contractor, whose work schedule was extremely busy.   He was actually a very nice person to work with, and had very good credentials, but was perhaps stretching himself way too thin.

Maintenance of the pool and spa, actually, is not hard to do, with perhaps the exception of keeping the water chemistry in balance.   Most of the cleaning is automated.

Here's what must be done manually, each week:

• Clean the debris from the pump baskets and skimmer basket
• Check chlorine level in water
• Check the amount of chlorine in the chlorinator
• Brush the Pebble Tec

The "baskets" are just filters that prevent the larger debris from getting into the filter. The Pebble Tec needs to be brushed regularly to prevent dirt from adhering to it, which will give it a rough texture.

Here's what must be done every 6 months:

• Clean out the pool filter

If your filter is cartridge based, this is somewhat easy to do.   You just remove the cover from the filter, and clean out the junk.   There is another kind of filter that uses sand.   I'm not familiar with how this works.

That's about it.   The pool skimmer and pool vacuum cleaner keeps the rest of it clean for you.   The vacuum cleaner runs around the bottom of the pool keeping it clean.   Normally, you keep this in the pool when you're not swimming in it.

We ended up hiring a pool service company to do most of the work for us, even though there isn't much work to do.   The main thing is that we wanted them to manage the water chemistry.

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Suggested Links

·  National Swimming Pool Foundation

·  Swimming Pool Energy Costs

·  PoolSpa WebCenter

·  Leslie's Swimming Pool Supplies

·  Swimming Pool Buyer Beware