How To Take Care Of A Pool Step By Step

Taking care of your own pool is not impossible but it will take some commitment to learning about difference aspects of your pool, pool chemistry etc. but with some effort you very shortly can be on cruise control with your daily / weekly swimming pool maintenance. It is not a lot of work once you get over the learning curve...plus you don't need to learn everything about all pools - just your one swimming pool. Definitely something you can do if you set your mind to it (and watch this video)!

00:00 - Take care of your own pool introduction
02:52 - Savings potential taking care of your pool
04:30 - Maintaining a relationship with a pool professional
05:45 - Pride of ownership in your swimming pool
07:15 - Self promotion of Swimming Pool Steve
07:57 - Swimming pool filtration system overview
08:56 - Swimming pool pumps
09:40 - How to find information you need to care for your pool
10:50 - Pump leaking water
11:30 - Identifying your pool filter
11:55 - 3 different kinds of pool filters
13:50 - Clean operational pressure for your pool
15:00 - Verifying the pressure gauge is working
15:40 - Normal pressures for swimming pool systems
16:17 - When do you need to clean the filter
18:00 - Peripheral pool equipment like heaters and salt chlorinators
21:25 - Making sense of your plumbing system
22:45 - Ideal water level in swimming pools
23:30 - Pool pump losing prime
24:30 - Pools with no skimmers
25:00 - Infinity edge, negative edge, knife edge and vanishing edge pools
26:10 - How much water should a pool lose to evaporation?
26:46 - The bucket test for water loss in your pool
28:00 - Bucket test step two (pump on versus pump off)
28:55 - Reducing evaporation with solar pool cover blankets
30:30 - Taking better care of your pool than the company you paid to do it
31:15 - Brushing, scooping leaves and vacuuming your pool
33:30 - Pool vacuum types (suction, pressure and robotic)
34:45 - Emptying strainer baskets (skimmers and pumps)
35:30 - Danger emptying skimmer baskets
37:05 - How to turn off pump and clean pump strainer basket
37:47 - Priming the pool pump
39:05 - Swimming pool chemistry fundamentals
40:40 - How to adjust pool water chemistry values
41:25 - Why bother balancing the water chemistry
45:00 - A note on safety and pool chemicals
46:00 - How much work does it take to maintain the chemistry?
47:37 - Pool chemistry values
48:05 - Chlorine levels (free and total chlorine)
48:57 - pH and Total alkalinity levels
49:28 - Calcium hardness levels
50:00 - Phosphate levels
51:12 - Cyanuric acid / stabilizer levels
53:00 - Stabilized versus unstabilized chlorine sources
54:45 - Common pool chemistry corrections
55:50 - Order of corrections for pool chemicals
56:55 - Pool chemicals you do not interact with often
57:22 - Free chlorine versus total chlorine explained
58:30 - Combined chlorine buildup
59:15 - Breakpoint chlorination to remove combined chlorine
01:01:28 - Deficiencies visible in the pool

PLEASE LIKE & SUBSCRIBE!

#poolmaintenance #swimmingpoolgoals #swimmingpoolsteve

[anthonymcinnis]

Hello people, I just saw this video and started watching it.

On a side note, I just built my own swimming pool and without Steve helping me by answering ALL my emailed questions, I would not have made it through this.

My pool is not some slapped together crap either. It's a 9.5' X 40' concrete wall swimming pool. It's beautiful.

Thank you Steve.

Now let's all go back to LIKE and finish watching this video.

I should have water in 4 weeks max.

[lungisiqebengu]

I have just parted ways with my Swimming Pool Guy. Now I have to learn how to do things my self. Thank you Steve for such an informative lesson.

[darianboling]

Thanks for all you do. My pool guy disappeared with 2k dollars I gave him for a cover. I do everything myself now.

[cliffvictoria]

Steve, love your videos! I find it relaxing to get a bit of stretching and exercise by vacuuming my pool with some good music going in the background. What surprised me, when I started learning was how much dissent there is between "experts" on youtube. Case in point is many of them feel filtering the water once a day (by pool gallons size) is fine when commercial pools do it 4 times and Steve recommends 3 times for home pools (EDIT-Steve has a video on it). Finding someone as knowledgable as Steve and watching the videos is a great place to start for newbies to learn how to care for their own pools. Even veterans can learn a lot from this channel. Thanks!

[storyman]

I have been doing my own pool maintenance so long, that I actually enjoy it and find it relaxing. Put on some music and start vacuuming, skimming, and testing. Except during allergy season.

[edmondsjc]

I ended up knowing probably 95% of this by educating myself over the last few months, but your video gave me the confidence I need to take care of my own pool. Thanks!

[barbaralewis]

I'm so grateful for this information. My pool guy, who I've had for several years, caused a rash of problems. Rarely cleaned the pool filter, which caused problems with the pool pump. Got a new Jandy heater and he KNOWS how important pH is. I was checking the pH and he had it always low. He's coming today and I wish I could say we'll depart on good terms, but I don't think that's possible. Just replaced the heater, the pool pump and the filter. I've learned how set the Pentair Intelliflo VST and how to clean the filter and been monitoring the water chemistry. This video is filling in other information. THANK YOU!

[mikemyles]

This is great info! Thanks.

I have no desire to do my own pool maintenance. However, I recently joined a pool advisory committee for my HOA. We have a large in-ground pool for 183 residences (many are seasonal occupancy - in FL). Maybe the answer to this question is its own video - but what are the tips, things to look for, red flags, people in my position should consider when dealing with a maintenance company? License and insurance requirements for commercial/public pools? Scheduling, logging, and reporting standards? Essential report contents on water quality, chemicals used, equipment settings & condition (age/life expectancy/preventive maintenance schedule)? Documentation of the current system (equipment list, nominal readings/settings, system diagram)?

Our current service doesn't seem to provide much information and some equipment settings don't seem right based on typical recommendations. But I don't know what we should expect/demand to validate everything is up to snuff. I also presume there are state & local requirements of the info we must have if inspected, but it's hard to find clear info on that. Government regulation documents are pages and pages of legalese that are tough to parse.

I don't want to do the work, but I need to know enough to assure the board and residents that the work we are paying for is being done right, the pool is safe, it's operating at peak efficiency, and we're 100% prepared if inspected for any reason. At the moment we seem to put all our trust in the maintenance company without any independent verification - which concerns me.

[keypoolequipment]

Hi Steve:
Good on you for trying to solve this age old dilemma.
Pools are for people who can afford to run them and have them serviced properly.
We end up making more money from people who are not technically minded who try to look after their own pool. I have a few customers who are all over it.
By the way Steve, you will notice that about 10 years go, they started making the holes in the gauges smaller so they block up quicker. We drill them out before installing them to the same size they used to be back in the good old days. They last longer before they block up.
When a gauge won't go back to zero we remove it and re-drill the hole. We get an 80% success rate with this technique. The trap is if you put too much thread tape on it when you put it back in, you will split the filter MPV. It's surprising how easy it is to do this.$$$
I do the arrows on the Pipework, Easiest and best way to help people understand WTF is going on.

[terrilhargrovejones]

I let them close last year after putting the new filter in and cover on. I'm letting them open this year. Just being good to myself. All the 26 years I've lived in this house we've always opened and closed it. All I need is one other person to help me take off the cover... I can do everything else. So satisfying when I get the chemicals just right and the water is crystal clear!!!
😁😁😁

[Scott]

Had a service open my inground pool two weeks ago. Because of this channel, my water is crystal clear and I haven't needed my local pool guy! Just wish I could get rid of the silt.

[mattorta]

Steve, being a pool owner for 2 years, I want to “thank you” for demystifying water chemistry. I am finally now beginning to understand the priority in which I should be tweaking the water chemistry at. Prior to to watching this video, I would just take a basic reading of ph and the chlorine levels and be done with it. I always wondered why I was needing to adjust chlorine and ph levels and wondering why my pool walls were always developing algae and the chlorine never seemed to be effective.

[MeatHuntr]

Some of your best work thank you Steve

[dinabrilliant]

I feel so much better now that I have found your channel! I’ll be binge watching :) your videos!

[joedambrosia]

Excellent information. Everything you mentioned is exactly what my pool builder has taught me. I'm a new pool owner with a fiberglass pool. Took a while to comprehend the chemistry and equipment, but quickly got the hang of it. We went with a UV system along with using Target Zero, glass filter, prepump leaf collector and a cyclone. Not once did I have to clean out the pump basket. I backwash weekly and scrub and run the robot at least 3 times per week. Again, great video.

[nickcifelli]

Thank you Steve! Thanks to your expertise and great videos, I have redesigned the pool filtration plumbing (after pipes cracked this winter) and have a handle on pool chemistry!
I am happy to say that my pool is crystal clear, balanced, and ready for tomorrow’s opening day pool party!
Keep up the great work!

[Peter-Alexander]

Hi Steve, thanks for the awsome video. I managed to learn everything online and like you said downloaded all the manuals. One interesting thing I discovered later on was the so called Langelier index which will tell you your water is corrosive (tends to eat calcium) or scaling (tends to deposit calcium). There are some handy apps and websites where you enter pH, water temperature, alkalinity and hardness and the index should be between -0.5 and +0.5. I am.sure you know all about it. One thing I would like to give as an advice to salt water generators is to let your pump run about 15 minutes longer than your swg. It will prevent scale buildup in your cell.

[suebusby]

Steve, thank you so much for this clear explanation of it all. I became a pool owner at my second home in France (live in UK) just 2 years ago. I didn’t have a clue what the pool technicians were doing for what I paid them. After watching your video, not only do I feel empowered as I now understand how it all works but I also feel quite happy to pay the pool guys as I think they are well worth it given all the aspects they have been keeping an eye on!

[mrcleanisin]

55:25 when one goes up the other goes down and when one goes down the other goes down?

[saldanajoel]

Does clean filter pressure stay consistent with each cleaning or does it change over time?