How to Keep Your Pool Clean and Crystal Clear

Once you understand how to move through this simple routine, you won’t have to worry about issues like cloudy water and algae again. 

Creators & Guests

Host

Matt Giovanisci

Founder of SwimUniversity.com

What is Pool School?

A podcast for pool owners covering pool maintenance and water chemistry.

Matt Giovanisci: 00:00

Everyone, and welcome to Pool School by Swim University, where we help you keep your pool clean and clear all year. My name is Matt, the founder of swimuniversity.com. And on this episode, we're talking about how to keep your pool clean and crystal clear. Let's dive in. Real quick.

Matt Giovanisci: 00:27

If you want more help taking care of your pool, be sure to grab our free pool care cheat sheet at swimu.com/cheat. Now there are 3 steps to keeping your pool clean. 1, keep the filter clean. 2, keep the water clean. And 3, keep the surfaces clean.

Matt Giovanisci: 00:44

Now once you understand how to move through this simple routine, you won't have to worry about issues like cloudy water or algae ever again. Now the first step to keeping your pool clean is to keep your filter clean. So as the water circulates through your pool and through your pump, it reaches your filter where your filter media traps small contaminants, then that filtered water is sent back to your pool. But if the filter itself is dirty, it can't clean and filter the water. So how do you know if your filter's dirty?

Matt Giovanisci: 01:13

Well, one sign is that your filter one sign is your is your filter's pressure gauge. If the pressure is high and it's reading 10 PSI above what it normally rain, reads, then that means that you, your filter needs cleaning, essentially. So the more pressure it builds up, the more there's dirt and debris trapped in your filter. Another telltale sign is when you see low flow coming from your return jets. Okay.

Matt Giovanisci: 01:40

So you just stick your hand in front of the return jets. If it feels pretty weak, then the pressure is probably up and you need to clean your filter. So cleaning a filter is different depending on the type of filter that you have. So if you have a cartridge filter, it means removing the cartridge and spraying it with a filter cleaning solution or just a hose, or you can soak it in a filter cleaning solution overnight. Now if you have a sand filter, you'll need to backwash the filter to loosen up and remove the contaminants that have built up inside the sand.

Matt Giovanisci: 02:10

And if you have a DE filter, you'll also need to backwash the filter, but you can also rinse the filter grids or the fingers and add fresh DE powder. Now finally, to keep water flowing through your filter, you'll also wanna check your skimmer baskets and your pump basket about once a week to remove any debris. And you wanna make sure that your pump and filter are running enough. You want all of your pool water to pass through your filter system at least once a day. That that that's called the turnover rate.

Matt Giovanisci: 02:43

And that usually means running your filtration system at least 8 hours a day and even longer depending on if you have a, small pump and a huge pool. Okay? So, 8 hours a day is the minimum, but you can, I mean, you can go as high as obviously 24 hours a day if you have a variable speed pump? 24 hours a day is great. But, yeah.

Matt Giovanisci: 03:06

8:8 to 12 hours really is what we recommend. Now the second step is to clean the water. So this means balancing your water chemistry. When your water is balanced, you can avoid issues like algae growth and cloudy water. And the only way to know if your water is balanced is by testing it once a week.

Matt Giovanisci: 03:24

We we recommend using test strips or a liquid test kit, but really, test strips are a quick and easy and cheap way to get a high level snapshot of your pool's chemistry. They're not as accurate as a liquid test kit, but they're much faster, much easier for most people. Now as you test your water, you wanna pay extra attention to alkalinity, pH, and free chlorine. These levels tend to fluctuate the most week to week. And when one of those is out of range, it could lead to skin and eye irritation, it can lead to scaling on your pool surfaces, and of course, unsanitary water.

Matt Giovanisci: 04:03

Water that's not safe to swim in. Now once you have your test results, you'll wanna adjust your chemistry. So you're gonna need the following chemicals on hand. That's alkalinity increaser or you can use baking soda. Make sure it's just pure baking soda.

Matt Giovanisci: 04:19

PH increaser or soda ash, you can find this in the laundry aisle, or you could use borax, there's another one, or borate. PH Decreaser or muriatic acid, if you wanna use that. I recommend using the Decreaser. The powder is much easier to handle than the liquid, and it's a little safer. Chlorine, like tablets or granules or even liquid chlorine.

Matt Giovanisci: 04:46

Chlorine stabilizer, which is known as, cyanuric acid or CYA on your test strips, calcium hardness increaser, Alright. This is calcium chloride. And then pool shock. You can do non chlorine shock or chlorine shock like calcium hypochlorite. Okay.

Matt Giovanisci: 05:05

Now you're gonna balance your total alkalinity and your pH first because alkalinity helps protect your pH from fluctuating, and balanced pH helps your chlorine to work more effectively. And then you're gonna add your chlorine, and that means adding chlorine tablets or granules or liquid chlorine about once a week to your pool. And when I say the tablets, you can throw them in a, a floater if you don't have a chlorinator, but I recommend getting a chlorinator. I can also recommend temporarily, if you need if you don't have a floater and you don't have a a chlorinator, you can put them in your skimmer basket. Although, we don't like this long term because it does corrode all of your filter equipment and it's not good it's not a good place to put them.

Matt Giovanisci: 05:47

Alright. That Alright. So the other thing is is if you have a salt water pool, that means you wanna make sure that you have enough salt in the water to keep your chlorine levels in range. Alright. So that's for salt.

Matt Giovanisci: 05:58

Now, these first three chemicals are the most important to test and balance regularly, especially because they fluctuate the most. But you're gonna also wanna keep an eye out on your cyanuric acid or your CYA levels. This is the chlorine stabilizer. Without CYA, your chlorine will get destroyed by the sun's UV rays. Okay.

Matt Giovanisci: 06:18

It burn the sun burns off 1 part per million about every hour. Now if you're adding Trichlor Chlorine tablets or dichlor granules to your pool, they actually already contain a little bit of cyanuric acid, and you probably don't need to add chlorine stabilizer throughout the year because it'll just keep the levels normal. Right? But at the beginning of the year, if you don't have any CYA in your pool, then you may need to start with an initial dose of cyanuric acid or chlorine stabilizer or pool pool stabilizer, it goes by many names. But if you add that first amount to get at least up to 30 parts per million, then you can kind of just use chlorine tablets or dichloric granules over time and that should keep the levels in check.

Matt Giovanisci: 07:03

Alright? Now, you you need to make sure that your CYA levels don't get too high, especially if you're using tablets. But if you're using liquid chlorine, that does not contain any cyanuric acid. Also, shock, like calcium hypochlorite shock, also does not contain cyanuric acid. Alright?

Matt Giovanisci: 07:24

And if your pool is not in direct sunlight, then you really don't need to worry about CYA at all, unless it gets too high. The final level to check is your calcium hardness level. Now this level can build up over time, especially if you live somewhere with hard water. So you wanna check these levels about once a month or after you add fresh water to the pool. This is one of those chemicals where you normally just like cyanuric acid, you kinda add it at the beginning of the year, get get your base level set, and then you're kinda good for the rest of the year, most of the time.

Matt Giovanisci: 07:57

Now the last ingredient to keep your water clean is shock. Shocking your pool once a week will help your chlorine stay more active in the water and kill extra contaminants. Non chlorine shock, which is called oxidizer, is great for regular maintenance and revitalizing your free and available chlorine. Chlorine shock, like calcium hypochlorite shock or cal hypo shock is more is a more powerful option for problem solving issues like cloudy water or algae. Okay?

Matt Giovanisci: 08:30

And you're gonna be confused between the word, what the the product called shock and the act of shocking. So, shocking is just the act of super chlorinate in the water and oxidizing. So you can use a non chlorine version just to oxidize or you can use a chlorine version to super chlorinate and oxidize. And super chlorinating will kill, you know, problem stuff. If you have algae, like green algae, if you have yellow or or mustard algae, if you have black algae, that stuff you're gonna need a high concentrated dose of chlorine and that's when we recommend the chlorine shock.

Matt Giovanisci: 09:01

Now the dose of chlorine and that's when we recommend the chlorine shock. Now the 3rd step is to keep your surfaces clean. So that means once a week, you're gonna skim, brush, and vacuum your pool. Weekly cleaning is gonna seem like a lot, but it's so much better than trying to clear up an algae bloom caused by contaminants that have just sat in the water. So you're gonna need a skimmer net or, you can use Yeah.

Matt Giovanisci: 09:26

It's a net or like a leaf, a big bold leaf net, a manual vacuum, and optionally, a robotic pool cleaner. Oh, also you need a pool brush. So we're gonna first skim the water to remove any large debris like leaves. So they're just skimming skimming the surface. Then you're gonna brush the sides of the wall.

Matt Giovanisci: 09:46

You're gonna brush the floor to help loosen up any algae clinging to the pool surfaces or any debris that's kind of just sitting there. And then finally, you're gonna vacuum your pool to remove any tiny particles, dead algae, or small contaminants out of your water. This is also where a robotic cleaner can really come in handy because it's a hands free way to make sure that your pool's constantly cleaned, free of debris, and a robotic cleaner is like having an extra filter system because a lot of them, have like a fine mesh bag inside, and that actually filters the water usually down to about a 2 micron, which is pretty decent. It's not as good as like a sand filter, but it's a little extra. So it's kinda nice.

Matt Giovanisci: 10:28

But you're still gonna want a manual vacuum for other tasks like, if you have to vacuum out algae, if you use the shock and flock method, or just any sort of finer debris like pollen that the the robots are just not gonna be able to get. Now remember, if you need more help with pool maintenance, grab our free pool care cheat sheet at swimudot com/cheatcheat. And if you found this episode helpful, subscribe for more pool maintenance tips on your favorite podcasting app. And when you do, leave us a review because your support helps more pool owners like you find this show. Alright.

Matt Giovanisci: 11:00

That's it. Thanks again, and happy swimming.