My wife and I became a first time pool owner in 2006 and specifically, the owners of a salt water pool. I hadn’t even heard of a salt water pool before this time but then again, none of my friends had pools and I’d lived in a condo downtown for years prior. Pools weren’t really my thing.
Since I took responsibility for the pool care, I quickly got very familiar with maintaining and cleaning it, keeping the water balanced and learning about the mechanical aspects of it. I also learned the hard way on more than one occasion about how you can’t always rely on your pool company to fix stuff and make it right.
Avoid these 7 mistakes I made with my salt water pool to get a better handle on pool ownership earlier in the process to spend more time using it and less time maintaining it.
Pay attention to your salt cell and keep it clean
Early on, I didn’t spend much time checking my salt cell during the season or even after the season very carefully. I took a quick peek at season’s end but everything looked good I thought and I didn’t give it another thought. After some research however, I learned to take a much closer look for deposits on the metal plates inside the salt cell that cause trouble and decrease the lifespan of the cell.
Check your chosen salt cell chlorinator unit to see if it comes with a reverse polarity feature. It’s an automatic cleaning feature that reverses the polarity of the DC-powered salt cell temporarily to loosen and repel mineral deposits that attach themselves to your salt cell. Turns out even my newer Hayward chlorinator didn’t come with this so I was supposed to be cleaning the salt cell manually, which I wasn’t.
Over time these minerals (calcium typically) reduce the effectiveness of the salt cell and will eventually if you’re not careful, lead to the premature death of your salt cell. Then you are forced to spend several hundred dollars for a new salt cell right in the middle of summer when you should be using your pool.
It’s recommended that you inspect your salt cell twice during the swimming season – let’s say once in the middle of summer around June/July and again in September/October or when you remove the salt cell for winter. Inspect it more frequently if you notice that the cell is getting more debris attaching to the metal plates.
Follow your salt cell manufacturer’s instructions to clean it if you don’t have a reverse polarity feature or if that feature exists but isn’t doing the job 100% as required.
Don’t rely on your pool company to make things right
I found this out the hard way multiple times and ended up switching pool companies. Having never owned a pool before, I was thrown into the deep end (pun intended) when it came to pool maintenance and upkeep. While a salt water pool tends to be lower maintenance than a regularly chlorinated pool, the same sorts of things can go wrong with a salt water pool – algae, high phosphorous, metal, low chlorine and leaks to name a few.
Plus you have potential problems with your salt water chlorinator and salt cell which a chlorine pool doesn’t have.
A major problem for me during the first several years we had the pool was opening the pool in spring. We paid the pool company at this point to open and close it and every spring they’d take the pool cover off and the water would be pea soup green just like the photo at the top of this page. The same three pool staff showed up each year and none of them ever made a comment about the pea soup color so I assumed it was normal.
Every spring it would take me close to 2 weeks to get the water crystal clear and it wasn’t until about year 4 when I started researching and I realized what was wrong:
- I was scheduling pool closings too early in the autumn. When the temperatures are still high and with no chlorine being produced, algae can develop. Don’t close your pool until the temperature is consistently under 60° C (16° F) which is when algae and other organisms can’t grow. When you close a pool early, even though no one is swimming, no chlorine is being produced either and you have a late autumn with nice sunny weather and a pool cover covering everything up from view, you’re going to develop algae.
- The pool company wasn’t putting chlorine in the pool for closing. Depending on who you ask and where you live, a pool closing should involve liquid chlorine or some other winterizing sanitizer, and algaecide being put into the pool. My pool company not only didn’t do this for me, they never even suggested I do it myself. I had to figure that out on my own. Once I switched pool companies to close the pool, they poured both chlorine and algaecide into the pool for closing and next spring, the pool water was much clearer upon opening.
- Our winter pool cover had a gap in it. Leaves and other debris would sneak into the pool over the winter through this gap. Leaves and twigs rot and disintegrate and pollute the water and help to dirty the water over winter.
If your pool company builds pool, their major business is that: Building them. That’s where the most money is and in a short summer season, their focus from April – August is building new pools for tens of thousands of dollars, not visiting you for $50 or $100 to fix an algae problem. The quicker you can learn about your pool, the sooner you’ll be able to take full responsibility for its upkeep.
Don’t close your pool too early in the autumn or you’ll get algae
As mentioned, don’t close your pool for winter until your local temperature is consistently under 60° C (16° F). Under that temperature is when algae and other organisms can’t grow and make a mess of the water and walls and floor of the pool. Cleaning a pool full of algae in the spring is incredibly time-consuming and involves vacuuming, rinsing the pool filter mediums, more vacuuming, more filter medium rinsing and probably a few more rounds of vacuuming and rinsing.
Keeping your pool open longer even when it’s too cold to swim in means you’re using electricity to power your pump and chlorinator with no swimming benefit. If you’re conscious of electricity costs, your best bet is to reduce the amount of time your pump runs as the temperatures go down each day but still run it long enough to keep chlorine levels between 1 ppm and 3 ppm as required. Once the temperature is consistently below 60° C (16° F) you can close your pool.
If you’ve had problems with pea green soup water in the spring like I did, ensure the pool is treated at closing with a winterizer like shock or chlorine and algaecide preferably at least 24 hours before closing so they have time to circulate throughout the pool. Then fully cover your pool with a winter cover to prevent leaves, twigs, branches or even rodents to fall in and pollute the water.
Don’t expect to kill bad cases of algae with chlorine alone
Despite what I’ve read online I have never cleared up a bad algae problem by dumping large amounts of chlorine or shock in the pool.
Never.
I have tried dumping very large amounts of shock and crystal chlorine in after vacuuming out chlorine but I’ve never had success with getting rid of algae until I dumped 1 quart (about 1 L) of algaecide in to kill the algae first.
When you have a bad dark green algae breakout you want to get it cleaned up as quickly as possible. I tend to dump a bottle of algaecide in and let it do its thing for a day. Then I vacuum the pool and rinse the filter mediums. Then I repeat both tasks until the pool is clean. It works for me and does involve work but it takes some time.
While I’ve read onine suggestions that you shock the pool several times in a row over 2-3 days to kill green algae, I’ve not found this method works for me.
Learn to spot the signs that something is wrong early, not late
One of the things I like to do each morning before I go downstairs is look out the upstairs bathroom window down at the pool below. I look at the color of the water and compare it in my head to what it looked like the day before. Over time you can quickly spot problems not only at a distance like this, but up close too through sight and sound.
Things to look out for:
Low chlorine: Water starts to look cloudy. It’s difficult to see the bottom of the pool. It’s likely your chlorine level is low. Test for chlorine and double check your chlorinator to make sure it’s working and producing chlorine.
Algae: Algae is typically caused by lack of chlorine, lack of water circulation, poor water balancing and/or pool water filtration. Have your water tested by your pool company. If you haven’t rinsed or backwashed your filter medium in some time, take a look to see how full they are. Use the telescopic pole to brush the sides of your pool every few days. If there is algae or other debris, it’ll come loose and eventually make its way into the side skimmer or bottom valve and end up in your pool filter. Then rinse your filter mediums to get rid of the algae or backwash if you have that filter style.
Noises from the pump: The first time I had to replace our pool pump I got a hint that something wasn’t right when I turned it on one morning and it started up and screeched for a few seconds before quieting down. Two days later, the pump seized up and had to be replaced, only two weeks after we’d opened the pool for the season. Pay attention to how your equipment sounds because it tends to make the same consistent noise until it doesn’t, and when that happens it may mean something is wrong.
Other noises from the pump: You’ll get used to the familiar sound of your pump running properly. But then you’ll also experience the sound of the pump struggling for water due to an air lock or when the skimmer door gets stuck open or closed or some other problem. It’s a distinctive sound and it means you need to troubleshoot something. Go directly to the pump first although take a peek at the side skimmer first to ensure that isn’t the problem, typically involving the skimmer door being blocked. It could be a skimmer basket being full or the side skimmer basket overflowing with leaves. Ensure that nothing is loose such as the fittings on the skimmer pot which can loosen up given the constant vibrations from the pool pump and result in air getting sucked in.
Keep your filter medium longer
Our pool has a Sta Rite System 3 filter system and it generally works well. They refer to their filter mediums as cartridges so you might hear that name, too. When the pool is full of algae the cartridges (the pleated filters inside the unit) get very dirty and full of algae. They need to be rinsed very frequently until the algae is gone.
Since I love machinery and figuring stuff out, I got to know our pool system from A to Z and over time, saw that as our filter mediums would get older the water returns into the pool would be less forceful than before. So I would rinse the mediums and for a day or so the water flow would be super strong reentering the pool again. After awhile it would die down a bit and the flow was not as powerful as right after cleaning.
At some point after several pool seasons, the filter mediums will need to be replaced. So I’d buy new ones when the pleats looked like they were too loose to hold debris and that would be that.
One of the things I discovered myself though was the benefits of using a liquid pool filter cleaner.
In a nutshell, I took a large, clean garbage bin – the Sta Rite System 3 cartridges are pretty big – filled it with water and poured the entire bottle of filter cleaner in. I then put the 2 large cartridges in the bucket and left them overnight.
Next morning I took the cartridges out, rinsed them off and reinstalled them in the Sta Rite filter. I was amazed at the difference it made. The water flow was very strong again and it lasted longer than I expected. The filter cleaner removes oils and other debris that simply rinsing – even with a strong hose – never did. For the $10 that I paid for the filter cleaner, it was certainly well worth it.
It’s certainly cheaper than $300 for the new filter cartridges.
Don’t pee in your pool
I’m not saying I did it, I’m just saying not to do it. Studies show that the average pool contains 30 mL – 80 mL of urine per person so someone is doing it…
A salt water pool is a mixture of water plus various substances like salt, chlorine, and other chemicals we’ve added like stabilizer. Then you have the human elements in the pool including dirt, sweat, urine, lotions, deodorants and other contaminants that we bring in.
And if that’s not enough you may have birds occasionally having a swim or flying overhead and taking a dump in your pool. I’ve been near the pool and seconds after seeing a flock of birds flying overhead, heard their falling excrement hitting the pool water surface, so I know it happens.
Plus if your dog likes to swim in your pool, you can only guess what (s)he is adding to the mix. And we haven’t even spoken about the dead rodent(s) you’ll typically fish out each season.
The bottom line is that all these chemicals and all these man made (and animal) contaminants react with one another leading to something called Disinfection Byproducts (DBP).
Back to the peeing in the pool thing for a second. When urine (urea specifically) mixes with chlorine it causes a byproduct called trichloramine which among other things gives off that pool smell we remember as a kid (yep, it’s not just the chlorine) which can lead to red, irritated eyes and skin irritations. It can also aggravate allergy symptoms.
What was the mistake here? Assuming that a pool is clean just because you’re adding chlorine to it. It can still be very dirty.
Summary
The sooner you take control of salt water pool troubleshooting, the sooner you can begin to save money and master your pool’s overall health rather than relying on your pool company. If they build pools for a living, they’re going to focus on that rather than popping over to your house to fix a problem that you have.
One way to keep your pool cleaner for longer is to insist that everyone jumping into the pool has a shower right before entering for the first time to wash off sweat, lotion and deodorants that they have on them. Otherwise, they’re going to dump these chemicals into the pool.
You might want to leave your dog out of the pool too because they track in other stuff you might want to avoid.
