20 Pool Cleaning Tips That Will Save Money

05 May 20 Pool Cleaning Tips That Will Save Money

Pool cleaning tips that will save you lots of money in the long run. The costs of running and maintaining a swimming pool can easily get out of control, even if your pool is quite small. But this doesn’t have to be the case if you’re smart:

20 Pool Cleaning Tips  for Reducing the Costs of Running Your Pool

1. Add Chemicals at Night
Ultra violet light coming from the sun degrades chlorine. If you have low stabiliser levels, your entire pool’s chlorine can disappear in a couple of hours if it’s exposed to direct sunlight.

2. Maintain the Level of Your Pool Stabiliser
Stabilisers diminish the destructive effect on chlorine of the sun’s ultra violet light. The proper level is from 30 – 60 ppm, and if you keep your stabilisers at those levels you will increase the lifespan of the chlorine in your pool 5 – 10 times!

3. Keep the Chemicals Properly Balanced in Your Pool
Preventing problems before they occur is a lot less expensive than dealing with them once they appear. To prevent your water from becoming cloudy or algae from growing, you need to maintain a certain chemical balance in the pool. The ideal balance is:

Calcium: 100 – 200 ppm
Alkalinity: 100 – 150 ppm
pH: 7.4 – 7.6

4. Baking Soda Can Help Control the Alkalinity in Your Pool
The baking soda you have in your cupboard is nothing more than sodium bicarbonate. When poured into your pool, it will naturally increase the water’s alkalinity. But, only use in small quantities.

5. Pool Chemicals Should be Bought in Bulk
When you buy anything in bulk, you save money. This is no different when it comes to pool chemicals. It may cost more upfront, but the cost per kilo will be a lot lower.

6. The Pump & Filter Should be Run at Night
When adding chemicals at night, make an effort to circulate the water in the pool so the chemicals can spread around and do what they’re supposed to do.

7. Clean Your Pool on a Regular Basis
Brush your pool vigorously once a day before skimming and netting it. By brushing it you free up the dirt and debris sticking to the sides, especially in the slack areas. This gets it all back into circulation so the filter can deal with it.
8. Plant Leafy Shrubs and Trees Away From Your Pool
When leaves, twigs and branches blow into the pool, the chemical balance is upset because they deplete the chlorine in the water. They can also cause your filter system to work harder, especially when they block the filter and the skimmer baskets.

9. Toss a Couple of Tennis Balls in the Pool
Tennis balls provide an inexpensive and effective way to remove the surface oils that accumulate from sunscreen, makeup, lotions and body oils, etc. The balls’ fluffy surface is very good at absorbing these oils, removing them from the surface of the water.

10. Your Filter Should Be Cleaned Regularly
If your filter is clogged up, it has no choice but to work harder to get the job done. This causes more energy usage. And it cannot efficiently filter the water.

11. Properly Maintain All Pool Equipment
When you keep all pool equipment properly maintained it lasts a whole lot longer, which means you won’t have to replace it as often. Do not leave any equipment out to bake in the sun. Rinse and dry everything before storing.

12. Keep Your Pool Heated Only When You’re Actually Using it
If you and your family only use the pool on weekends, and your pool is heated, just lower the thermostat on the heater or heat pump one or two notches during the week when no one is using the pool.

13. Keep Water Features Turned Off
If you have waterfalls, a waterslide or fountains flowing into your pool you need to know that they cause a lot of air and turbulence to be introduced into the pool’s surface water. This will cause the water in your pool to evaporate much more quickly.

14. Minimize Splashing
When there is a lot of splashing and bombing going on in the pool, a lot of water is removed and splashed on the surrounding areas. All this turbulence just adds to more water being evaporated into thin air.

15. Have a Variable Speed Pool Pump Installed
Variable speed pool pumps are a great deal more energy efficient (from 30% – 50%) than a standard pool pump. You will see a reduction in your energy bills as a result.

16. Your Filter Can Be Run Less in the Cooler Months
You may have your pool open throughout the year, but the risk of algae growing, taking hold and spreading is far less in the cool winter months of the year.

17. Get a Robotic Cleaner
Robotic cleaners are very good at cleaning the pool, but they have the added advantage of being a filter as well. Because the device is self-contained, you won’t need the filter system running simultaneously.

18. Create a Sort of Wind Break
You can lower your swimming pool’s sunning costs by creating a barrier to the wind. This could be a fence, some landscaping, a hedge or some type of screen. This will shield the surface of your pool from cross winds.

19. Replace Your Pool Lighting with LED Lights
It is not hard to replace existing incandescent or halogen lights with LED lights. LED pool lighting is a lot more energy efficient, which can make a huge difference in the costs of running the lights in your pool, by as much as 80%.

20. Purchase a Good Pool Cover
Having a good pool cover is the easiest, fastest and most effective way of reducing the costs involved in maintaining and running your pool. With a pool cover, you will enjoy a 50% reduction in costs per year!

A pool cover will help you save in the following ways:

Lowers Cleaning Costs – There is no doubt about it, pool covers keep leaves, twigs, dirt and other debris from getting into your pool. This allows you to clean less and save money on the energy it takes to run the cleaner and filter. This also means it will take fewer chemicals to keep your pool clean.

Lowers Water Costs – A good pool cover will lower the evaporation by about 97%. An uncovered pool measuring 8 x 4 metres will lose approximately 10,000 litres of water due to evaporation in the 6 really hot months of the year. This comes to 25% of your pool’s water.

Lowers Heating Costs – Without a pool cover you are losing 79% of your heat due to evaporation. If you have a heated pool, using a pool cover will substantially lower the cost of keeping it heated.

Lowers Chemical Costs – Water isn’t the only thing that evaporates; your pool chemicals are evaporating along with your water. Plus, when chlorine is exposed to sunlight, it’s destroyed.

If you got this far in the article you probably learnt a few pool cleaning tips that you can implement immediately to reduce the running cost of your swimming pool.