How to Follow a Year-Round Pool Maintenance Schedule

You might think the relatively mild winter weather in Southern Nevada, would enable you to take a break from doing pool maintenance. However, you shouldn't neglect pool maintenance even during the winter. Pool season in the Henderson area officially opens when temperatures hit the 80s -- often in March. But with regular swimming pool maintenance, you can have your pool open and ready to use all year round.

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3 Swimming Pool Maintenance Schedules for Henderson Homeowners

There are daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that you have to complete to keep that pool in great shape. It's much easier to keep the pool in good condition than it is to get the pool back into good shape. For this reason, we recommend using a schedule to make it easier to remember to take care of those tasks.

Daily Maintenance

Daily pool maintenance consists of mainly checking items to ensure everything is continuing to work regularly. This includes the following:

• Checking the water level to make sure that evaporation or a leak aren't taking their toll on the water in the pool
• Checking the filter and pump to ensure that nothing is beginning to form a clog; clean the filter if you notice it's gotten dirty
• Checking the pool cleaner and baskets to ensure nothing is clogging those; remove debris as needed.
• The chlorine/salt and pH levels don't have to be checked every single day, but you should check them several times per week to ensure those are remaining steady. Note: If a storm comes through and drops a lot of rain, you will want to check the pH again because it can be altered by rainwater.
• And finally, checking all safety equipment -- the fences and gates you have that keep kids and animals from falling into the pool.

Weekly Pool Maintenance

Weekly maintenance involves more cleaning than daily maintenance. This is when you skim leaves out of the water, clean the sides of the pool, and clean the areas around the pool, taking care not to let more leaves fall into the water. Also, when you check the pH, check the total alkalinity. The pH and total alkalinity can help keep the water in your pool safe. Having the total alkalinity in the right range makes it easier to maintain an adequate pH.

Shocking your pool can be a weekly or monthly task, depending on how stable your pool tends to be overall. This involves putting a chemical into the pool to get rid of bacteria, sunscreen residue, body waste like sweat, and more. Shocking can also reduce the odor from the chlorine if you're using that instead of salt.

Monthly Maintenance

Monthly maintenance is a little more complicated. This is when you not only clean filters, clean more equipment like the skimmer, and ensure no clogs are forming in the water lines, but it's also the time when you do some more involved chemical treatment for the water.

You'd also want to check the calcium levels and water hardness. Hard water can stain pool walls and make swimmers feel rather icky. The pool saturation index is a way of telling whether your water -- the calcium, pH, alkalinity, and temperature -- is all balanced so that the water feels good and is clean.

You can find calculators online or have your local pool maintenance company come over once a month to test this.

Southern Nevada is blessed with relatively good winter weather, so it's possible to keep your pool open all year. But remember that maintenance should start from the moment you become a pool owner. Following a consistent swimming pool maintenance schedule can be time-consuming. If you think you won't have time to complete regular (and sufficient) maintenance, contact AO pools today at 702-560-7665.