When your guests think of summer, one of the things that likely comes to mind first is the property’s swimming pool – the season’s staple entertainment. After being exposed to the sun’s sweltering heat, a dip in a refreshingly cool swimming pool is one of the most anticipated parts of any tropical getaway.
As a result, most resorts and hotels, particularly those located in warmer regions, pride themselves on their swimming pool. They are aware that it serves as the hub of many vacations for many.
So, how can resorts and hotels that depend so heavily on their swimming pools ensure that they are kept immaculate, and why is proper pool maintenance of such critical importance?
Hotel management teams are constantly looking for new ways to improve their property. Still, core amenities and facilities continue to serve as the basis for what guests expect from their vacations. For example, guests expect complimentary breakfast and access to wireless internet, but they also anticipate spending quality time with their families in the hotel pool.
Don’t miss out on an extra star rating or great review because no team member is paying attention to your pool. When impressing guests and boosting their overall experience, putting in just a little extra effort to assign regular pool maintenance shifts goes a long way.
Guests Are Keen to Make Use of It
Most people do not have access to a swimming pool at home. Individuals staying at resorts or hotels are invited to live in a different world. One where they can rest and lie around the pool – and jump in anytime they please, just as if they owned it themselves.
Swimming will also help them relax and improve their physical health, and because they can swim in clean water, guests experience increased happiness and improved health.
Kids Like to Swim
Parents naturally want the best for their children, especially when they are on vacation. However, if the pool is too dirty for the guests’ children to swim in, the guests will be upset. Not only could your guests ingest cyanobacteria, which might harm their health, but your reviews will also suffer.
So, ensure a team member understands the level of danger posed by an unclean pool and the most prevalent varieties of algae, such as green or yellow blooms.
When the staff at your hotel knows what kind of algae is growing in the pool, they can choose the cleaning approach that will be most successful. As a result, the pool will open sooner, and both parents and children will be happy.
Pool Maintenance Reflects Management
When guests arrive at your resort or hotel and find that it does not look like the images they saw online, they will feel dissatisfied. They will leave negative reviews, which may discourage potential customers from staying there.
Management can demonstrate their commitment to providing excellent customer experiences by making the pool area a clean and welcoming place to spend time. Ensure that the water quality, lounge chairs, and towel racks are kept in good condition; staff visit the pool area regularly to remove the garbage, tidy up and check for any potential hazards.
Dirty Water causes Odors
Even if your guests don’t go for a dip in the pool, they are still impacted by the pool’s condition. Bacteria developing in the water produce pungent odors which can travel inside the property, into their units and other amenities such as restaurants and spas. And who wants to sit on their balcony overlooking a dirty and potentially hazardous swimming pool?
Maintenance increases ROI
Pools have a positive return on investment for hotel and resort owners because a beautifully designed, clean, and well-managed pool with plenty of towels and sun loungers will increase bookings.
Improve Your Pool Maintenance regime
By instructing staff members how to proactively clean the water and the surrounding area, you can maintain your pool so it is safer, cleaner, and more efficient with less mess and aggravation.
10 pool maintenance mistakes you should avoid:
1 Adding Chlorine into The Pool’s Water Directly
Anything that gets into your pool will be bleached if you use concentrated chlorine at its full level. And while it is impossible to chlorinate your pool too much, adding it directly to the water in a pool with a vinyl liner can be a disaster waiting to happen.
Granules will settle to the bottom, bleaching out your liner. Bleaching causes an area to become brittle and fragile, leading to leaks.
Before adding chlorine to your pool, ensure the chemical is fully dissolved in a pail of water first. In this way, the chlorine will be able to diffuse more equally throughout the water, which will protect your pool liner, walls, and floor.
Always add chemicals to water, and under no circumstances should you add water to chemicals. For example, before adding the chlorine to the bucket, ensure it’s full of water to avoid a possibly hazardous splashback.
Also, if you use warm water, the chlorine will dissolve more easily. However, this will result in the production of chlorine steam, so ensure staff are adequately protected by donning protective glasses, a chemical mask, and chemical-resistant gloves.
2 Neglecting to Brush Your Swimming Pool
You already know how essential it is to regularly vacuum your pool to prevent gunk and scum from accumulating.
However, your pool requires a thorough brushing to achieve the best possible appearance. After manually or mechanically vacuuming your pool, you should follow up with a thorough scrubbing of the walls and floor.
Using a pool brush, start cleaning the regions of your pool that are difficult to access, such as the following:
- Behind ladders
- Waterline
- A series of steps and stairs
- Crevices and corners
The constant scrubbing drives out invaders like algae and other gross organisms. To maintain the cleanliness and health of the pool, brush it once a week or more frequently if necessary.
3 Using an Automatic Pool Cleaner
Taking care of swimming pool algae is a challenging task. But do not give in to the temptation and start using a robotic cleaner. Automatic pressure-side pool cleaners force algae and other particles up through a mesh bag as they operate.
However, this does not eliminate the algae, and adding more technology won’t make a difference.
While robotic pool cleaners do a fantastic job, they cannot handle algae because they use a fine mesh bag that will quickly become clogged with algae. As a result, the stuck sludge is spread around the pool, forcing you to start over.
The solution to this frequent problem requires a little bit more effort. To tackle the issue, you will need to use a manual vacuum. Also, be careful you turn your filter to the “waste” setting or remove the plug from the drain.
Yes, you’ll lose some water, but you won’t have to worry about the algae. They will be removed entirely from your swimming pool.
4 Ignoring pH and Alkalinity Levels in Your Water
You most likely learned about the significance of a balanced pH in your high school science classes. This information applies to all ecosystems, including your pool. A low pH implies that the substance is acidic, whereas a high pH suggests that the substance is alkaline. Both in excessive amounts are bad news.
If the pH of the water in your pool is really low, then the water is quite acidic. At first glance, this may appear to be a positive development; after all, it is challenging for algae and other invasive species to flourish in acidic water. In addition, acidic water is bright and shiny, giving the impression that it is untainted and pristine.
However, a pH level that is too low might cause damage to your pool’s equipment, including the following:
- The pump and filter of the pool
- Vinyl liner
- Heater
- Automatic pool cleaner
- Chemical feeder
- Maintenance equipment
- Solar blanket
A stable pH can be maintained by striking a balance between acidity and alkalinity. Make sure you test the water in your pool consistently because the chemistry of the water can be thrown off by virtually anything in a short amount of time.
The next step is to readjust your levels using a pH increaser, an alkalinity increaser, and any other critical chemicals necessary until everything is back in equilibrium.
5 Backwashing your Pool Filter too often
Backwashing is the process of cleaning the media that is contained within your filter. This could be sand or diatomaceous earth (D.E.). The filth and grime removed from the filter media by the pool water are discharged through the backwash valve drain port.
Backwashing is an essential aspect of primary pool care; nevertheless, one of the most common mistakes people make while maintaining their pool is backwashing too frequently.
Maintain constant vigilance over the pressure gauge located on your filtration tank. Make a mental note to check the pressure gauge as soon as you have finished giving your filter thorough backwashing. The optimum baseline for optimal filter performance is between 10 and 15 pounds per square inch (psi), which the gauge will typically read in most cases.
The more debris your filter captures, the better it will function—at least up to a certain point.
This may appear to be the opposite of what you would expect. The presence of additional debris is beneficial in that it assists in capturing finer particles; however, the advantages are nullified if the accumulation raises your pressure reading by around ten psi above your baseline (that is, 20 psi–25 psi).
When the pressure in your filter is ten psi more than typical, you most likely have a significant amount of extra goop there, raising the pressure. Backwash and bring the pressure back down to keep your system operating at its highest possible level of effectiveness.
6 Distributing Chlorine Using Your Skimmer
Some pool maintenance mistakes are not nearly as severe as others. However, this one will blow up your pool’s filter system.
Poisonous gas is produced when a pool combines calcium hypochlorite or dichlor pool chlorine with chlorine. For example, when you pour the chlorine into the skimmer of an in-ground pool with an automatic chlorinator attached to the filter system, the two chemicals will meet in a very confined space.
The result?
An explosion is caused by a confined space filled with an expanding poisonous gas.
Ensure the pool’s chlorine and the pool skimmer are kept a safe distance apart as part of your pool maintenance program. And always apply while wearing the proper safety gear, following the guidelines provided by the manufacturer.
7 Adding Chlorine during the Day
When chlorine in the pool water binds to organisms that it seeks to eradicate, it leaves behind a byproduct known as chloramines, chemical compounds.
Chloramines should not be present in your swimming pool because they cause irritation to the skin and eyes and generally make life more unpleasant.
Chlorination helps reduce your pool’s chlorine levels to a healthy three parts per million (three ppm) and eliminates any chloramines present.
While your guests enjoy the pool during the daytime, adding chlorine to the water is not the best time. Pool chlorine is unstabilized and is affected by the sun, which will burn off one ppm per hour, causing your chemicals to be less effective and costing you more money.
When you treat your pool at night, you give the chlorine the time it needs to accomplish its work correctly. In addition to this, you should treat your pool once a week, using approximately 1 pound (.5 kg) of shock for every 10,000 gallons (37,854 L) of water, and then test the water until it reaches or is close to the goal concentration of 3 ppm.
8 Failing to Take Advantage of the Calcium Hardness
As with pH, balancing your water’s calcium hardness is essential to a clear, clean, and safe swimming pool. And although you don’t want too much of it because it will make the water cloudy, a little bit of hardness is a good thing to have.
It helps materials like vinyl liners, concrete, plaster, fibreglass, and filters survive longer.
Calcium hardness increaser can be added to water to maintain the required range of 175 ppm to 225 ppm for calcium hardness (200 ppm to 275 ppm for concrete and plaster pools).
You must include it when you open your pool to achieve the desired water level. It is essential to check the levels frequently during the season because evaporation and splash-out can bring them down to unsafe levels.
9 Not Running Your Pool Filter System
If you don’t keep it running, the filter on your pool won’t be able to do its job correctly.
When your pool filter is used more frequently, the number of impurities and animals that can cause problems decreases. Even though this is a relatively minor oversight in terms of the maintenance of your pool, you should ensure your pool’s filter and pump should operate at a minimum of eight hours every day.
This is enough time for all the water to flow through the filter, keeping the water in your pool clearer. The amount of time needed will depend on the size of your pool.
10 Failing to conduct weekly water tests
When you own a pool, there is a never-ending list of pool maintenance tasks that need to be completed each day, week, month, and year. However, the weekly water testing that you do is one of the most important things you can do because it can alert you to minor problems in your pool’s water chemistry before those problems develop into severe catastrophes.
At the very least once each week, you should use either test strips or a liquid test kit to analyze the water in your pool. The next step is to bring a sample of your pool water to a pool supply business at least once per month so that they may perform an in-depth examination for you.
The primary levels to test as part of your pool maintenance program:
- pH and alkalinity
- Calcium hardness
- Cyanuric acid (chlorine stabilizer)
- The quantities of salt as well as total dissolved solids (TDS)
- Copper and iron
It is unnecessary to perform a thorough investigation every week, but you should regularly check the alkalinity, pH, and free chlorine levels in your pool water as part of your pool maintenance program. These are the primary factors contributing to pool water’s cleanliness and safety.
Do you have any industry news that you’d like to share? Send us your press releases, news, and articles, and we will publish them here on the IHS website. Just complete the contact form and get in touch.