JAMMIN’ JULY

Well, we all prayed for the rain to stop. Instead, it brought us a heat wave for the last week of June that felt more like it was July! July has notoriously been very hot for us here in the Northeast. July feels like true summer. It is when all the kids are out of school. It hosts America’s birthday when many people take their summer vacations. It brings us 31 long days of summer time fun. With all that happening, the swimming pools in July are in constant use, day and night.  And when that happens, we have some additional considerations we need to take to ensure our pools are operating at their prime.

SO JELLY

Pools are a luxury! And if you are one of the lucky ones to have one, your pool may be the “neighborhood” pool. That means you have lots of friends, and they all want to be in your pool when it’s hot out, like July. Pools do have bather loads. A bather load will detail the maximum number of people that should be in your pool at any given time. While residential pools aren’t regulated by bather loads, commercial ones are. In New Jersey, bather loads are computed as shallow area 1 bather/15 square feet in the shallow end (less than 5 feet) and deep 1/bather per 20 square feet in the deep end. Spas are computed at 1 bather per 10 square feet.

WHAT A JUNKER

With the longer days, high heat, lots of sun, afternoon thunderstorms, and more bathers, swimming pools can easily become cloudy and sanitizer levels can quickly plummet. We need to maintain sanitizer levels in our pool to oxidize bather waste, kill off germs, and keep the water clear and pristine. However, with all the aforementioned factors, along with environmental debris coming in from the nasty summer thunderstorms, sanitizer levels can easily be depleted. That is why we recommend keeping sanitizer levels on the higher end. Residential standards recommend a level up to 4 ppm for pools and 5 ppm or spas, but commercial pools encourage chlorine levels up to 10 ppm. You want to have stabilizer in your pool to help maintain that sanitizer level from dissipating due to the sun’s UV rays.

LET’S GET THINGS JUMPIN’

Another thing to consider with all of this is the potential need for increased backwashing. Backwashing is the process of reversing the flow through the water in your filter in order to clean the filter media to increase your flow. This may help with any cloudy water that may have developed as a result of high bather loads. It is important to understand that only sand and DE filters can be backwashed. If you have a cartridge filter, that media would need to be manually removed and cleaned. Also, you want to regularly empty your skimmer baskets during the entire season. Summer storms are going to bring a lot of debris into your pool which will collect in your skimmer baskets. Due to the storm, skimmer baskets can overflow, flip, and block flow that can lead to a clogged impeller which will not only hurt your pool, but also your pocket$! 

OH JOY

The bottom line is you need to ensure that you are making the extra effort in between our visits to maintain proper water balance, higher sanitizer levels, and a consistent flow rate to ensure that your water is clean and safe for all these bathers to swim in your pool. Give us a call if you want some advice or tips to ensure the pool is always open!