Before opening the swimming pool in the summer season initial maintenance of the pool and its main components avoids unpleasant and costly interventions during operation.
- Between April and May is the time to reopen your pool
- It is essential to take a few steps for optimal cleaning
- The maintenance of filters, whether sand or cartridge filters, is a central aspect.
Re-opening operations.
The days are getting longer, the temperature is getting milder, and the first hints of spring inevitably trigger the desire for a dip in the pool. For those who own one, now is the time to start the reopening operations. Only proper maintenance, in fact, is a guarantee of safe bathing. Let's take a brief look at what needs to be done, from pool cleaning to the maintenance of sand or cartridge filters.
First step: take off the cover!
Very often swimming pools are covered with a cover during the winter season. In this case, the cover must be thoroughly cleaned on both sides with water and specific detergents, allowed to dry perfectly and then put away to be used again at the end of the season.
Second step: cleaning the pool.
It is essential that both the bottom and the walls are perfectly clean. For dirt and limescale, it is best to use specific products that clean without affecting the materials. If the pool has not been emptied, the easiest solution is to clean the bottom automatically using a robot cleaner.
Third step: think about cleaning the sand or cartridge filters.
At the beginning of the season, filter cleaning is a must. This is essential, especially if the pool has not been emptied during the winter. Cleaning operations vary depending on the type of filter. If you have a CARTRIDGE FILTER system, you use the water jet from the inside to the outside, preferably with a high-pressure cleaner, while the cartridge should be washed separately and left overnight in water and degreaser.
Cleaning the pool SAND FILTERS requires a series of steps. Filters usually have 6 ways that correspond to as many functions: backwash, filtration, rinse, drain, recycle, close. One starts by setting the valve to backwash mode and then activating the pump, after opening the drain valve if present. The water, flowing in the opposite direction to normal filtration, removes the dirt that has settled in the filter bed. The pump is then switched off and the valve is placed in rinse mode to remove any remaining residue. Finally, with the pump switched off, filtration mode is selected, the drain valve is closed and the pump is switched on again. The filtration system should remain active for 48 hours, as long as you take care of the water with an opening shock treatment.
As we have already seen in a previous article, pump and filter should be considered as a whole. therefore, it is important to check at the beginning of the season that the pump is working properly and that its components, in particular the seals, are in good condition. For more details, you can read our previous post: Swimming pool filtration pumps: how to take care of them.
Fourth step: water treatment.
In the first stages of reopening the pool, shock treatment is needed. To achieve this, the most practical solution is to resort to superchlorination, i.e. the introduction of a very high dose of disinfectant into the water, higher than the dose normally used. As a guide, the recommended dose of chlorine is about 15 grams of chlorine per cubic metre of water. For the next two/three days it is best not to use the pool. Furthermore, it is recommended to proceed with superchlorination at night, as the sun burns 1 ppm of chlorine per hour and would therefore be a waste of resources.
This shock treatment should also be repeated at the end of the season to keep the pool in ideal condition. The pool water must be analysed constantly to check both the chlorine value and the PH value, which must always be between 7.2 and 7.6. This can easily be done in a few minutes thanks to special testers.
When is it time to reopen the pool?
Finally, a consideration on timing. It is certainly important to wait until the season has stabilised and there are no winter bumps in the tail. At the same time, however, it is not good to delay too long. Much depends on the temperature, but in principle we can say that April and May are a good time. If the water in fact exceeds 20° and we have not already started with cleaning and maintenance, we could face unpleasant water alteration problems.
Once these simple steps have been taken, everything is ready for the new season. Remember that to ensure water quality, the filtration system will have to run every day for as long as it takes for all the water to be treated. Hence the importance of having a system that is reliable, quiet to ensure maximum comfort, and energy efficient.
