Keep it warm with a heat pump!!!

We offer almost any heat pump brand available and can install them for as little as $2999.00.

The advantages of a heat pump over Liquid Propane or Natural Gas is considerable.  People often avoid heat pumps because of their reputation for being slow or unreliable in colder weather. 

If you are fitted with the appropriate size heat pump (for the amount of water) and have it installed by a professional pool service, such as Majestic Pool Service, you will be pleased with the results.  Heat pumps often do not perform because of factors unrelated to their specific make and model.  For example, the flow rate that you get from your current pump and filter, along with time of day that you are trying to run the equipment, can often mae a big difference in how long your heat pump has to run and how long it will take to increase the pool temperature a certain amount.

You will always be able to get a gas heater with a higher BTU output, but the cost of the propane or natural gas used will far outweigh the cost in electricity that you will incur with a heat pump.

For a free estimate or consultation:

e-mail your request to  majesticpoolservice@yahoo.com

or read more at:   http://www.majesticpoolservice.net/pool-heaters/

More and more pool builders and retail outlets are convincing homeowners to either switch to a “salt system” or chlorine generator, either for their newly built pool or as a retrofit for their existing pool.  This has brought several new issues, related to the science of balancing the pool water and preserving the pool finish.  A zinc anode is one item that is becoming popular with sales people who are becoming educated about the side effects the salt system can have on the customer’s finish and want to give the pool owner added value.  These simple items can be installed for only a fraction of what it might cost to eventually acid wash or do a complex stain treatment after a few years.

But more importanly, one simply has to understand the added complexity of balancing PH and when/how to add salt to the pool to keep it from having harmful effects on the plaster.

Click in this article to read more about some of these factors and how they may or may not lead to issues with your pool finish, old or new, if you are installing a salt system chlorine generator.

My dog Milo goes everywhere with me, so I fully understand people who want to involve their dog in daily life,  whenever possible.  If he didn’t completely LOATHE water and getting wet, it probably would be hard to keep him out of my pool.  Of course, he is a short haired dog, so often those types of dogs are a completely different brand of maintenance.

Dogs are obviously not the cleanest animals. Sure we give them a bath? but how often? every week? every 2 weeks?  If you went 2 weeks without a bath, imagine what you would have on your body?  

Actually, many dogs do more harm to the pool just after they have been bathed, since a lot of dog shampoos and grooming products contain agents that already cause problems in pools on their own.  This often comes in the form of increasing the phosphate level.   Read here

Your dogs will introduce lots of bacteria and other elements into your pool that increase chlorine demand.   The pool can handle it, as long as adjustments are made in how much chlorine is being added and how much the filter is being run and backwashed.  The main thing that the dog will do is increase the chlorine demand and phosphate level.

If your chlorine reading is just showing above 2.0 PPM, and your dogs are going to swim, or have been swimming, you are likely to have a problem if the pool is not shocked or super chlorinated within a day or two.

Also, consider your other variables in the pool system. Any hair that is shed by the dogs will end up in the water, and eventually the hair will be filtered.  Your skimmer basket may catch some of it, but generally, most of it will end up in the filter.     If you have a Diatomaceous Earth (DE for short) Filter, you may have to backwash more frequently if the hair is clogging the filter.  You may also need to open it up and manually clean the grids more often.  Be careful to check your filter pressure throughout the backwash cycle. If you start getting Algae, or when you vac your pool, no matter what you do, you cant get enough suction to clean the dirt and other debris, check your filter.

Most important, the more hair your dog has, the more problems you will encounter.  No matter how often you groom, it is always best to simply keep them out of the pool as much as you can.

Florida Decides to Relocate in 2011!!!!

Believe it or not, there is not much that you need to do. 

Many people think that it is necessary to lower the water level to acommodate the rain water, but chances are, if your pool was going to overflow, it would have done so by now.  Most pools have an overflow or static line running from the pool wall or inside their skimmer and out into the yard.  As long as the end of the line is cut below deck level and is free to vent, the pool water will run out of that before it gets up to your deck.  Just make sure it is not clogged with dirt or buried.  This happens often if people are careless when replanting or doing yard maintenance around the overflow.  It’s something you should always check when the wet season starts.  Make sure that it has an open place to pour out and run off from.

Don’t load the pool up with chemicals.  You are just wasting them.  If your pool turns green from excessive rain, it will only be fresh water and this clears up quickly with a basic shock, as long as you do it within the 2-3 days after the storm.

 Finally, if you are concerned about your equipment, be worried most about the pump motor.  Turn the power off to it for the duration of the storm and there should not be any damage.

Total process took 3 days, start to finish.

We started working on this last Thursday afternoon, 7/8/10 and this is how it looked Tuesday morning, 7/13/10!!!

We have been using phosphate removers for 3 years now, so we are well aware of their importance for preventing algae and removing it.  This spring/algae season has been no exception!!!!  This is a great article about how they are being used by companies like us to fight contamination in the water.  Most homeowners don’t even realize that it is there!!!   Also see our posts related to the topic here.

A recent advertisement on local radio stations about salt system (chlorine generators) is very misleading to the consumer.

The ad claims “install it, set it, and forget it.”   http://www.recwarehouse.com/

We have written about this before, on this site, and previously explained why it is not necessarily true.  ReadHere . 

With a salt system, you may not have to lug 2.5 gallon jugs of chlorine/bleach back to your pool.  Now you will just have lug 40lb. bags of salt back and forth!!!!  Maybe not as often, but keep that account open at the pool supply store!   It will also be important to keep a close eye on PH and Alkalinity, since the chlorination process via the cell makes that part of your water chemistry even harder to manage than if you were using traditional chemicals.  This, along with stabilizer to lock the chlorine in, will have to be tested for and adjusted using the same store-bought chemicals that you were probably using before.

More importantly, the rate of output on the chlorine generator will always have to be adjusted up and down, as the weather conditions and bather load change.  “set it and forget it” will almost certainly lead the cell being run too much or not enough.  So, periodically you will still need to test the chlorine level in the water to decide if you need to increase or lower output.

Also, the cell needs to be removed and cleaned after a certain amount of run time.  Make sure that is a responsibility that you can handle!!

Finally, you need to watch your salt level.  Too low will make the cell shut down and not produce.  Too much will again shut down the cell to keep it from being damaged by the high salt content.  It takes some diciplined monitoring to stay within this range.  I’ve gone out to salt pools before that were green.  There was no chlorine.  I told the homeowner that the salt level was too low.  Their answer was “I have to add salt?”

Now that salt pools are more common, many side effects have come to the forefront, mostly related to staining.  There are things that you can install with the salt system to prevent certain types of staining, but most of the staining happens when people don’t understand what they are dealing with. 

Tom

This was a unique tile chosen by the homeowner and it turned out to be a very nice match with the finish.  What a difference!!!