Over the past 10-15 years, cartridge filters have become much more common in SW Florida.  Most agree that the operating cost of a cartridge filter is much less than a Diatomaceous earth or even a sand filter, since it eliminates wasted water (from backwashing) and chemical costs (from having to re-charge).  It also has become the better alternative from an environmental standpoint for these reasons.

One of the most common oversights in maintaining a swimming pool with a cartridge filter is failure to replace the cartridge or element when it is necessary to do so.  Most manufacturers will tell you to replace it after 10-12 cleaning cycles.  Normally, the cleaning cycle will vary anywhere from one month to 2 months, depending on the bather load of the pool and what has been found to be necessary by the user, given other environmental factors.  To put it simply, the more dirt and body oils you run through your filter, the more often it needs to be cleaned AND changed out.

As a rule, we normally track the lifespan of each of our customers’ filter cartridge, and after roughly two years, we automatically replace them.  In other cases, we replace it sooner; when wear and tear has made even more frequent replacement necessary.  

But how do you know?

1.  Know your filter’s “starting pressure.”  This is the minimum pressure you will be able to achieve on your filter pressure gauge.  This can vary considerably from pool to pool, because it is affected by so many variables, for example: pump horsepower, plumbing size and layout, etc.  Make a note of the PSI right after you have placed a new cartridge in the filter.  Or another way of determining your starting pressure is to take the cartridge out of the filter and see what the PSI reads with nothing inside.   If you are still getting more than 5 PSI above your starting pressure, even after you have cleaned the cartridge, you need to replace it.
2. Automatically replacing the filter after the given period of time (suggested above) assures that the material inside, which degrades over time, will be in adequate shape to filter the water.  Your filter might be missing a good deal of particles that it otherwise would remove from the water if it was new.

This is the time of year that many homeowners begin to wonder:  Does my pool leak?

This is the most popular time of year for leak detection and repair for 2 main reasons, both related to the chamge in climate.

1.  Less rainfall will lead to the discovery of slow leaks, that were not enough to outpace the weekly rainfall experienced during the summer months, from July to September.  This type of leak can be as simple as patching around a fixture or waterline tile.  The most common examples of this are leaking light niches, skimmer openings, step/or cap tiles, or loose marcite around your return fixtures or main drain.

2.  As the water table drops during the dry season, some settling may occur underneath your deck and/or pool shell.  This will make the most common and expensive form of leak problem occur as these slight movements can put pressure on your lines and eventually cause them to break or crack.

But be sure.  The easiest way is to fill a bucket of water and mark it at the waterline.  Do the same in your pool.  Leave the bucket on your deck for 48 hours and see if there is an obvious difference in how fast the water evaporates inside the bucket vs. in your pool.  It is not uncommon to have to fill your pool every other week or replace as much as an inch to 1.5 inches of water per week.

Pay attention to things that might accelerate evaporation in your situation, like if your pool is open and more exposed to wind, or if you have a spill feature or waterfall that is causing more spray.  This will make the evaporation in your pool higher than average.

We offer the full range of leak detection from simple patching to detecting broken lines, recovering those lines, and fixing them.

Drain and clean, repair screens, deck clean/pressure wash, and replace filter pump.  9/23/10 to 9/27/10

Fall Special on the Nano, only $799.00 installed!!!!!   Handles up to 20K Gallons of water.

Read More Here

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.

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!!!