The Filter Game Plan: Clean, Track, Repeat

Most routes bleed time and money during filter season, not because the work is hard, but because the system behind it is fuzzy. We break down a simple framework that keeps your margins healthy, your schedule predictable, and your clients happy: when to clean, how to price, what to replace, and which tools shave minutes off every stop.

We start with the big decision: include filter cleaning in your monthly price or bill it separately. For regions running full-size cartridge and DE filters, separating the charge boosts accountability and keeps your bids competitive. From there, we compare four-month and six-month schedules.

Next, we go tactical. Learn how batching by filter type reduces on-truck inventory and speeds decisions, what spare parts to carry for common DE and cartridge models, and how a three-year replacement cycle for grids and quad cartridges prevents messy mid-summer failures. We talk through efficient upsells, when a full grid assembly swap pays off, and why pairing salt cell cleaning with filter service saves steps. Maintenance timing matters too: rebuild backwash valves during shoulder seasons to prevent leaks and headaches in July. For pure speed, we share the small tools that make a big difference, from multi-torque socket sets for clamps to the Orbit Sunmate 58361N nozzle and low-dust DE that keeps lungs and trucks cleaner.

• charging separately for filter cleaning to increase accountability and margin
• regional differences between single-cartridge systems and quad or DE filters
• four-month versus six-month cycles and why seasonal timing wins
• pairing salt cell cleaning with filter service and choosing whether to bill
• pricing strategy to keep monthly rates competitive while itemizing cleanings
• batching routes by filter type and stocking only needed parts
• three-year replacement cycle for cartridges and DE grids, longer for select systems
• adding backwash valve maintenance during off-season windows
• time-saving tools including multi-torque sockets and high-pressure nozzles
• choosing l

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Episode Focus
• 2:17 Should You Charge For Filter Cleaning
• 4:00 Regional Differences And Filter Types
• 7:00 Cleaning Frequency And Seasonal Timing
• 12:04 Bundling Salt Cell Cleaning And Pricing
• 14:20 Pricing Strategy And Competitive Bids
• 16:40 Route Planning And Parts Management
• 21:49 Element Replacement Cycles And Upsells
• 22:10 Resources And Coaching Program

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

And welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about seasonal filter cleaning, and I'm going to go over some aspects like should you charge extra for filter cleaning, what when should you clean the filters, at what time of year, and also pricing if you are charging, and all kinds of things related to filter cleaning, the process itself, and how you would approach it with the customers in your service area. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the Pool Guy Coaching Program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support from me. I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at Swimmypoollearning.com. And I'll tackle the first one, and that is should you charge for filter cleaning? If you're in certain areas of the country like Arizona, Nevada, Florida, would be something I'll touch on in a second. But California, the West Coast, Texas, where you have full-size cartridge and D filters, I really do suggest you charge extra for filter cleanings. You don't include them in the service. There's a couple of reasons why this is logical. And one is that it kind of motivates you to actually clean the filters. I know this sounds crazy, but if you have it all inclusive and you're charging, let's say$10 a month more for the customer, probably a little more than that, I should say actually, maybe like 15 or 20, and you're including the filter cleans, there's not a lot of incentive for you to clean the filters when the time comes because there's no extra money on the table. And for me, I think that's a big motivator for not just you but also for your employees to clean those filters because it's like anything, it's all optic. If you're getting the money, if you're getting the money during the month, you're not really seeing the money come in, and you know in the back of your head you gotta clean the filter because you're getting paid for it. But if you charge the customer at the time you're cleaning the filter, it just is much easier, I think, mentally to get into the mode to clean, you know, 70 or 80 filters. Now, as far as Florida goes, a lot of the area has the single cartridge filters, and you have to clean them probably once a month or every other month. And so including that in your service rate does make a little sense. Doesn't take too long to clean a single cartridge filter. However, if you have D filters or larger filters, you will want to charge for that cleaning as we do here on the West Coast because it is more time consuming, and it's something that you don't do every month, you're gonna do it every four to six months. And then, of course, the other argument is how often should you clean the filters? Now I don't like cleaning filters, I'll be honest with you. I've cleaned so many of them over the years since I started back in 1988, that it's one of those things that I don't like doing. A lot of pool guys actually will outsource their filter cleaning to other companies. There's a few here in California, or a few guys here, or gals here, that'll put a sign up at the supplier saying they'll do filter cleaning service. And there's one company here in particular that actually takes the filter into their truck and takes it to their shop and cleans it there and then brings it back. So there's actually no mess at all on the property. A really good service because as you get older and as you've done these over the years, you just don't want to clean them anymore. And so it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, outsourcing them sounds great. But if you are going to say, you know, should I clean them every four months or six months? Mathematically, of course, every four months is going to make you more money if you charge per filter cleaning. I'll keep it simple. Let's just say you charge$90 a filter, and if you're doing it three times a year, of course, you've captured$90 more dollars over the course of let's say 60 filters, and you know that's$5,400 extra if you do it every four months versus every six months. And the manufacturer does recommend cleaning the filter. I think it says in some literature every four to six months, and sometimes you can get away with saying the manufacturer recommends this, or you can just set it up as your policy to clean it every four months. It's not gonna hurt to clean a D filter every four months, or to take a four quad type cartridge filter apart and clean it every four months. And I should emphasize the difference between the areas in Florida where they use a single cartridge filter and the areas here where we use a quad type cartridge filter, which are four usually 100 square foot cartridges in one filter tank. And those don't need to be cleaned every month like the single cartridge filters in Florida. As far as D filters, you do have to clean those at least every six months, in my opinion. Some people will say otherwise, you can just backwash them for a year and then clean them in one year. But I think if you are charging for the filter cleaning, it's better to clean the D filters every six months or every four months if you choose to do that. The only problem I see with doing it every four months is that you're actually going to be cleaning the filters in the middle of the season, where it is probably not the most ideal time to clean the filters. Every six months you can kind of time it to where you're cleaning it at the beginning of the season and when the season is ending before you get into winter. So I really prefer every six months myself for that reason. You can clean your filters in March and April, and that way they're just perfectly ready for May, June, July, and August, and then take them apart again late September and into October. Here in my area, that's before the Santa Ana wind season starts, so that's perfect as well. And then in March and April, there's not a lot to do at the pool site. So you can get away with doing a really quick cleaning of the pool and then spending the time there cleaning the filter, and same with late September, early October. There's not much going on either weather-wise, and you can get away with deferring the cleaning of the pool, maybe just doing a quick skimming, brushing, checking the chems, and then knocking out the filter. And I think those are the ideal times to clean the filter. When you start getting into April and May, here you start getting a lot of pollen in the in the pool. The season may start early, and you may have to do some algae treatment, things like that, charging up the salt systems, working on cleaning the salt cells. And by the way, I always like to clean the salt cell in tandem with the filter cleaning, just because it's probably gonna need it. And since you had the filter apart, you might as well take the salt cell off and soak it in the acid water mixture, and it kind of kills two birds at one stone. And again, there's a debate on should you charge for salt cell cleaning. A lot of guys charge like$35 or$50 to clean them. It does take time, and since I do them usually when I clean the filter, I haven't set up a charge for them. I probably should, but since I'm just taking it off and putting it in where I'm cleaning the filter, it's not really a big deal for me. And I rarely have to clean it like middle. Well, I should take that back. Certain pools do need their salt cell cleaned in the middle of summer. But usually when I clean it in the beginning of the season, there's only a handful of them that may need an acid bath in May or June. And then other areas are different, of course, because your water is much harder, and you may have to clean the salt cells much more often. So that's for you to decide if you're gonna charge for that or not, and maybe that's for a different podcast episode. But as far as filter cleaning, I really think again, as I said at the beginning, you should be charging for the filter cleaning service because it motivates you to do it, it motivates the employees to do it, and it's something that is just very common here and very normal as far as service goes. The pool service companies usually don't include it as an all-inclusive service here. It just is better also when you're bidding for a pool. Because when you're bidding, the bottom line is how much is it monthly? And if you're adding the filter cleaning into the monthly rate, it's gonna raise the rate above your competitor who may be charging for the filter cleaning separately. So again, it may be to your advantage to charge a lower monthly rate and then build them every six months for the filter cleaning. I find the easiest way to keep track of your filter cleaning progress is still with a printed sheet in some cases, so you can kind of visualize each day which filters need to be done. And you can do this in a spreadsheet as well, and you can put them in order of D filters and cartridge filters on that service day. So, for example, let's say on a Tuesday you have 6D filters and eight cartridge filters. Now it's up to you if you want to clean the cartridge filters first or the D filters first. I don't recommend doing a mixture of both. I used to do it like that. I used to go in order, so I would just start at the beginning of my route, clean the filter, and do like the first four, and then I would do the next four the next week, the next four the next week, and the next four the following week. So in a month I would finish that whole day of filter cleaning. But I find it's much better to split them up to where you have say the cartridge filters first and the D filters second. There are a few reasons for this. The main reason is that the filters are vastly different and the components are different as well. What I mean by that is if you're going to do D filters, you should carry spare grids on your truck. So you should have some 48 square foot, 60 square foot, some of the Penter FNS Plus grids, and you should also have the Penter 4000 and 2000. I shouldn't say Penter FNS Plus because they're pretty universal with the Jandy and Hayward filter. It's just that I have a lot of Penter FNS pluses in California in my area. So you want to carry that also stem O-rings, O-rings for the tank. And you should have your route analyzed to the point where you know what filter type is on which day, what filter brand, what you should have on your truck as far as O-ring for that, stem O-ring, grids. And so if you're doing it to where you're just doing it in order, you know, by the pool that that that day, and not by filter type, sometimes you're carrying a lot of parts on your truck that you don't really need. And it does take up a lot of space inside your back seat of your truck. That's where I carry my grids. I used to carry the grids on the back of my truck, but I've lost a few that have blown out. And I also realized that the sun hitting the grids is not a good thing. It really weakens them really fast. They're not made the way they used to be made, so any kind of sun exposure really ruins those grids fast. So I like splitting it up mainly because I can carry the grids during the DE filter cleaning time, carry the dietomaceous earth on the back of my truck. That's a big thing, by the way, having you know four or five bags of DE. So having all of that and mixing it between cartridge and D filters to me is inconvenient. So I'd like to split them. So I'll go through a checklist and I'll make sure I mark all the DE and cartridge filters that day, and then I'll know which ones I'm gonna start doing. And I still do them in order by the way. So you know the first pool may have a cartridge filter, the third and fourth pool has one, then the seventh and ninth pool, and staying in order really helps so you don't make a mistake. Also, since I change the elements every three years, this is also an important thing that you want to do, and I usually do this the week prior to my filter cleaning. You can do this during your filter cleaning process as well, but I find it's better to do this the week before because then you'll knock some of the filters out and you'll have room on your truck to have the elements. What I mean by that is that if you change the four cartridges out on a pool every three years, like I do, and you mark on the filter with a sharpie or on your in your app, when you change the grids out or the cartridges out, you can actually time it so where and you should always kind of do this during the filter cleaning season if you can. Now, sometimes a D filter will develop problems, the grids will tear, and you can't time it as well. But you would really want to time this as much as you can during the filter cleaning season. So I'll replace the grids and the the cartridges every three years, with the exception of the quad D filters, those cartridges seem to last a lot longer. So I'll go five years with those, and then the system 3 filter, the stay right filter with the large cartridge and the smaller one. I'll do that one maybe every six or seven years. Because the elements are really expensive, and they really last a very long time over the standard quad four cartridge filters. And then you'll again want to time this usually the week before you do the filter cleaning. So go down the list of all the filters that you're going to bring elements for, order those, have them on your truck, and then I change those out pretty rapidly. What I usually do with D filters, if I can get away with it, if the customer doesn't mind, I'll just get a full grid assembly. That's the top manifold, bottom manifold, all eight grids, and I'll just pop the lid off the filter, and I'll take that whole thing out and drop it in there. Now, sometimes customers are more economical and they don't want you to spend that kind of money, extra money for the whole grid set. I think it's a good way of doing it because everything is brand new at that point. But if you can't do that, and probably do that every other three years, so every six years you can do the whole grid set if you wanted to. Changing out the D grids is pretty easy and quick for me as well. So I'll do that, and it saves you a cleaning basically because you're just taking the old grid out, putting a new one in. The cartridges are the same way, they take up a lot of space on your truck, and doing it every three years is really easy. You just take out the old cartridges when you get to the third year, put the new ones in, throw those away, and you're pretty much set. And it's you save yourself a filter cleaning, but I do charge an install fee for the grids and for the cartridges. So you make you don't lose that filter cleaning charge if you are charging during the season, the filter cleaning season. You still recapture that charge you have you have to take it apart. Takes you some time to do it, and I do charge for the installation of the cartridges and also the grids. Ed, you'll take you'll also check that off, you know, to clean that filter at that time. So that helps you as well, kind of mentally, and also with your time management. And you should really change cartridges, the quad type cartridges, I should say, single cartridges, you're gonna change more often. But the quad type cartridges, change those every three years, and the same with D grids, they don't last as long as they used to. It just prevents the D grid breaking during the season, causing D to get into the pool, causing a big mess during the summer. So if you are in this regiment of every three years, you're gonna have a really easy time maintaining these filters. The longer you go without changing the elements, the cartridges, and the grids, the harder it is to maintain that pool, in my opinion. So I just tell the customers every three years I have to replace the elements and the filter, and that's just the way it is. It's this industry standard basically now. In my opinion, it should be, and you should do this at least every three years with your filters on your route. I also like to do backwash valve maintenance when I'm doing the filter cleanings at this time. It's a good time to replace the O-rings in the piston, or replace the piston itself, or if you have a multi-port valve, sometimes it's a good idea to replace the top of the multi-port valve or the spider gasket at this time. Basically, kind of lumping together your backwash maintenance with the filter cleaning time is a great way to kind of do both at the same time and keep the filter running at the optimal capacity. I don't really like messing with the backwash valves during the season, especially in the summertime where you may have a problem. So if you can do it in the off-season, beginning or at the end of the season, and do all the backwash maintenance as well, backwash valve maintenance as well. I think it's smarter and a better use of your time. No matter how you want to do it, I think you should split them up between cartridge and D filters, in my opinion. It just makes for an easier filter cleaning time. And of course, there's all kinds of tools you can use with the cartridge filters, like the cyclone filter cleaning, and you can also, you know, with the D filters, I like using it, what's called the Orbitz nozzle. I should give you that number because to me, I think it's the best nozzle for D filter cleaning, getting the grids off. You can also use it for cartridge filters. Here it is for you. It's the Orbit Sunmate Hose End 58361N. That's the Orbit Sunmate 58361N. It's a tiny little sweeper nozzle. They wear out. I keep them in my pocket, I keep them in my glove box in my truck. These are great for the D filters. It gives you the added pressure that a lot of homeowners here in California, we have like a lot of restrictors on the hose lines. They're really annoying because you can't get the full water pressure, and you can't really get the restrictors off either. They're like really hard to get off without breaking the hose spigot. So this orbit nozzle is great for D and cartridge filters, in my opinion, because it just kind of gives you a lot more pressure or water pressure. So pick some of these up. They're like eight bucks on Amazon. I used to get them at Walmart for like two or three dollars each. I'd go into the garden section and grab a handful of them, but I don't think Walmart carries them anymore. They may carry them by you, but this is definitely the best hose nozzle you can get. And one more tool I should mention before I end here, and this goes without saying, is the multi-torque socket set. This is gonna be a great way to get these the clamps off, the compression nuts and bolts off the filters very rapidly, and to get them on very easily. It saves you a ton of time out there. Just go to multi-torque.com, pick up a set, and these are pretty universal for the Hayward, Jandy, and Pentair filters, and it's gonna save you a tremendous amount of time, even with those stay right system 3 filters with the clamps. It's just that of course the builders like to put them right up against the wall or against the house, and you're always kind of trying to get one clamp off still with your hand, one or two clamps, but these are a great way to get that off rapidly. So the multi-tour tools are great, a great way to speed up your filter cleanings on your route. Whatever you can do to speed up your day out there. And I should mention before I close, I also like the cellar pool low dust diatomaceous earth. I find this to be easy to add DE without the dust going everywhere. Plus, the bags are a lot more robust, it's like a plastic bag, and you can usually get them at your supplier if you order them ahead of time, if they don't have them in stock. So it's the cellar pool, the low dust diatomaceous earth. To me, that's the best DE to use out there, and it's easy to manage, easy to carry, and the bag's not going to rip on you. I mean, invariably you're gonna have all these bags of DE ripping in your truck. One way to prevent this, of course, is just to put a put them in a 13-gallon trash bag ahead of time, and that way if the bag does rip, you you have the trash bag protecting your truck from having all this diatomaceous earth all over the place. So whenever I get a bag of DE, I put it directly into a 13-gallon white trash bag, and that actually protects it, keeps it from being torn just by rubbing against something in the truck. And it's just something that's kind of annoying that the diatomaceous earth is in a bag that tears so easily. Looking for other podcasts, you can find those on my website, swimmingpulllearning.com. You go to my website, you'll see a drop down menu of over 1800 podcasts there for you. And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at poolguycoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have you ever seen your week and God bless.