Normal Pool Behavior vs Real Problems

Ever heard a variable speed pump scream for a minute on a cold morning and wondered if the motor is toast? We dig into the real-world signs that separate normal quirks from costly failures, sharing field-tested ways to read noises, clouding, and pressure spikes without overreacting or replacing parts you don’t need.

We start with cold-start pump behavior and why grease viscosity makes a VS motor squeal briefly in chilly weather, then move to the mess that follows a season’s first rain. You’ll learn why that initial storm dumps more dirt and organics, how dilution erodes free chlorine, and the fastest way to recover with targeted shock, brushing, and filter management as PSI climbs. From there, we unpack the “DE sneeze” that can puff powder back through returns after a filter clean, what’s normal for quad DE designs, and how to protect sensitive hardware like pressure-side cleaners, salt cells, and in-floor systems by checking screens and flow paths.

Air in the pump lid gets its own spotlight. We explain the small bubble you might see at low RPM, how to test system tightness at full speed with the air relief open, and where suction-side leaks actually hide—lid O-rings, unions, valve stems, threaded fittings, and bleeder assemblies. You’ll get practical fixes to stop drain-back, improve priming, and extend motor life. Finally, we cover chemical odor safety. Acid and chlorine carry expected smells, but a wet trichlor bucket or feeder can create a dangerous gas mix. We outline safe opening steps, storage tips to keep tablets dry, and simple habits that protect your lungs and your route.

• Cold-start pump squeal that fades in minutes in low temperatures
• Cloudy water and debris spikes after first seasonal rain
• Shock levels to recover diluted chlorine and haze
• DE and cartridge “hiccup” on startup and how to manage it
• Protecting pressure-side cleaners and in-floor systems from blowback
• Air in pump lids at low RPM versus real suction leaks
• Diagnosing drain-back and hard-to-prime systems
• Chemical odor basics and tri

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Chapters

• 2:39 Setting The Theme: What’s “Normal”
• 3:24 Cold Mornings And Noisy VS Pumps
• 5:37 First Rainstorms And Cloudy Water
• 8:27 DE And Cartridge “Blowback” Hiccups
• 11:32 Protecting Cleaners And In-Floor Systems
• 13:03 Air In Pump Lids And Slow Speeds
• 15:20 When Air Leaks Become A Real Problem
• 17:19 Chemical Odors: Normal Vs Dangerous

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:51

Hey, welcome to the Poohai Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to go over what sometimes is normal out there. You kind of get the hang of this what I'm going for here when you start to listen to it. But I'm going to go over some things that you may think, wait, why is it like this? But it's actually perfectly normal and something that you're going to learn that this is not something abnormal at one of your service accounts. 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 swimmingpoollearning.com. You may run into this one on your route, and eventually you're going to run into this where you start the pool up and the pump is pretty loud and you're hearing it whining and squealing. And typically this will indicate that the bearings are burning the bearings are burning out or wearing out, and that noise gets louder and louder. And sometimes you can even hear this noise from like the front of the house when the pump comes on. But what's weird sometimes, and it you may seem like this is not normal, but after like 30 seconds or a minute, the sound goes away and the pump sounds normal again. Now you may be thinking, well, it's definitely wearing out then at that point, but then it may not happen again for a week or two, or may not happen again for a month. Now, of course, this could indicate that the bearings are wearing out, but it could also just be the cold because the grease thickens in cold temperature and it makes that squealing noise because there's more metal to metal vibration. And of course, this happens a lot with variable speed pumps. You may think that, oh, I gotta replace this VS pump motor because it's squealing, but then when the air temperature rises, and this typically happens when it's like in the 40s and 50s outside, you're gonna hear this squealing. Probably should have said that at the beginning. Doesn't happen in warm weather typically unless it's actually wearing out, but in colder weather, when the pool pump starts up, it starts up cold, and then of course the grease inside is cold itself, and you're gonna have more of that. But if you do notice that this happens, it doesn't go away after one to five minutes, then it's a good indicator that the bearings are indeed wearing out. And it could be a precursor in the older pump that it is happening, but you're gonna hear this, you know. Well, the first time I heard this, I was surprised because it was a fairly new VS pump, and I was like, wow, this must be defective. So then I went to go clean the pool and I went back and it didn't make that noise anymore. So, yes, this is a normal thing that can happen in cold weather to a variable speed pump, and this doesn't necessarily indicate that the bearings are going bad at that point. Here's another one that is perfectly normal, and that is a cloudy pool or an extremely dirty pool after the rainstorm. Now you're gonna find every every area is a little specific, but you're gonna find that usually the first one or two rainstorms is going to cause the pools to be much messier than future rainstorms. And you may be wondering, well, why is that? Why is the pool full of so much dirt after this rainstorm? And then a month later you get the same kind of rainstorm, but there's hardly any dirt in the pool. It's because everything gets washed off in the first rainstorm, you know, from the deck, from the trees, especially if you have trees around the pool. There's a ton of dirt in those trees, and when you get the first rain, it's like giving it a good car wash at the beginning of that first rain, and so all that dirt is gonna go into the pool, into the deck, and eventually wind up in the pool at some point after the first storm or second storm by the third or fourth rainstorm, you don't have that same effect because it's been cleansed already, so to speak, in the first storm. And typically the pool is gonna be cloudier when you have the initial rainstorm. There's a lot of reasons for that. One of them is that maybe there isn't enough chlorine in the pool to take all of the you know inorganics that are going in there from the rain, and it's it's also being diluted by the rain. And so you'll find that typically I find this to be true that the first major rainstorm in in my area of Los Angeles County, there's gonna be a certain amount of pools that are gonna be cloudy on your route because they're just not prepared for it. And then subsequently, the rainstorms, you're gonna be more prepared, and the pool is going to be chlorinated. Usually the cloudy pool is because the chlorine has been diluted or zeroed out by the excess water or by organics being washed into the pool, and that's perfectly normal. And fairly quickly, you can turn this around by adding chlorine at a shock level, you know, 10 parts per million or 20 parts per million to kind of bring the pool back around. And a lot of times you're gonna find that the filter is also the filter PSI has also gone up after the rainstorm, and that's perfectly normal as well, because a lot of stuff gets washed into the pool, and especially if you have if you have a suction side cleaner working in there, it's gonna take all of that into the filter. So perfectly normal for the rainstorm to produce a really dirty pool, a cloudy pool, and the filter psi to go up after a pretty significant rainstorm. I'm talking one to two inches of rain here in my area, and of course, if you're like in Texas, that's nothing. You're looking more like at three to four inches of being a major rainstorm. Here's one that looks like there's a problem, and that's when you clean a D filter, and then you have I call it a hiccup of dietomaceous earth back into the pool. You know, you'll take the filter apart, you'll clean it, you'll get everything out, you'll put it back together, you turn the pool on, and then all of a sudden this DE comes out of the return jets. You're like, oh, what happened? What's going on here? Well, a lot of times when you take that lid off, and depending on how the pool's built and the year of construction, all these things are factors, some DE will actually go back down the return line into the pump. You can actually see it. If you take the pump lid off while the D filter is draining, you'll see some DE actually in the pump basket. Well, when you turn the pool on, that's obviously going to go back into the pool because that is actually something that's going to be in the line already, and it's something that is unavoidable sometimes, where DE gets in the line and you turn it on and has that hiccup. Now, of course, that's perfectly normal in some situations. Sometimes there's you never have that happen at pools. And you can also have the same thing happen with a cartridge filter. When you turn it back on, a little bit of debris goes back in there, and again, that's perfectly normal in some situations where some of the debris just didn't get out when you drained it and it went down into the where you when you remove the cartridge, some of it went in there, and it's nothing to really be worried about. But there are a couple notes to be a couple of things or a couple things to note down with certain systems. If you do have the blowback or any cartridge debris blowback after you clean it, there are two situations where you have to be really cognizant of how this can affect the system. One of them is if you have a pressure side cleaner attached to the pool. I would recommend cleaning the screen on that. If this pool always has this problem, I recommend disconnecting the Polaris cleaner from the dedicated return line prior to cleaning the filter and then reattaching it later. But that debris screen may be full of debris from that kind of hiccup of di tamaceous earth or debris. And also if you have a caretaker system, sometimes if that happens when you have a caretaker system, there's a screen inside the caretaker. These are the systems where they have the return pop-ups on the bottom of the pool that could happen as well. Kind of look at the pool as anything that gets past the filter going back into the pool. If it goes to the return jets, not a problem. You can vacuum that up. But if there's something like a Polaris cleaner where the return jet has a screen that's going to get clogged up, or a caretaker system where there's actually a screen inside the caretaker system as well that could get clogged up with debris. So just be aware of that. That those hiccups do happen with these systems on occasion, depending on factors like the backwash valve isn't working. But I find this to be very common. You'll be really careful, like you're cleaning a system three filter, you've got all the water drain out, you take the cartridges out, you clean them, and invariably there's some blowback. It's just something that happens. So just be aware of that. Also, your salt cell could also get clogged up with some blowback as well, especially if there's a lot of debris and it gets stuck in the cell plates and water can't get through. So be aware of anything that can be affected by the blowback. You know, if you clean a filter and this happens. Now, what's not normal is if you start charging the D filter with new D powder and it comes through and you see it coming out of return lines. There is one exception to that, and that's when you do a quad D filter. You'll find that sometimes the quad D filters will still have like a really fine blowback when you're charging it with the new diatomaceous errors, but after a few minutes or you know, you let time go by, that will stop. Something about the quad DE filters and DE, it lets a little bit through. Uh, one way around that is to use paralyze. You're not gonna have that same problem with paralyze, it seems to stick better to freshly cleaned uh quad DE cartridges themselves. One thing you may notice also is that there's air in the pump basket lid. You'll see like air bubbles in there. Now, sometimes you can do it can go crazy trying to clear the air out. Sometimes the air is there and it's the problem, and it could be something as simple as the lid o-ring of that pump basket needs to be changed, or you can lube it up. And typically that's the culprit that air is in there because the pump lid o-ring just needs to be uh changed over and put a new one on there that usually takes care of it. There's some pools that I've service where there's just air in the filter lid, and I can't clear it no matter what I'm doing. It's one of those things that's just part of the pool, and you know it's frustrating to the customer too because they'll see air bubbles coming out of the return line and they'll think there's something wrong with their system. But there are just those accounts where air is in the system, it's a small amount of air that's always going to be in the pump basket. Now you may notice this a lot when you're running a VS pump on a lower speed that there's a larger amount of air in the pump basket, and that's because at that low speed, a lot of times it just can't fill up that basket. You know, it's a big area, and it's sometimes you'll notice that there's a lot of air in there, sometimes significant amount of air. But once you put it on full speed, it's a good way to test the system, by the way, too, is to put it on full speed, and then you'll notice that there's no air in the pump lid. You also want to open up the air relief valve on top to let any air out to make this test more successful. And typically, if the pump is running in a completely sealed system, there should be zero air in the pump clear, you should be able to see no air looking at through the water in the clear pump lid. But of course, there are systems that like the Jandy Stealth Pump, you know, that there's just a little bit of air in there all the time, and not much you can do about it. I want to say that it's normal, it should be an airtight system. And one thing that could be a problem if it's not totally airtight is when you turn the pool off, you may start hearing the D filter or the cartridge filter start draining down. And this is a bit of a problem because sometimes the DE will drain back down into the suction line, into the skimmer, and so when the pool turns off, there'll be DE in there, and sometimes it leaks out into the pool. Other times it may be harder to prime the pool the next time you're at that stop because all the all the water drained out of the filter, there's air in the filter, you start everything up, the pump doesn't necessarily have enough push with the water into the filter to prime up, and of course the pump would be empty as well because if there's air in there, that water will actually go back down the skimmer. So all of this, these are factors, it's not normal for that to happen. It may be normal to have a little bit of air in there at lower speeds, and your system may have just tiny bits of air bubbles in there for no logical reason that you can think of. It's just there. But if the filter starts draining down, or if the pump basket drains down after you turn it off, that's a problem. There's an air leak somewhere. It could be the if you have unions, it could be the O-ring in the unions, there could be a Jandy valve O-ring, could be the threaded fittings that go into the pump and the inlet and outlet that are melted slightly, causing air to get in there. It could even be the air bleeder valve on top of the filter. Hayward has an air bleeder assembly that's notorious for causing this problem, and that just unscrews just the black part on top, the flat black air relief valve on top. Unscrew that. There's like a giant ping pong ball in there, just clean that off and put it back together to see if that solves it. If not, replace it, and then it will solve the air kind of leaking into the filter and draining it down. You can also put a check valve above the pump or in front of the pump to kind of help mitigate that problem. But in some cases, you know, you're going to have to find that air leak and solve that problem, otherwise, it just becomes a worse and worse problem, and eventually that pool pump won't even prime in some cases. And I'll end with this last one here, and it's perfectly normal for chemicals to smell. There are some situations where that can be dangerous, but of course you're gonna be you're gonna smell the muatic acid. You don't want to do this, of course, because you'll start gagging, but it does have a strong chemical odor to it that could cause you to gag. You're gonna if you can smell the calhypo, you can smell dichlor. Everything has a a smell to it, a chemical smell to it, so it's not unusual to smell that. And when it becomes a problem, is I'll use trichlor as an example. If you have a 50-pound trichlor bucket of tablets, and the lid is not secure on there, and you get a rainstorm, and water gets into that bucket, it can be a very dangerous situation. Almost like the mustard gas they use during World War I. You have acid and chlorine gas mixed together, and you take that lid off, and if you breathe that in, you could actually damage your lungs. And so just be aware that some chemical smells are normal. You can smell the trichlor, it's not overpowering, it's not going to knock you out. But if you have a trichlor bucket with water in there with the trichlor, and it's a small contained bucket, same thing with the rainbow chlorinators when you open them. There can be tablets that haven't been dissolved in there, and that could be strong overpowering odor. So just be aware that that is a dangerous situation. That odor is not normal, and it can be overpowering and dangerous. So make sure the trichlor buckets don't get any water in them. And if you're at a customer's house, and this is where you can get into a dangerous situation. This has happened to me. There's the bucket of tablets there already established, you haven't put it there yourself. You go to open that lid, and if you're not cautious because you don't know the condition of that bucket, you know, has it been sealed? Has water got in there? So, what I do now after doing this and learning the hard way, I mean, I was just like on the ground gagging at some point during this situation that happened. You want to make sure that you are wearing a mask, you open the lid, you step away from the bucket, and then you let it air out, come back, gradually get closer to it to see if indeed there is water in there, if it's safe. And I do this whenever there's a bucket of tablets that's at an account that I did not put there myself personally, because I make sure that my tablet buckets are sealed. Another thing you can do is put them in a trash bag and tie the trash bag around it, and then open it whenever you need them. That's also a good way to make sure that they stay, you know, free of water. And put them in a dry area where they're not gonna get rainwater in, of course. That's also gonna be helpful, but just approach those with caution because it can really knock you out with that strong chemical smell that is definitely not normal. But yes, you're gonna be able to smell the chlorine, of course. It's very normal to smell the different chlorine types that you have and the acid, and it's something to be aware of that some of these chemicals can be overpowering and just flat out dangerous. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those on my website, swimmingprolearning.com. On the podcast, uh there's a banner with a podcast icon. Click on that. That'll take you to a drop down menu where I have over 1800 podcasts. If you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at PoolGuyCoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Hope you're seeing a week. God bless.