The Right Way to Clean Heavy Debris Pools

Leaves don’t just make a mess, they steal your time, stress your body, and starve your margins. We break down a clean, repeatable system to handle heavy debris pools without burning out: what to avoid, what to automate, and where to invest so your route stays profitable even when the wind goes wild.

We start with selection strategy—why a mature business doesn’t need every account—and how saying no to chronic leaf traps can raise your average hourly return. Then we dig into gear that does real work between visits. The Pool Skim turns a return line into a secondary skimmer with a debris bag, pulling leaves off the surface before they clog the basket. Pair that with a reliable solar surface skimmer like the BETTA to keep the top clear all week. Together they stabilize flow, protect pumps, and reduce chlorine burn, making water balance easier and saving you emergency trips.

Next, we get tactical about the source: tree trimming. It’s not glamorous and trimming day can be messy, but the payoff is dramatic. We share the exact client framing that works—reduced equipment risk, fewer algae blooms, and more consistent clarity—and when to recommend it. From there, we set firm time caps per stop and outline how to price for debris-heavy service tiers. If a client wants pristine results after a storm, we show you how to quote it confidently and stick the landing without resenting the account.

Finally, we dive into tools that transform post-wind cleanups. Strong poles like Skimlite or Primate and large-mouth rakes like Purity Pool’s Red Baron or Gator handle bulk removal. 

• choosing which pools to keep as you grow
• pool skim as a secondary skimmer on return lines
• solar surface skimmers for daily debris control
• tradeoffs in cost, looks, and reliability
• client education on tree trimming and equipment risk
• time limits, pricing tiers, and boundaries
• windstorm prep with strong poles and large leaf rakes
• cordless and cart-based vacuum systems compared
• ROI, route efficiency, and reducing strain
• links to m

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Chapters

• 1:53 The Real Cost Of Leafy Pools
• 3:20 Under‑The‑Radar Pool Skim Solution
• 5:11 Solar Skimmers And Tradeoffs
• 6:52 Trim The Trees, Save The System
• 9:36 Time Limits And Pricing Strategy
• 12:28 Windstorms And Preparedness
• 14:17 Poles And Leaf Rakes That Last
• 15:36 Vacuum Systems That Pay For Themselves
• 18:36 Work Smarter, Protect Your Body
• 19:46 Resources, Coaching, And Sign‑Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Bay Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about some solutions for pools that have heavy leaf debris. I'm going to go over some proven methods that work really well. And I think you can glean some great tips from this podcast if you have pools on your route where leaf debris is a real issue. 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 swimming poollearning.com. And this may sound a lot like circular logic here, but the best solution for pools with heavy leaf debris is not to have them on your route to begin with. Now this is a little bit unrealistic when you're starting out, but when you do get established, you really don't need to take those pools where leaf debris is going to be a problem. So just keep that in mind that there are certain pools that you need to take, and there's certain pools that you're not going to need to take later when you're well established. I really think that if you're taking on every pool still, and you're really an established pool service company where you have plenty of accounts, it's not the best strategy or the best use of your time. With that said, in reality, you're going to have some pools on your route with heavy leaf debris. Let me just talk briefly about some technology that would help you before I get into some more of how to remove debris and things like that. But there are some technologies that you could utilize wood pools with heavy leaf debris. You can, of course, use one or two things, or both of these things, in fact, would be helpful as well. One of them is a device that is very much under the radar. It's a small company called Pool Skim USA. It's a product from South Africa that she is the only distributor. She lives in Chicago and she's the only distributor of this product. You can find it on Amazon or on their site. And the device is called the Pool Skim. P-O-O-L-S-K-I-M. It's pretty easy to remember. This device is really good with a few installation things that you have to know about. One is that you need to have one and a half inch return lines on the pool. A lot of pools do have this, some pools don't. So if you don't have it, I would say you're out with this device. Because even if you try some other installation products with it, it doesn't work as well as having one and a half inch threated return lines. Then you can install it. So it's basically like a secondary skimmer that works off of a return line and it has a debris bag. It's highly, highly effective. So I would say this would be the first thing I would try if I had a pool with heavy debris that it had one and a half inch return lines. I've used it very successfully on heavy debris pools, and it's just golden. It's a device that works really well. It's got a weir that floats and it pulls the debris right in. It's just an amazing idea that is highly effective. So look at that pool skim. You can go to their site, pool skimusa, I think it's called.com, or just go to Amazon, you can find it there. The second device that I would recommend would be a solar powered surface skimmer. I think the beta is still the number one choice out there as far as reliability. They're gonna probably have, depending on your area, the lifespan is dependent on how long it's running in the pool, you know, how long your season is, but you're gonna get a good two solid years out of the beta. And the other ones sometimes they have glitches here and there, but I think these are the best built solar power surface cleaner. How they work is that they have solar panels on top, they have a paddle in front, and they just kind of move randomly in the pool as they have enough charge where there's a battery in there that charges, and then they run when it's when it's not being charged by the solar panel, and it picks up debris. I would say it's about one or two skimmer baskets full of debris in that basket, and these are also great as well as far as pools with heavy surface debris, they can do an amazing job with heavy debris pools. So these are devices, and again, there's other brands of these solar skimmers, so just do your research. But I think the beta BETTA has been the best and most reliable one that I've used, and it's something that you can utilize in these pools with heavy debris effectively. They're like$400, so and in the pool scheme I should have mentioned is around$100, a little over$130 or$140. So that's more affordable, but you are kind of limited with the return lines or the return jets in that case, and it does look a little unsightly sitting in the pool, so keep that in mind. If you have a beautiful pool with you know, you have a mansion and you put this thing in there, it may not look as you know inviting, but it's highly effective in getting leaf debris out. Another solution here, and this is one that you can utilize against your customers that have a lot of trees around the pool, and that's kindly urging them to trim the trees, and it's an expense a lot of people don't want to spend doing, but it does go a long way in keeping the pool debris-free, and it's a very simple thing for them to do, and it's something that does help tremendously. It's like night and day sometimes when you have a lot of trees around the pool and they trim them. By the way, the the trimming day is gonna be a disaster because most of the tree trimmers don't cover the pool for whatever reason, and the pool gets totally destroyed. I've only had like one tree trimmer in like my whole life that covered the pool with the tarp. I don't know why they don't do it, but they don't. So just be aware that's gonna be a pretty bad day. But then after that, everything is nice because there's so much stuff in the trees that are dead that keep falling constantly when the wind blows, they get into the pool. Once the trees are trimmed, none of that stuff is gonna happen. You're gonna have very little leaf debris falling into the pool, and it is really an amazing transformation with something as simple as trimming the trees and kind of thinning them out, getting all the leaves that would fall out. This is this is something that I highly recommend you kind of push the customers to do. You can do this by letting them know that you know, with all the leaf debris in the pool, it is making it hard for you to balance the water, and you know, the allergies forming, you know, could form, and you also could have equipment problems, you know, because the skimmer baskets can always full of debris. This affects the pump, and the pump can get hot and burn out. And so I always kind of like try to blame it, or try to not blame it, try to give them some motivation that's gonna cost them more money with the pool care if there's a problem with the equipment, and also with the leaf debris, you know, using up the chemical, the chlorine in the pool, causing possible algae blooms in that pool. And a lot of times it's true that there are algae blooms in these pools, and it's true that the equipment is not running properly because of the leaf debris. So it's not something that is not the truth of the matter, and it's something that you need to convey to the customer so that they get kind of motivated to trim those trees. Also, what's helpful is to know what you can actually do at the pool if the pool has a lot of leaf debris in there and you haven't implemented these things yet, is that there's a time limit for each pool depending on your service area and pool size. Of course, it differs by area, but here in my area of Southern California, for a 15,000 gallon pool, you should not be spending more than 25 minutes there because then you're not really making the money. Now you could charge accordingly based on the amount of time you spend at the pool, which is logical to do, and sometimes you can do that, sometimes you didn't think about it until it was too late, so you're kind of stuck with this pool where you have your baseline rate, and you can of course raise your rate on the customer depending on the risk factor of them canceling, or maybe you do want them to cancel, so you can raise the rate and get out of that pool. But the bottom line is you have to set a time limit at this pool, and you can't be spending 45 minutes, an hour there cleaning the pool because it's really not worth it to you, especially if you haven't raised the rates to kind of quantify the amount of extra time that you're spending at that pool. So have a limit, you know, do the best you can, and then leave the pool kind of dirty in some ways because you can't clean the whole pool with that limited amount of time. Now, if the customer calls and says, You were here, the pool still has a lot of leaf debris in there. This gives you a good segue into a few of these strategies. You can offer them the pool skim or a solar skimmer, or you can let them know that they have to trim their trees, or you can raise your rates at that point, letting them know that if you want me to spend an hour at your pool, you'll have to pay more for that because I'm only charging a baseline amount and your pool requires a lot more time. Sometimes they'll pay you more to do the work because they understand that you're spending a lot more time at the pool. Most of the time they'll do that if they really want their pool cleaned every week properly. But do you really want to invest that much time there? That's something you have to consider and think about. That's the kind of a pool that you would dread every week when you pull up there. So keep that in mind that you don't want a pool that's gonna be a downer on your route and take all the wind out of your sails, you know, in the middle of the day. But having limits is really a key thing with these heavy debris pools, and you have to establish limits how you see fit in your business. Either charging more for them, not taking them on at some point, or letting the customer know that you're only gonna spend X amount of time there each week, and if they can be helpful with the pump baskets, skimmer baskets, or put one of these devices in, a solar surface cleaner, or the pool skim USA, that would be really helpful for you with this pool. I'm gonna give you some practical things now when you're cleaning pools at heavy debris because sometimes it's because of a windstorm, and not necessarily the pool is a heavy debris pool every week. And here we get the Santa Ana winds, which are really terrible from October all the way into like April sometimes, and they'll destroy a pool that looks pretty good, and even if it doesn't have any trees around it, the Santa Ana winds will blow stuff in from the neighbors from two houses over. It's really crazy. I I was doing this one pool one time, and I never had any leaf debris in there. There's no trees around it, it's all cement basically. And I get there one day after this windstorm. This is one of the first times the winds have hit that area. Sandana winds are weird, they'll like hit areas continuously, and then they'll miss areas for years, and then they'll finally hit that area, and this is how this happened, and I was like, Where do these pine needles come from? I mean, there's no pine tree here, and so I'm just I go out to my truck, and I can see like four houses down, there's like this pine tree that's really tall, and I'm like, there's no way that but yeah, that's the truth. It actually blew it from way over there into this pool. So, what you need to do is have tools in place for windstorms, and of course, when you have heavy debris in the pools. The first thing I think is having a strong pole. I really recommend either a skim light pole or the primate pole, these are great poles to have. You know, the skim light has I think the best aluminum poles on the market, and then the primate pole is a great carbon fiber pole. And the reason why you want a strong pole is that you're getting a lot of heavy debris out of the bottom sometimes with your leaf rake, you're skimming the surface with the leaf rake, and it's getting heavier and heavier, and you want to have a pole that's not gonna snap or bend or break, and so the pole is critical, so get a good strong pole. Also, a leaf rake. I mean, you can use like the red baron as your primary leaf rake. It's I think it's a the perfect size leaf rake from Purity Pool. They do have a gator, it's a bigger one, and you know, there's also like a gigantic one that they make, I forgot what it's called, but you definitely want to get a large leaf rake. The gator I think is 24 inches wide, the red baron is 20 inches. The bigger the leaf rake, the better, I think. In most cases, when you're skimming large leaf debris, because it didn't get like large palm branches and other things that the smaller opening, like an 18-inch opening, can't get. So definitely pick up like the gator, great large leaf rake, I think, for these situations and very durable. But then you would want, of course, have a vacuum system. Now, I'm not saying and I'm not saying this lightly that spending you know$1,500 or$2,000 on this thing is something that you should not think carefully about because it is an expense. However, I I think you should approach it by looking at time as money and not just the purchase price of a product, but how much time it saves you out there and how much easier or more at peace you're gonna be knowing that you have these vacuum systems in your vehicle, so that when there is a windstorm or when you're cleaning a heavy debris pool, it's not a big deal because these things are just awesome with leaf debris. Now, the two that I recommend are the bottom feeder, and this the bottom feeder is great because it's cordialess, you can just drop it in anywhere, has a two-hour runtime, and you have really nothing to worry about. The new shrimp is also really good, and it depends on the amount of debris or the usage in your area, which one you want to get, the bottom feeder or the shrimp. Both are great portable vacuum systems with no cord. And then if you're in an area where you just get like destroyed all the time, and there's areas here like this, the riptide is great. It has the cart, get it back there, it's got great power, and it's just a beast of a cleaner. If you ever used one before, you know what I'm talking about. It's got just the overwhelming power, but in a lot of cases, the bottom feeder is all you're gonna need, and it does a great job with pools, and it's something that I recommend because it's portable, and it you would find you're gonna find a lot more usage out of it, at least in my area of Southern California, and than a full-size vacuum system. You don't need the cart, and you know, the cart does have some drawbacks. There are yards you can't get the cart back to, and you have to put it on the back of your truck, which kind of limits opening your tailgate in a lot of cases. So the bottom feeder you just put in your back seat, and away you go. So it's a great vacuum system, and it's more affordable than the riptide at this point, without the cart, of course. Riptide, you have the built-in cost of the cart, and so you have to uh kind of just do the math on that. It's not that the bottom feeder is less expensive, it's just that the cart you have to purchase with the riptide as to the price point. Both would be great choices for your pool route, and I would think having a vacuum system of some kind would pay for itself within, I'm gonna say just to be generous, within the first year of use, it's gonna be a lot sooner, but just think about taking off 20 minutes a day or 30 minutes a day on your route, and how many more pools you can do. You can actually add one pool onto that onto your week because you have extra time and in one year that one pool is gonna pay for that vacuum system. I had an old timer post one time on I think it was the Riptide video that I did. It's like, you don't need to spend$2,000 on this thing, just use your leaf rake, it takes just as long. It's not really true. The leaf rake, you're going from one end of the pool and you're stirring everything up, and then you have to let it settle, then you get the other end of the pool, but then you're wearing yourself out. If you've ever cleaned like 10 pools in a day with just a leaf rake by skimming leaves off the bottom after a windstorm, you are just sore, you're tired, your back hurts, and you have to factor in that the vacuum system saves all that, saves your body, saves the strain on your body, and it does save you a lot more time because you're not waiting for the debris to settle back down. You may have to pull it out, empty the bag, not a big deal, but it's a great tool to have because you're not straining yourself, nor are you stirring the pool up and making a mess. So it's really not the same thing. And if you don't want to spend the money on it, that's up to you. I would think that investing in your business is priority number one, and especially if it's gonna save you time and save wear and tear on your body because it really is like if you were a football player and you didn't utilize all the tools they had, you know, the old timers like you don't need to wear a padding when you're practice or a helmet. Well, you're not gonna last very long in football if you don't wear your gear. And it's the same thing with the pool pro with the proper gear, you're gonna preserve your body and and not wear yourself out and extend your actual working time out there, which is money, of course. And I think these tools are great, they're all on the market. Why not utilize them? And for those heavy debris pools, I think all these things, if you implement everything here, it's gonna make your life a whole lot better, and you're gonna really enjoy. I wouldn't say enjoy the wind or days when you have Santa Ana winds, but it's gonna make it to where it's not unbearable. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those on my website, swimmingpoollearning.com on the podcast. On top of the banner is the podcast icon. Click on that, there'll be a drop down menu of over 1800 podcasts for you there. And if you're interested in the coaching program, you can learn more at PoolGuyCoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a great rest of your week and God bless.