Pool Route Tips You Can Use This Week

Your route doesn’t have to be a grind. We unpack the simple habits that separate smooth, profitable days from chaotic ones, drawing on three decades of pool service experience to show how routine, timing, and smart planning eliminate headaches before they start. The heartbeat of the conversation is a reliable workflow: show up the same day and roughly the same time each week, then run the same sequence at every stop so nothing gets missed. We explain why dosing chemicals last prevents second-guessing, and how a quick look back for a chlorine floater catches mistakes. For safety, we share a small skimmer trick—run your hose over the deck into the skimmer so you won’t step into an open lid—and the mindset that keeps you from getting distracted in the first place.

We also talk timing strategy. Arriving while the pump is already running turns hidden problems into visible ones: slow leaks reveal themselves, cleaners that should be moving stand still, and cloudy water is obvious on sight. Starting early adds buffer and beats heat and wind, but it works best with respect for neighbors and homeowners. We cover quiet gear choices, like carbon fiber poles that won’t start a chorus of barking dogs, and route planning that avoids bedrooms and noisy yards at dawn.

Then we zoom out to route design and resilience. Build crossover so Tuesday and Thursday zones overlap, making last-minute checks or holiday stacking easy. Carry doubles of essential tools—two poles, two leaf rakes, two brushes—so a broken cam lock or a sunken vacuum head doesn’t stall your day.

• building a consistent weekly schedule clients can rely on
• creating a fixed on-site workflow with chemicals last
• preventing injuries around skimmers with simple safeguards
• arriving when equipment is running to spot issues fast
• starting early while avoiding noise and disturbances
• designing crossover in your route for flexibility
• doubling essential tools to avoid downtime
• timeboxing pump priming and troubleshooting to eight minutes
• resetting and returning with clari

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Chapters

• 0:00 Practical Tips Preview
• 2:09 Coaching Program Invitation
• 2:29 Build A Reliable Routine
• 4:01 Safety Around Skimmers
• 6:08 Why Chemicals Go In Last
• 7:28 Arrive With The Pump Running
• 10:05 Start Early Without Disturbing
• 12:59 Plan Around Noise And Neighbors
• 14:59 Create Route Crossover
• 16:21 Double Your Essential Gear
• 18:32 Timebox Troubleshooting To Eight Minutes

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:03

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to give you some practical tips out there on your pool route. These are things you may not think about, these are things that you may not put into practice all the time, but I really think that these principles will help you out there each day to make your job a lot easier. 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. The first practical tip is to stay in a routine. I know this can be very boring, but doing the pools the same day at the same time really builds consistency with the clients. They'll appreciate knowing where you're going to be there, and they'll look for you about the same time each week. This really helps go a long way in making your service very reliable to the customer. As part of that routine, I also suggest you do your cleaning and your chemical dosage and checking in the same exact order each at each stop. Don't get out of order, don't get distracted. This is when problems happen and accidents happen. I've seen or heard of many pool pros that put their foot into this open skimmer hole. You may be checking the leaf debris in the skimmer, and then you get distracted and you're doing other things and you forget to put the lid back on and you're walking around the pool, you put your foot in there and you sprain or break your ankle because you're doing things out of order. So I suggest you do these things. And by the way, there's a pro tip if you're manually evacuating a lot of pools. Take your pool hose and when you put it into the skimmer, don't put it through the weir gate in front. Put it over the top of the deck into the skimmer hole. That way you have the pool hose there in the hole so that if you do step in there, you'll step on the pool hose and you won't put your foot in there awkwardly and sprain your ankle. That's just something that I always do because I've always I've not always, but I've had on occasion stepped in the skimmer while I'm vacuuming, and with the pool hose there, it has saved me many times from injury. But staying in that routine is important because if you get out of it, again, you're doing things out of order. You may step into an open skimmer, you may forget to put chemicals in the pool because you don't do it in a the fashion that's a that's kind of a routine. Someone asked me on one of my videos when I'm doing a step-by-step cleaning, why put the chemicals in last? And the only reason I do that is because that's the last thing I do at the pool, and I I'll remember all the time to put the chemicals in. Because if I add it in the middle or any other time, I'll get to my truck and be two stops down the road, and I'll think, did I add chemicals to that pool? Because I'm not in my routine, I didn't remember to do it in order. And besides that, when I leave the pool, I always look back just to give it a visual check. And if I see like the chlorine float around the deck, I know I didn't add the chemicals. So definitely the routine is important, and you know, you can develop any routine that you like. I personally like getting to the stop, checking the chemicals, and then you know, making a mental note of what I have to add to the pool. Then I'll put some dish soap in the pool, I'll skim the pool. I'm not touching the skimmerlet at this point, I'm just doing all the cleaning of the pool. Of course, the pool should be on at this point, and I'm gonna touch on a tip on arriving at pools as the pool come and running as well. But you want to clean the pool, I'll I'll skim the pool, and then I'll brush the tiles, and then I'll either vacuum or do what I need to do. You know, if I'm if I'm going to use my vacuum system, I still am not gonna take the skimmer lid off and do any of that. So then I'll do all that, and depending on the weather, of course, if it's the if the skimmer is impacted by leaf debris, you want to clean that earlier. But the last thing I do is I'll do the basket checks, I'll check that, and then I will add the chemicals to the pool. And that's kind of the routine that I've developed over time. Now, you may want to do it differently. Your routine should be again ingrained and it should be the same exact routine all the time. Now, as far as getting to the pool with the timer or the pool pump running, I think it's really important that you set your pools on your route. And if you're setting the order of your pool stops, the pool should be running when you get there for a few reasons. And the number one reason that I like having the pool running when I get there is I can inspect the equipment and see if there's any kind of leaks or problems with the pool. If you get there and you turn it on, you may not see an obvious leak at that point. Sometimes they're really slow and drip leaks, so I like to check for leaks, and that's kind of why I like having the equipment on. It also helps me when I arrive at the pool because the first thing I do is I'll visually check everything again to see if everything is working and everything's okay. And if you get to the pool and the pool is supposed to be on at 9 o'clock and it's not on and the pool looks hazy or cloudy, you know right away there's a problem. Or if you get to the pool at 9 a.m. and the pool is on, but the automatic cleaner is not moving in the pool, then you know there's a problem right away. It just saves you time in diagnosing leaks or problems with the pool itself, problems with the automatic cleaner. Because if you get to the pool, you turn the timer on, you have to wait for any kind of leak to form, and you have to wait to see if the automatic cleaner is working. So I like to get there when the pool is running so that I can visually make sure everything is operating at that point. Really easy to do. Just set all your pool timers basically to when you get to the pool so that they're all going to be on at that time. And if you you know get to a pool at 10 o'clock, have the pool come in at 9 o'clock, get there at 11, have the pool come in at 10, and so forth. That way the pool is running when you get there. That's what I prefer. Everyone's different. You may prefer to get to the pool with the pool not running, whichever you prefer. But I found in my experience that when you get to a pool that is already running, you have a better chance of visually seeing any kind of problems with the pool at that point. This also ties into that, and how you set your route up is important as well because it will be something that will allow you to start at a certain time in the morning when you want to start the route. That's kind of convoluted, but some people start at 8 o'clock in the morning, some people start at 9. I personally like to get there at the crack of dawn, so I'll start my pool route. You know, usually I'll get to my first pool at 7 in the morning. The sun is kind of breaking out. You don't want to get there too early when it's dark still and you turn the pool light on. That's kind of weird. But you want to start early, in my opinion. The earlier you start, the better your day will go. Now, if you're a late riser, that's perfectly fine. I just don't I just don't think I could start my day, you know, at 8 or 9 o'clock. I just start early in the morning. And the thing with starting early is that the day feels shorter because by the time you get to like your near last pool, it's just like after lunchtime basically, or before the early afternoon. You know, you're at your eighth eighth pool by 10 a.m. So it feels really good when you get an early start. And when you set your route for the early start, there are a few parameters and a few factors that you need to understand about backyard pools, homeowners, their kind of routine. You know, do they go to work at 6 a.m.? Perfect, you can get back there and don't disturb anyone. If the neighbor has a barking dog, that pool needs to be moved later in the day because you don't want to get back there at 7:30, have the neighbor's dog barking and waking everyone up. So kind of plan your route around things that will allow the homeowner not to be disturbed. And I kind of am very conscientious about getting to a pool early in the morning that's really close to the house, so that you know I'm walking around back there where they're getting ready for work or eating breakfast. So you want to plan your route to do the pools that don't have barking dogs, that the homeowners maybe are at work already early in the morning, or that are further from the house itself. And this can be easily done by moving pools sometimes from different days, so that you can do that. If you have like pools where the owner's not even in the house, where they're like absentee owners, put that one first in the morning, and you just again want to arrange your pool route accordingly. I remember when I was using the piranha power pole, I was testing it out, and it was a you know, I like the pole. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid two-piece pole. They always have have been talking about making a three-piece pole, but I haven't seen it. But the piranha pole is really nice with the snap lock. However, it makes quite a lot of noise when you're snap locking it, you know, click click-click click. And if there's a barking dog anywhere nearby, or a dog anywhere nearby, I should say, more than likely it'll bark and it'll disturb everyone in the neighborhood. So I kind of stopped using the power pole because of all the noise it made. Kind of weird, a weird problem, and I just like the primate carbon fiber pole, it's quiet, you don't disturb anybody. And even the skim light snap lock pole is kind of loud in the morning. So these are all things to think about. You know, they're they're kind of things that you don't think about too often, but you should think about making noise back there, and you don't want to be really loud early in the morning, but you do want to start, in my opinion, as early as possible. So kind of you arrange your route so that it can be accomplished. Speaking of arriving at pools and having a route where you can go early in the morning, you also want to have some crossover on your pool route. You can create this by putting some pools that are in a similar area on a Thursday and do another similar area on a Tuesday. That way, if you're out there on a Tuesday, there's a problem with a Thursday pool, you can easily get to it. Or if you're gonna go on a four-day weekend, you could take your Thursday pools and put them on Tuesday to kind of stack them. So having some kind of crossover is always good. So if you can keep some pools within like half a mile or a mile of your current route on Tuesday, and those are Thursday pools, it can come in handy when you're stacking pools or when you have to move pools around or things like that. So crossover is something that you should develop on your pool route. I wouldn't necessarily have like every pool in the general area on one day and then be in a different area each day of the week. It makes it harder to do any kind of crossing over and doubling back for the pools. Now, speaking of doubling, I really think that you should have double equipment on your pool truck. This means two leaf rakes, two poles, you know, I wouldn't say two vacuum hoses, but you want to have you know two brushes. Everything should be duplicated so that if you leave something at a stop or something breaks, you're not out of luck. The two poles are really important. I'm not sure if you have done this, but I've done this when I wasn't paying too much attention. I attached my my vacuum head to my pool pole, and then I wasn't really paying attention. This can happen with your brush as well, and I drop the pole into the pool, and then it of course sunk to the bottom. So with the brush on there or the or the manual vacuum on there, it's hard to get it out if you don't have another pole to use your leafwork to get it out. And sometimes the homeowners won't have a pole there, and so now what do you do? You're not gonna go into the pool to get it. So having that spare pole comes in super handy when something like that happens, and you need to fetch it out of the pool. Not that you should be dropping your stuff in the pool with the pole attached to it, but it can happen, and I've done it before. Also, if a pole breaks, I've had a my dually pole, the cam lock not locking, and you know, I have to put it back in my truck and get my spare pole and use that. I've also left the pole at a pool before. Instead of doubling back and going back to get it, I wasn't too worried about it. I was gonna pick it up later in the week. I just use my spare pole the rest of the day. So these things happen, and it's something to keep in mind that having the extra doubling of everything is really important so that you don't you're not out of luck. You if you have this one leaf rake and it tears, what are you gonna do at that point? You just not gonna clean the pool. So doubling up on equipment I think is crucial, and it should be something that you do automatically. Everything that's essential should be doubled in your truck. I talked about staying in a routine and kind of you know starting early so that your day goes well. Something that could really ruin your day, and this is something that you can prevent if you implement this particular attitude. But something that can really ruin your day is if you get to a pool and there's a problem. Let's say you get to your fourth stop and the pump is not priming. This does happen out there quite a bit. It could be anything that caused this, you know, the water level made it went low, and the customer didn't fill it up and the pump ran dry, something got stuck in the skimmer. I've had pool noodles stuck in there from a pool party, a t-shirt stuck in the skimmer, all these things. I even had a thermometer that got sucked into the skimmer, don't ask me how that happened, stopping the flow. And so trying to fix these things on the fly can be frustrating, especially if you can't get the pool primed. So, how do you prevent this kind of frustration and delay in your your week or your day, I should say, hopefully it doesn't last a week. You set a time limit. If you can't get the pool primed in like five to eight minutes, I would just turn everything off, leave a note or text the customer saying you'll be back later in the week to kind of troubleshoot the problem. Because the last thing you want to do is be there for 20-25 minutes, and time goes quick when you're you know trying to get something fixed, it's weird, but it seems like time speeds up. You just don't want to be spending so much time at the pool trying to troubleshoot a problem, and it also also helps a lot when you get back there when you have more time on your hands. Let's say you're doing this pool on a Monday and you're back over that way on Wednesday. You have plenty of time to kind of assess it, look at everything, think clearly without having pools, you know, eight more pools to do on the back of your mind, and the time the clock is ticking. And it really is interesting the clarity you have when you go back, when you have more time and you're not feeling pressure, you're not feeling rushed, that you can solve the problem a lot quicker and easier. I found this to be true that when you're in the moment and you're trying to get it primed, you're not really looking at things clearly, you're frustrated, and then you start getting more frustrated, making it harder and harder to think. But when you go back there another day and look at it, you usually can solve it and you can fix it. Now, if you can't refer it out to somebody, or if you do the repairs schedule something, and you just have to analyze it, sometimes it's a weird problem. I've had many weird suction leaks that I had to even get a leak detector out to fix. So don't spend too much time, it's brain damage sometimes if something is not working. Just leave everything off and get back there another day. Because again, time just starts flowing in the opposite way you want it to, it gets away from you, and then you're rushing the rest of the day, making mistakes sometimes. So try to keep this mental note that if you can't get something working in five to eight minutes, I would say ten minutes, but I think you're pushing it at that point. So five to eight minutes, just pull the plug on it, turn everything off, and move on with your route to avoid frustration. I think this is something that is very common. You know, all these things I mentioned, staying in your routine, having a route where you can start early, these all make things very pleasant for you and make being out there enjoyable, I think. If you are not in a routine, for some reason I find that getting out of the routine, for any reason, you know, if I have to stop and do something and get back to my route, it just kind of it's just me maybe, but it makes my day harder to do. Staying in a routine and these practical tips will help you, just makes your day go a lot better out there. And if you're looking for other podcasts, you can find us by going to my website, swing4learning.com. On the banner, there's a podcast icon. Click on that, and there'll be a drop-down menu with over 1800 podcasts there for you to listen to. And if you're interested in the coaching program, you can learn more at PoolGuyCoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a good rest of your week and God bless.