When the Pool Route Falls Apart

Bad days on the route don’t send a calendar invite; they just show up. We’re pulling back the curtain on the moments that derail a service day and the practical systems that stop them from turning into disasters. From a pool left in spa mode for a week to a heater cranked to 95 after a party, we break down why these problems hit so hard and how to build an insurance plan that keeps water clear and clients happy.

We walk through a party-proof prep plan that actually works: how to raise free chlorine without irritating swimmers, when to use non-chlorine shock, and why borates, enzymes, phosphate control, and PoolRX-style solutions buy you precious time when circulation lapses. You’ll hear how utility gas alerts help catch a forgotten heater before it nukes the bill, and the one-minute tutorial every client needs so a quiet variable speed pump doesn’t stay off all week. We also get honest about the mistakes we make when routines break, and the simple habit shifts—like using timeout mode instead of service mode and running a final pad check—that prevent callbacks and keep the day on schedule.

Out on the road, the truck matters as much as your test kit. We share hard-won lessons on dead starters, weak batteries, and why a AAA membership with on-the-spot replacements protects your route margins. And yes, we tackle the spike of panic when a client’s dog slips the gate, with calm, humane tactics and a pocket treat strategy that turns chaos into control. If you run pools for a living, this is the field guide to staying ahead of algae, automation surprises, and backyard curveballs—without losing time, money, or your cool.

• traffic delays and planning buffers
• pools left in spa mode and algae risk
• chlorine enhancers as insurance
• party prep with shock and dosing kits
• heaters left on and utility alerts
• variable speed pumps stopped by clients
• avoiding service mode and using timeout
• route vehicle failures and AAA strategy
• routines to prevent chemical misses
• gate discipline and handling escaping dogs

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Transcript

Coaching Program Invitation

Traffic Woes And Lost Time

Pools Left In Spa Mode

Chlorine Enhancers As Insurance

Party Prep And Shock Strategy

Heated Pools And Hidden Risks

Gas Alerts And Heater Left On

Variable Speed Pumps Switched Off

Vehicle Failures And AAA Hacks

Breaking Routine And Chemical Misses

Gate Safety And Escaping Dogs

More Resources And Closing

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm gonna call this bad day out on the pool route. So I'm gonna go over some things that happen out there and have happened to me that really kind of ruin your day. And of course, every day is different. Not every day can be perfect and you know, roses and whatever, butterflies. So there are gonna be some bad days out there. 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. Of course, traffic is one thing that for me is an irritant living in Los Angeles County. You deal with it all the time, and my family will tell you that I'm probably the person that's most upset whenever there's a traffic jam on the freeway. And I've been in some really bad traffic jams, by the way, where they're even like landing a helicopter on the freeway and the freeway's closed for a couple hours. I think one of the worst situations I had was when the local freeway here that I take, a 210 freeway, was actually closed for from the whole freeway was closed down for most of the day, and all the back roads were congested. I think it took me like two and a half hours to drive what normally would take me 25 minutes, and of course that ruins your day. So those are things that you can't predict or stop or fix, it's just something that happens. So there are a lot of things that will kind of ruin your day, and I'll go over a lot of these here for you, and you'll probably experience some of these, and they're really not preventable, but if you know about them, you're you're aware that the situation can happen, and you can understand that you can work through just about any kind of problem out there that happens. I'll start with this one, and this happens sometimes when the customer is using their pool and they don't think about it. They're having a party on a Saturday, and let's say your service day is a Thursday, and they'll leave the pool on spa mode, have the pool running all week, but the pool is not actually running all week, it's in spa mode. Every day the spa is coming on for eight hours and turning off, and the pool is just sitting sitting there stagnant all week long, and in the summertime, this means that the pool is gonna develop a pretty good-sized algae bloom in most cases. And the customer, for some reason, I don't know why this is, they never notice that like the pool is not circulating or running, and you know, when you tell them, hey, I you uh you left the pool in spa mode and you have this algae bloom and I was there for extra time treating it, they'll be clueless. They'll be like, What? We left it in spa mode? How did that happen? Well, it does happen and it will happen to you on your route, so just be aware that in the summer when people are using their pool, this could be a problem you run into. Now, there's a couple of things you can do to you know let the customer know that there's gonna be an extra charge for the chemicals because a lot of times you're shocking it, treating the algae, and bringing it back. But there are a few things you can do to prevent it becoming a disaster. And you hear me talk about these chlorine enhancers all the time, but I really believe in them because they are a way to offset a disaster like this, and it'll also offset the second thing that I'm gonna talk about here in a minute. If you use a pool RX, or if you use borese to 50 parts a million, or if you use a combination of enzyme and enzymes and phosphate treatment every week, this really will offset this, and it's not gonna be a major disaster, it'll just be a minor annoyance in most cases because there's gonna be enough of the element, the chlorine enhancer in the pool for that four-day period to kind of protect it from the algae bloom. If you don't have the pool rex or the borates, or if you're not using any kind of other enhancer in the pool, there's a few other ones I don't talk about often, but they do exist out there. Then when this happens, the pool is gonna take its natural course, and algae will form with no circulation, there'll be no coin in the pool, and it could be a big mess. So the enhancers are really an insurance policy sometimes to where something like when something like this happens, it just becomes again something minor and not a major disaster. And I've run into this before, and you'll probably run into this as well, where the customer is having a pool party and they don't inform you, and you should make this known to the customers, especially those that have kids and use the pool a lot. If you ever have a chance to converse with them, or when you first get the account, let them know that oh, if you're having a pool party or a big event, let me know that week and I'll make sure the pool's ready for it. Because typically you would want to shock the pool and bring it up to a certain level and do things to the pool prior to that, put in some non-chlorine shock, whatever you do to get your pools ready for a party. What I usually do is I bring the chlorine level up to the highest point possible to where it's not going to be irritating, so about 10 parts per million, and then I will put in a couple bags of non-chlorine shock. I'll also leave a bag of cal hypo with the customer and a couple bags of non-chlorine shock as well. And I'll tell them before the pool party, throw in these two bags and they'll throw them in there, and this will help the non-chlorine shock. I'm saying not the cal hypo. And then after the pool party, I'll have them put in the cal hypo just to bring up the chlorine level if necessary. So these are all things that you can do for those party situations, but a lot of times customers won't tell you they're having a party. So you'll get to a pool, and I've had this happen before, and again, this is why those enhancers are really great to have. So this was with a pool that was gigantic, it was like 30,000 gallons. They heated the pool to 95 degrees over the weekend. It was pretty crazy. They had a big party. So when I got there, I think I was there on a Tuesday, I put my hand in the pool, and it was like still in the 90s, and I was like, wow, what happened here? And of course the chlorine had zeroed out. But fortunately, for this pool, I was using two black pool RX units in the pump. They had two separate pumps and filters, and I was using two pool black pular X units in that pool. And really, even though the pool was heated in 95 and the chlorine has zeroed out after the weekend party, it looked actually really good. I didn't really see any algae, it was clear, and I was really thankful that I did have that Pull RX, those Polar X units in that pool as my insurance policy for something like this happening. So, yes, the customers will heat their pool, have a party, not tell you, and it's one of those things that can happen out there, and it can be a major disaster, especially if they had the party on a Saturday and you're not there until the following Friday, and the pool's heated, and they of course they tend to leave the heater on. So it's one of those things where I text the customer, I'm like, Oh, yeah, you had a pool party over the weekend, your heater's still on, by the way. So I guess it's a good idea to jump in the pool and use it this weekend as well, or use it during the week. And the customer usually texts back, it's like, oh man, and one thing that can actually prevent this from happening, by the way, and this is area dependent, but if you're in Southern California and a customer is with Southern California gas, they can actually get alerts when they're using too much of the gas. And this happens with one of my customers one time where he texts me when I was on my route saying, Hey, I think my on vacation, my relatives are there, and I think they left the heater on. Can you run by and turn it off? Because I got an alert saying that I'm using a lot of gas, and sure enough, I went by that pool and the heater was on, and they had left the heater on. They had used the spa, put it back in pool mode, and left the heater on, so I turned off the heater. But those alerts are important too for you as a homeowner and for you as a pool service provider. Let the customers know that there is that alert system by the gas company. I'm pretty sure all the gas companies have this, and they'll get a notification on their phone saying that they're using a large amount of gas, and so this is one way to prevent that kind of heater on all week effect, and you'll be like the hero when they get an alert one day and they can go turn off their heater. So this happens, the heater being left on, a pool party not letting you know, or leaving the pool in spa mode after a pool party. And one more thing that could happen, similar to these things, is someone with a standalone variable speed pump, when they're having a party, they don't like the noise of the pump, so they're gonna hit stop or they're gonna hit off on it. And what happens is that they don't turn the pump back on, and this leaves the pool off all week basically. So I like to educate the customer that if they're having a pool party and they don't like the noise, yes, you can turn the pump off. It's better if the pump is running, I tell them, because when people are using the pool, it's better if the pool is circulating, it's just a better experience, and of course it keeps the pool from having problems. And but if they insist on turning it off because the pump is too loud, and I understand if the pump is really loud next to the pool, make sure that they hit the on button again or the start button again, because let them know that unless they do that, the run cycle or the weekly timer doesn't come back on and activate, and basically the pool will sit off all week long, and it'll be a major problem. So just educate the customer ahead of time that if you do turn the pump off for whatever reason, pool party is usually the reason. Make sure you hit the on button or start button again, and that will put it back in its normal time cycle. There's really no way to override that for you, and it's something that just happens out there, and just be let the customer be aware of that problem, and that's usually a good way to prevent it. If it happens once, I let the customer know right away what they what they did wrong, basically. And if they're home, I have them come out there and I show them this this is what turns off the pump, unless you restart it, then leave it off all week long. Other things, of course, out of your control is a mechanical failure with your vehicle. It's one of those things that's it can't be frustrating at an ESON Frontier that had over what I think it I ended with over 200,000 miles on this thing. Put a new engine in at about 120, I can forty. I can't remember when I put the new engine in now. And it just has some problems and it was kind of a headache to have these problems. But the problems you're gonna have mainly is with the starter because you're turning the truck on and off, you know, 20 or 30 times a day, and eventually you're gonna try to turn that truck on, your truck on, and you're gonna hear the click-click, or you're gonna, you know, it's just gonna be one of those things where the starter is dead. Also, the battery tends to die a lot because you're turning it off and on a lot as well, and so you'll go through a lot more batteries, I think, than most normal drivers will go through. And fortunately, there's triple A, so I like having the AAA battery service because what they'll do is they'll put a new battery in for you if your battery dies, and then they'll warranty that battery, of course. But then two or three years down the road, when your battery dies again, you call triple A, they'll just swap it out on the spot. So it's really effective because you don't lose any downtime, maybe 20 or 30 minutes. If your battery dies while you're on your route, call triple A. And by the way, you should get a triple A membership, it's not super expensive, and you get three service calls per year, and hopefully, you don't use them all up in that year on your truck. I've done that with my Frontier, and then I kind of had to borrow time from my wife's triple A card, she'll call it in for me, but that's another story there. And they also change your flat tire, so all these things are great to have the ability for them to come out and do that. But the battery service is really good because then they'll swap out the battery, and you don't have to worry about it. If it dies again two years later on your route, they'll come out and put a new battery in for you, and there's no no real downtime at that point. And I'll admit, sometimes we cause our own problems out there on the pool route by not following the routine and forgetting to do things. I haven't really forgot to clean a pool. I have dreams about like forgetting to clean pools. You probably had these dreams before, like your their anxiety dreams where you had the this pool route, and in your dream you forget to clean certain pools, and time goes by in your dream, and you're like, Oh, I gotta these pools. I I missed these pools. I couldn't I didn't clean them. I had one dream where I had an account where they had two pools on the property, and I kept forgetting to clean the secondary pool that was on the property. This didn't exist, of course, just in my dream. So forgetting things at the pool or forgetting to do things, you can cause a lot of problems for yourself. And I've done this on several occasions where I've forgotten to turn off the automated system. I'll put it in service mode when I'm cleaning the filter or something, and then I forget to put it back in auto mode, and the customer calls saying, Hey, you know, my pool's been running three days straight without turning off, and then I go over there and I see that I've put in service mode. So I rarely use service mode by the way, unless I have to. I'll just use timeout mode. That way I know that in three hours it's gonna go back into the auto mode. And sometimes the customer will call you saying, Hey, my my app says it's in timeout mode. What's going on? But I use that mode so I don't forget to turn the pool back on because if you put it in service mode on automated panel, it's just gonna run 24-7 or be off 24-7, depending on what you have a set for. I've also forgot to put chlorine in the pool, and this happens when I get out of my routine. I like to put the chemicals in at the end of my stop so I don't forget anything. And if I get a phone call or if I'm out of my routine, I have to go to my truck to get something. I'll sometimes, and this has happened not too often, but it does happen, I'll forget to put tablets in the floater, or I'll forget to put the shock in the pool that I was gonna put in, and then I get back there the next week, and of course the pool has a major algae bloom, and I I open up the tricar floater or the tablet feeder, and I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot to put a tablet in here. So I see what happened. So yeah, that can happen to you. So just be be more cognizant of a routine and not making that mistake, and it's gonna happen. I mean, you're gonna forget to do something at the stop, it's invariably gonna happen because we're human, we make these kind of mistakes. But if you stay in your routine, this is gonna eliminate that factor by like 90%, and you're not gonna forget to put chemicals in because you're in this routine that okay, I do this and I'll do this. And I always look back by the way when I'm leaving the account to make sure I didn't do anything like leave the skimmer basket on the deck, which I've done before. You know, I get distracted, I'm doing different things, so I always take a backward glance at the pool to make sure everything's good. And this is important to do to make sure that everything is set and you didn't forget to do anything. You know, if you see the trackler floater on the deck, you know that you need to put the tablets in the pool. And I'll end with this one here, and this is probably the one that you know, besides traffic and having car problems, is something that not only ruins my day, but brings my anxiety level up to like you know, a thousand percent. Because if you're in the backyard and you open the gate and the dog bolts out, the the family dog takes off running down the street. Of course, my anxiety level goes up because I have a I had a husky for many years that got out and I was chasing the neighborhood and I always worried about getting hit by a car, and almost happened a few times because she was an escape artist for sure. But my anxiety goes up to the point where it's like I can't think sometimes when this happens, and I'm chasing the dog and I'm worried about it getting hit, and I'm thinking about the family being upset. So this is something that you're probably gonna experience if you haven't. And you know, fortunately, I've never had a problem getting the dog back in the yard, which is good without usually they're in I'm in a suburban area, so it's not like a thousand cars go down the street. But yes, it can be a situation where your anxiety level goes up and you really have to get that dog back, or let the customer know the dog got out, and you just your day is kind of ruined because not only do you spend ten minutes chasing the dog and finally getting it, but your anxiety and adrenaline level is so high that you're like exhausted. So this does happen. There's really not much you can do except be very cautious when you open the gate and don't let the dog out. I carry these chicken chew rawhide treats on my truck. Again, I'm on Amazon. You can get a bag like what a hundred of them or two hundred of them in there, and they're chicken flavored rawhide, they're not super large, but they're fairly decent size. And what I do is when I have an account where the dog tends to be a problem where it can bolt, I'll get one of these rawhides and I'll toss it in there, and a dog will go for it. Then I'll get in and out of the gate, no problem. And I make sure I latch the gate. It's one of those things where you're technically at fault because you let the dog out, and you just want to make sure that you do whatever you can not to let the dogs get out. And I've had, I would say, over the years, more than half a dozen dogs get out on me for whatever reason. Carelessness, the gate didn't latch when I thought it did, or when I opened the gate, the dog bolted out. So it may happen. Just realize that you can get the dog, don't worry, you'll you'll get it. It'll get tired. The dog knows its neighborhood usually if it goes for walks, and so it tends to run, but then it goes to areas to mark territory, it'll slow down. It doesn't really realize what it's doing in some cases, just out for a walk basically, and so you can usually trap it. Sometimes a neighbor will help you, but I find that the small little dogs are the ones that are the hardest because they're so fast and they'll kind of stop and slow down and then bolt a different direction. So it's one of those things where hopefully nothing ever happens to the dog on your route if it does get out, and something to of course be aware of and be extra cautious of this happening, and it can definitely ruin your day. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those on my website, swimmingprolearning.com. On the banner, click on the podcast icon. There'll be a drop-down menu with 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 good rest of your day and God bless.