Stop Wasting Time: Pool Route Optimization Guide

Your pool service route doesn’t have to feel like a daily sprint that ends in burnout. I walk through how I speed up a pool route the right way by protecting the golden rule: never move so fast that you sacrifice pool cleaning quality, water balance, or your business reputation. The real wins come from removing friction around the work, not cutting corners at the pool.

We get practical on route efficiency and time management for pool technicians: starting earlier, fueling at the right time, and staging your truck the night before so you can roll immediately. I also share how to stop losing chunks of your day to supplier runs by using delivery or sending orders ahead, plus why carrying a smart inventory of spare pool parts is a route-saving habit when you service common equipment like pumps, chlorinators, and pool cleaners.

Then we hit the biggest time thief of all: algae. I explain how a filter cleaning schedule before peak season, along with chlorine enhancers like borates, PoolRx, phosphate removal, and enzyme treatment, can keep pools algae-free and keep your weekly stops predictable. We also talk about keeping free chlorine aligned with cyanuric acid so you’re not stuck brushing and re-treating the same pool every week.

Finally, we cover how vacuuming expectations can quietly wreck a schedule. Putting “vacuum when necessary” in a pool service agreement, leaning on automatic pool cleaners, and investing in faster vacuum systems can cut major minutes without leaving a dirty pool behind. 

• starting earlier to finish earlier without rushing
• fueling and staging the truck the night before
• reducing supply-house time with delivery or emailed orders
• carrying the right spare parts based on route equipment
• preventing algae with scheduled filter cleanings and chlorine enhancers
• using a minimum free chlorine to cyanuric acid approach to stay algae-free
• setting vacuum expectations with a service agreement
• leaning on automatic cleaners, spot vacuuming, and faster vacuum systems
• dropping time-sink pools that break the schedu

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Transcript

Welcome And The Golden Rule

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Welcome to the Pool Game Planet Show. In this episode, I'm gonna go over some ways to speed up your pool service route. Time is money, of course, and of course, you don't want to break the golden rule out there, which is don't go so fast to the pools that you sacrifice quality, and of course, you're sacrificing your business reputation. But there are ways to speed up your pool route effectively without doing that. 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. Let me start with some time optimizers for you that really add up over the course of a month. And this is kind of how you set your routine. Now, a lot of pool pros, when I was training, this is way back in 1988, it was an old timer that trained me. He wore slacks, which I took that, and I wore slacks as well. Button up shirt, I took that as well. I'm kind of an old timer in that particular matter because that's kind of how I learned how to dress and present yourself out there. And he would like stop to get gas, he would stop for lunch for an hour. And my personality, I'm more of a go, go, go kind of person. I've always been that way, and so I found this to be you know, not I would say irritating, but not my method of how I would do things when I was on my own. And certainly when I started working for him and I had my truck, I didn't stop for gas in the middle of the day, nor did I stop for lunch and spend an hour there, nor did I go into the supply place and talk for you know 20-30 minutes to the person behind the counter. That's not my personality. I like to get things done and to be more efficient. So I think the first thing is kind of know yourself, know what kind of person you are. Some people move at a different pace than others. You know, when I go to the grocery store, I'm like hunting and I'm getting everything done, and I'm just going through everything, and I'll move from one line to another if I look like it's moving faster, and invariably that line will actually go slower. And so that's kind of my personality, and that's kind of how I do business out there. I don't really waste a lot of time. Start early, so you know, at the crack of dawn is usually when I get out there and start working, and it's something that I've been doing for pretty much my whole life. I'm an early riser and I like to get things done. You know, I couldn't imagine starting the pool route at 9 a.m. like some people do. To me, I'm already done with like five or six pools by then, and you know, by the middle of the afternoon, I'm done completely. Another time saver again is when do you fuel up your vehicle? You know, I like to fuel it up at a time when I'm not in the middle of my route because to me that's a time waster. Usually on the way home, I'll fill up the truck, and that way the next day I'm ready. Also, I like to organize my truck the evening before so that I have everything for the next day. I feel like it slows me down too much if I get up in the morning and then I have to load my truck with chemicals or whatever I need to do for that day for the next, you know, if you're doing filter cleaning, put these things on your truck. I like doing all that in the evening to eliminate doing that in the morning, and that way I get in my truck and I go. And as far as stopping for lunch, that's something that I really never do. I'll just bring a sandwich or something or a snack in the truck, and then I'll eat an early dinner because really I don't like stopping and spending 45 minutes to an hour eating, and you know, that's it's just not something that I do. Now, you may of course feel like you need that break and it breaks up your day, and that's perfectly fine. Again, everyone's different. You want to do your pool route based on your personality and kind of how you're wired. You know, there's people I've trained before in the in the past when I was working for companies, and some people were just like me that were go go go at the pool. Others others took forever to do everything, and it was like, come on, can you do that a little faster? But then I realized as I got a little bit wiser and older that everyone's kind of wired differently, they have a different pace of life, and they're not always gonna be go go go. Now, with that in mind, you have your supplies you have to get eventually. A lot of times it's really more convenient to have them delivered and not to be waiting at your supplier to get things. If you do have to go in, of course, email the order in that way everything is sitting there on the dock for you, so you're not wasting time in line to get your supplies. These are all practical things that will speed up your your pool route without really doing anything at the pool to cut corners, you're just kind of rearranging how you operate your day so that you can get these done things done in a more rapid fashion. Let me go over a few things that do slow you down out there that you can usually eliminate in most cases. One thing that would really slow you down, and one thing that slowed me down out there was getting to a pool where I needed to put a part on and I did not have the part on my truck. This is like really aggravating to someone who's like me that you know an interruption like this is frustrating because now I have to go get go to the supplier or stop by Leslie's and pick up a pressure gauge, or I have to get an air relief valve, or I have to get chlorinating tubing because the inline chlor offline chlorinator tubing is cracked and I didn't have the six-foot spare black tubing on my truck. So, one thing that I'd be have become obsessed with, and you can my wife will testify to this, is that I have so many spare parts I could probably open a pool store with all the stuff in my garage on the side of the house, you know, extra pool hoses, all the parts I need, o-rings for everything, you know, baskets for every pump I have on the route. All these things are essential because again, if you have to stop in the middle of your day because you don't have this part on your truck, go pick it up and come back and start your day again. It really slows you down, and it's really avoidable because you should have a list. You know, if you have an app like Skimmer, you should have all the equipment in your app so you know what you have at each pool, and you should know what spare parts you're gonna need. If you have a lot of hayboard pumps, you should have o-rings for those pumps. If you have a lot of rainbow chlorinators, you should of course have the elbows and the tubing for those, you know, the lid o-rings, all this should be on your truck. It's not a mystery what equipment you have out there, what cleaners you have on your route. You know, if you have cleaners with diaphragms, have spare diaphragms in your truck. If you have cleaners to, of course, have plenty of universal hoses, you can change them out. If let's say a raccoon bites three hoses, and if you don't believe me, raccoons are notorious for biting cleaner hoses, and you'll get to a stop and you'll hear this, you hear air being sucked in. You know, you have a pool pool cleaner. I was gonna say pool Vrenougan right there. That's dating myself, but you have a Hayward pool cleaner or aquanut, and you know, you get there and you hear the hissing noise, and you look at the hoses, and there's bite marks in there. Chances are if you're in an area like mine, the raccoons have been biting the pool hoses, so you should have some spare hoses so you can just put those on and keep the cleaner running in the pool. Another thing that will slow you down out there, and this is something that will slow you down tremendously out there, is pools with algae in it. Now, this may sound like circular logic. You know, if you have pools with no algae, you're going to get through your day quickly. But if you have some pools with algae in it, it's going to slow you down. And the best way to prevent that is to not have any pools on your route with algae in them. Now, this is really easy to actually accomplish, and there's lots of things you can do to make this happen. I think the number one thing you can do to make sure that algae is not forming in pools is to have your filter cleanings on a specific time to where before the season starts, you're cleaning that filter out, and then while when the season is near the end, you clean the filter. So in my area, that's February and March, and then at the end of the season, that's September, October, when you're doing another filter clean, and that seems to be really effective. Now there are some members of my group that do it every four months, and this seems to be much more effective than every six months. Whatever you need to do to make sure that the filter is running effectively before the season starts is critical. If you start cleaning the filters in May or June, that's too late and you're gonna run into some algae problem for sure. The secondary thing you can do is to use an enhancer in the pools, a chlorine enhancer of some type. Borase to 50 parts per million, pull RX in the pool, phosphate and enzyme treatment, something that's going to make the chlorine more effective in the pool, especially in the summertime, goes a really long way in preventing algae in that pool. It's really crucial that you implement these enhancers. And of course, the customer will have to pay for the cost of them, but the pool RX is something you can pass on to them really easily. Bory to 50 parts a million. You can get a bottle of phosphate and enzymes and leave them at the pool, add those weekly, and this will all help the chlorine be much more effective in the water, and prevent algae and almost all the pools out in your pool route. Another thing to consider, of course, is Bob Lowry's formula of 7.5% free chlorine to cyaneric acid. And if you use this formula on your pool route, you're gonna find that your pools will be algae-free, with the enhancers, of course, to help you out. And I think this formula is really important to kind of memorize and write it down. This is the a minimum amount of free chlorine for the cyaneric acid level. So, simply put, if your cyaneric acid level is 100 parts per million in the pool, you're going to need to keep that free chlorine at eight parts per million all week long to prevent algae from growing in that pool in the summer. And believe me, this is really crucial to understand that this is the daily parts from free chlorine parts per million in that pool that's necessary to prevent algae from growing in that pool. Now, if you implement this formula, you have the enhancers. And by the way, Bob Lowry also said that if you have worries at 50 parts per million, you would you can cut this formula down to 5%. And so if the cyaneric acid is at 100% parts per million in the pool, you just need 5 parts million of free chlorine in that pool. So the enhancers do help a lot, and it does reduce the formula percentage that Bob Lowry created. Now, if you don't follow this formula and you have a pool that has 100 parts per million of cyaneric acid and you're keeping it at three parts per million of free chlorine, there's a really high chance that this pool is going to have algae in it every week. It's going to grow algae, it's going to zero out the chlorine a lot, and this is a battle you can't win out there. And if you spend five minutes or ten minutes per pool brushing a pool, treating it for algae, and then you multiply that by five pools on your route, you've wasted about an hour of your time out there. And not only is it frustrating and you're sweating in the summer, it's something that you feel like is out of control. You can have a pool route with no algae in the pools or very minimal algae that you can treat really easily by implementing these things that I talked about here. And this is a huge time saver out there because waste of time brushing algae in a pool, waste of time treating a pool for algae really slows you down out there. You may have noticed I haven't even touched on tightening your pool route up, you know, making it a tighter route, because that really is not something that can be done right away. And sometimes you really don't have a super tight route, and it takes years to develop a route that's really tight. So to me, that's really not a factor at this point, because of course, if you have a tight route where you're doing five pools on one street, you're gonna save a ton of time. But in the real world, you don't really have pools that are like right next to each other all the time, and there is some drive time in between. And unless you're speeding to every stop, you're not gonna really save any time. And tightening a route again is not the easiest thing to do. One other thing you can implement at these pools, however, to save time at these pools, is to have a service agreement. And if you want a copy of mine, I can send it to you. Just email me at Davidpoollearning.com. In this agreement, you want to put in there vacuum when necessary. And this is really important because a lot of times a customer may expect you to vacuum the pool every time, and this is something that will slow you down tremendously out there. Now, of course, having automatic cleaners really helps a lot out there. You know, most of your pools should have them, but if you do vacuum the pool and if you want to put a closet there for your employees to vacuum each time, I would suggest supplying them with a vacuum system. The bottom feeder, the shrimp are great choices. And I would say that if you are vacuuming the pool yourself and you have automatic cleaners in the pool, having something like the bottom feeder or shrimp cleaner is a great way to vacuum the pool rapidly. I really don't think you would want to be pulling out the pool hose and the vacuum head at every stop because that's gonna slow you down. So implementing ways to clean the pool more effectively and efficiently is gonna save a lot of time out there. I'm a big fan of automatic pool cleaners, either a suction side cleaner or a pressure side cleaner. And I'm a big fan of just spot vacuuming those pools and spas on your route, having it in writing that you're gonna vacuum when necessary, because sometimes you just need to skim the bottom with your leaf rake, and that satisfies cleaning the pool in a lot of cases. And you don't want the customer saying, Hey, you were at the pool and I didn't see vacuum it, and that's because you're vacuuming the pool when necessary, and that does save you a lot of time out there. And of course, eliminating those pools that you're spending a lot of time vacuuming, because that does take a lot of time. Can't get away with it with commercial pools, but with residential pools or an automatic cleaner, you can eliminate a lot of time wasted vacuuming a pool. To me, that's one of the biggest time wasters next to brushing the pool for algae. And if you have a portable vacuum system like the bottom feeder or shrimp, especially with the cartridge filter assembly, you can vacuum these pools very rapidly. Now it's an investment for a vacuum system. If you wanted to get a cart vacuum like the Riptide, it's a great vacuum system. It's a big investment, but it definitely will pay off for you because these vacuum systems really speed up your day out there. And I wouldn't discount getting one of these vacuum systems if you don't plan on using it a ton of times. Because when you do need them during the windy season, during times when you have a pool that maybe had tree trimming, the amount of time it saves you is tremendous. So having these in your arsenal is really critical and important in my opinion. So having a vacuum system is something that's gonna speed up your day. Again, it's an investment, but it it'll pay for itself with the amount of time you're gonna save at these pools. If you haven't used one before, you know, if you're an old timer and you're like you don't need one, once you start using the vacuum system, you're gonna the biggest regret you're gonna have is why didn't I get a vacuum system earlier? You know, why did I wait so long to implement this under my pool route? And so a great time saver, in my opinion, is vacuuming a pool with a vacuum system and you know, pretty much eliminating having to bring the vacuum head with the manual vacuum hose back there. The only caveat to this is that if you don't have the bottom feeder shrimp with the cartridge filter assembly, most vacuum systems will only go down to about 60 microns. So there'll be some fine dirt left in the pool, and if you have a suction side cleaner, that'll pick up the dirt no problem, so I wouldn't worry about it. But if you have a pool without a cleaner, you're going to have to vacuum that with a manual vacuum hose eventually because of the fine dirt that's left behind. So keep that in mind that the vacuum system is really most effective if you have a pool with a suction side cleaner in it to pick up the dirt, and not quite effective for long-term use with pools that get a lot of dirt in them. So it's something that's going to be a huge time saver. But you also want to make sure you clean the pool properly. And sometimes you have to eliminate certain pools on your route to make your day run more effectively and efficiently, and that's something you have to consider doing. You know, if there's a pool that takes you 40 minutes to clean, that may be a pool that you drop and get two pools that take 20 minutes to clean. And I think everything you can implement here will not break that golden rule of sacrificing quality for the customer. And that's something that you don't want to do. Speed up your day to the point where you're sacrificing the quality of your pool service business by not checking the chemicals thoroughly, treating algae, doing all the things that are necessary to make your business function as a five-star business, and speeding up your day by implementing small things that you can do, I think is the key, versus cutting corners and you know going to the pool really fast and not cleaning it properly. That's not necessary if you implement certain things that make your day run a lot more smoothly and faster without again cutting corners at each stop that you're servicing. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, swimmingpoolearning.com, clicking on the podcast icon. There'll be a drop down menu with over 1900 podcast view there. And if you're interested in the coaching program I offer, you can learn more at poolguidecoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a rest of your week and God bless.