Pool Service Knowledge Vol 4: Real-World Fixes & Lessons

The fastest way to level up as a pool service pro is to steal the little “route truths” that only show up after years in the field. We walk through Pool Guy knowledge volume four with practical pool maintenance tips that cut callbacks, reduce equipment failures, and save real time every week.

We start at the skimmer because that’s where so many problems begin. Skimmer lids can hide surprises, including black widow spider nests in the recessed top area, so we talk about simple skimmer safety habits that protect you on route. Then we get tactical: how to identify skimmer brands by the lid markings, why older locking skimmer baskets can become a headache, and why skimmer baskets often float up when the pump shuts off.

From there, we focus on keeping debris out of the pump and avoiding unnecessary pump basket cleanouts. We break down the “river rock” trick to hold the basket down, why size matters for safety, and how skimmer socks (skimmer filters) can catch fine debris before it reaches the pump.

We wrap with equipment-room wins: an easier way to get large filter lids seated, why RV-grade silicone spray can outperform messy lubricants for filter tank O-rings, what to do when a lid still leaks, and how to protect your arms from fiberglass shards on aging filter lids using long sleeves or a simple plastic wrap barrier. 

• spotting and avoiding black widows under skimmer lids  
• identifying skimmer brands by the lid markings and carrying the right spares  
• replacing older locking Waterway baskets with standard baskets to prevent jams  
• stopping skimmer baskets from floating with a 2.5 to 3 inch river rock  
• zip-tying PoolRx units so they do not get tossed during basket cleanouts  
• reducing pump basket cleanouts with skimmer socks and better leaf canisters  
• quick pump priming using a large filter air bleeder on compatible filters  
• seating heavy filter lids using RV-grade silicone spray on tank O-rings  
• handling older Hayward filter O-ring quirks and preventing leaks  
• avoiding fiberglass itch with long sleeves

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Transcript

Welcome And Coaching Offer

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm gonna talk to you more about the pool guy knowledge, and this is volume four. This is where I go over little things that you learn out in the field, of course, over time and experience. And these episodes are designed to give you kind of a jump start on that, to give you that experience without having to experience it in a way. 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. This first one is about skimmer lids and skimmer baskets. And I'll go over this for you. First thing I'll say is that whoever designed the skimmer lids must be a big fan of black widows because they left like a little circle in the top of most of these lids, which is a perfect nest already built in for the Black Widow to put its eggs in there and live right in that little circle on the top of the lid. So be careful when you take these skimmer lids off that you don't get bit by the black widows that are in there, at least in Southern California, is a huge problem. And I've actually been bit by one. I had the skimmer lid on the ground and it actually bit me on my leg, which I I must have just eaten or something because it wasn't too bad. It just was painful and I didn't have you know really bad symptoms. But you don't want to get bit by a black widow, so be aware that those skimmer lids they're they're a good housing or a good home for the black widows just by the design of them. And then speaking of skimmer lids, always carry extra skimmer lids in your truck. They have generic ones, but if you have a lot of them on your route with Penta or Hayward skimmers, now the way to find out what manufacturer made that skimmer, the lid has the manufacturer's label on it. So if it's a Hayward skimmer, it'll have an H on top. Pentair will have the word Pentair on there. If it's a waterway, it'll have waterway on there. So to identify the skimmer manufacturer is really easy. The skimmer lid is the giveaway. Now, of course, if the skimmer lid's generic has been replaced by a generic one, you won't have that kind of hint. But most of the time the original skimmer lid is intact, and when the skimmer lid breaks, most pool pros or homeowners will buy the actual skimmer lid that fits their particular skimmer. There are some fancy decks with you know fancy skimmer lids that match the deck itself, but for the most part you can find out the skimmer lid based on the manufacture. So if you have a lot of pen tear, carry some pentare lid or carry at least one pentair lid, one haywood lid, and maybe a waterway if they're popular. I'll touch on the waterway skimmer baskets first. They're really popular in Southern California because waterway is here in my region. So a lot of builders put in waterway skimmers, probably because they're inexpensive. I wouldn't say they're cheap, cheaply made, but a lot of the older waterway have these locking baskets that kind of lock into the skimmer. Waterway, of course, fixed that with the newer ones. They don't have this thing, this locking basket going on. But the older ones, if the basket locks in, sometimes it gets jammed in there and you can't get it out. So the first thing I do with a waterway skimmer is I replace that basket with a standard skimmer basket, and that way you don't have to worry about it locking in. Which leads me to the second tip about skimmer baskets. One thing you have to know is that a lot of them will float up when the pool turns off, and then leaves will get past when leaves will go into the pump basket when it turns back on because the the skimmer basket floats up maybe two inches. The leaves are floating in the skimmer, they start to settle down, and they'll settle down on the rim where the skimmer basket had kind of lifted up, and then when you turn on the pool, those leaves go right into the pump basket. The skimmer lid goes back down, and it's kind of like a losing battle basically because every week you're cleaning out the pump basket because the skimmer basket is floating up, letting leaves pass by and get into the pump basket. The easiest way to do this is to find a large rock. I like the river rocks you get at Home Depot. You can buy a small bag of these or go to a gravel yard and pick up some of these. Now you want to make sure the rock is larger than two inches in diameter. So I like using like a flat two and a half, three inch rock, and it doesn't have to be super large, but it's it's heavy enough to keep the skimmer basket down in there. So get these river rocks, they're really great to have and put in the skimmer baskets. The reason why you want to have a rock two and a half inches to three inches in diameter is because the skimmer opening is one and a half inches. So if anything happens with the basket, if air gets into the the filter and then when you turn off the pool, air comes back out to this to the suction line, it's going to push the skimmer basket up. And if it does tip over the basket, if the rock is bigger than one and a half inches, it's not going to go into the skimmer basket and clog it up. So you don't want to use anything that's going to be able to fit into the skimmer hole at the bottom of the basket. So two and a half, three inches. A flat river rock is perfect. I use them all the time. I have a bunch of them in my backyard because I have river rocks as part of my hardscaping. All this grab want to put it in the skimmer basket, and that essentially holds the skimmer basket down and it won't float up when the pool turns off. That'll eliminate those that leaf debris from going into the pump basket and having you to go clean the pump basket all the time. You want to also carry a few extra of these river rocks on your truck because invariably the customer will empty out their pump basket one day or do something and they'll dump it out with a rock in there. I've seen it happen before, and then there goes that river rock. So bring extra ones, put them in there. Customers like to mess with the skimmer basket sometimes when I see it full and they'll dump it out. They won't even know there's a rock in there, and this is something to remember. Now, if you are using the pool RX unit in the skimmer basket instead of the pump basket, make sure you zip tie it into the skimmer basket or tie it in with a little whatever the thing for the bread. I don't know what those are called. And make sure you tie that pool RX into the skimmer basket because if the customer goes to dump it out, they'll dump out the pool RX unit as well. So simply just zip tie it into the skimmer basket so it's locked in there for six months, or use something else to tie it in there. I have a buddy that hired a new employee and he's a big Polar X fan, so he had he had like 20 of these units in a skimmer basket. So the first week the new employee was there, he actually emptied all the skimmer baskets, and you guessed it. He threw away all the Polar X units that were in those baskets, so it's very frustrating. And so tie those in there and that'll save you a lot big headache. Now, this one kind of ties into pump baskets, and one thing that you want to do is you really don't want to ever empty a pump basket out. It's just one of those things where it just saves you time and it makes the pool run a lot better. And I always live by the motto, why do something that you don't need to do? And opening up the pump basket every week is something that takes time because you have to reprime it, you have to get a bucket of water, put it in there, and that just takes time. And by the way, there's a quick way to prime the pump basket if you have a Penthair FNS Plus or clean and clear filter with the large air bleeder on top. It's the air bleeder assembly, it's it's black, it's got like a half-inch opening, and you just kind of open it and it lets out tons of water. Well, the good thing about this air bleeder, it only really works with the Pentare air bleeders. I think the Aquastar pipeline filter has the same one as well. It's gotta be a big one with the half-inch opening or quarter inch opening, whatever size that is. So, what you want to do is you'll take the pump basket lid off, then you'll empty the pump basket, put the pump basket back in, put the lid back on in, back on the pump basket. I'm talking too fast here, and then you want to go ahead and open up the air bleeder or air relief assembly, and air will be sucked in the top of it, and water will actually come out of the filter and fill up the pump basket, and then go ahead and turn on the the f the pump and leave the air bleeder open. When water shoots out, close the air bleeder, and you prime the pump without having to get a bucket of water to pour it in there. It doesn't work with the little tiny air bleeders. There's not enough air, and not enough water comes out of the filter, only the big Penta ones. But in order to avoid all of this, you just want to make sure that every account has that river rock in there, the the three-inch river rock, and then you put a skimmer sock or a filter sock in the skimmer basket itself. You can order these on Amazon, you can order like they come like with like a 20-pack of them, and just put these on your skimmer baskets. They go on, it's like a really thin material, and this will stop all debris from going into the pump basket, even little particle debris. It's great, and I highly recommend it. In conjunction with that, if you have a suction side cleaner and using a canister, I really recommend using the pent tear or the larger haywood canister with the mesh bag that keeps all the small particle debris also from going into the pump basket as well. And I wouldn't use the the Hayward, what is it, the 560 or even the zodiac one because it has small little holes that debris can go through. Just the Pentair leaf trap or the Hayward, I think it's the 530. Use those primarily and no leaf debris will get into the pump basket. And you would rarely, if ever, have to clean out the pump basket because no debris is getting in there. You have the skimmer sock or skimmer filter in the skimmer basket, and you're using a mesh bag with the canister with a suction style cleaner. Why don't I like cleaning out pump baskets? Well, basically that's a fail point. If you open up the pump basket, sometimes the little o-ring is worn out and you can't get it back on correctly, especially those large jandy stealth or the large haywood pumps with a gigantic wet end. You really have trouble with those thin o-rings. And so why even open them and have that fail point when you don't have to open them? And sometimes you'll try to prime it, it won't work. And these are all fail points that you create yourself because you opened the pump basket because you didn't have a filter sock or skimmer sock, or you didn't have the canister with the suction cleaner with the mesh bag. This one here is for those that clean large filters, like here in Southern California. We have the quad cartridge filters, large DE filters, and one of the things that you'll find yourself having trouble with sometimes is getting the filter lid back on. Now, these are pretty heavy fiberglass lids, they're not like the single bullet cartridge filters you find in Florida and other parts of the country, you know, 100 square foot cartridge filter. Those lids are relatively easy to get back on with really not much effort. These large heavy fiberglass lids can be a pain to get back on. Now, one thing that I've done and I've moved away from a long time ago was using magic lube on the O-rings. Now, magic lube is messy, yes, it's a good product, but I find that it was really ineffective. It just got my hands all black and it just was a mess to work with. And so someone told me one day to use silicone spray, and so that's what I've been using for probably the last 10, 12, 15 years now. And if you ask a scientist, and this is something one of them was on my route, he told me that the silicone actually massages massages the rubber and makes it last longer and is healthier for it than the any kind of other lube. But don't just use any silicone lube, it has to be RV grade. I'm not sure what that even means. I don't have an RV, but if you go into AutoZone or Walmart, look on the aisle where it says where it has this the lube, and make sure you buy a can of RV grade silicone lube. This works great for these O-rings, so spray it on, and I find you're gonna change a lot less tank O-rings as well, and it's really effective in getting the lid back on really easily. So I I'm pretty liberal with it. I spray quite a lot of it on there, and I really have very little trouble with these large fiberglass lids once you spray and lube up the O-ring really well with a silicone spray. And now, if you can't get the lid on, a lot of times, even after you lube it up and you're still having trouble, a lot of times the O-ring is worn out, and changing the O-ring will solve this problem. Like 90% of the time, changing the O-ring will solve this problem, or I guess maybe 95% of the time, or 99% of the time I would say. Change that O-ring, lube it up again, and then get that lid on, and it should go on no problem at that point. Now there are a few weird things with these filter lids, and it's particular with the Hayward brand. If you have an older Hayward filter, when you when you change the O-ring on the old Hayward filters, they tend to leak. It's kind of weird, but you know, the Hayward Pro Grid filters or any of the older Hayward filters, I would say anything probably made in the last or prior to the last five years. There's a lot of trouble with these O-rings, and you put a new one on, you loop it up, and this thing starts leaking. It's just so weird that that would happen. So a lot of times I don't throw away the old Hayward O-rings right away. I put the new O-ring on and make sure it works. And if I get a leak on it and starts dripping, what I do is I just take that new O-ring off, and then I take the old Hayward O-ring and I turn it inside out. I basically kind of turn the O-ring inside out, then I put it back on the tank, and it seems to seal and hold better for another couple years. It's weird that Hayward has that problem. You'll probably run into it out in the field if you haven't, but the Hayward new O-ring leaking still, strange. I prefer Pentair filters and Jandy filters. Any day of the week over the Hayward filters, anyway. I don't really like the Hayward, the clamp they use on there. I prefer the Jandy and Penthare ones as well, anyway. So Pentair definitely is the number one choice in my area for filters still, and really you don't have much trouble getting those lids on. Once you lube up the O-ring or replace the O-ring with a new one, it's really easy to get those lids back on. And it's just a matter of kind of physics. You put it on one end and then kind of use your body, and then you press down with your body kind of holding on to the fiberglass lid on the other side of it. It takes a little bit of effort and strategy, but once you get one end on, you can kind of reach around and push the other end down on there, and then put the clamp on right away and kind of use that to tighten it. And it's it's a pretty effective method of putting that lid back on. And with the new O-ring and the silicone lube, you should have no trouble at all. One last tip about these fiberglass lids, and this is something that you're gonna learn the hard way sometimes, is that as the filter tops get older, the fiberglass starts to kind of degrade, and the coating on there is gone basically. And so you're gonna see just the fiberglass on top. And if you're cleaning this filter and putting the lid back on, what's gonna happen is that these little shards get into your arms, and then you're gonna start itching and you're gonna start feeling them for a few days, and that's the fiberglass particles actually going into your skin. One way to prevent this from happening or to avoid this, is to wear long sleeve shirts when you do filter cleaning. So I wear button-up long sleeve shirts, I roll up my sleeves when I'm working, but when I'm working on an old filter like this, I'll roll my sleeves down, button them up at my wrist, and that way I have this protection. Another trick, and this is from actually a fiberglass pool company, they told me this trick. Go ahead and wrap the top of the filter lid with the cellophane, you know, the Costco wrap that you wrap food with and put it in your refrigerator. Get a roll of this and wrap the entire lid in the cellophane, and that way it creates another coating basically on top of the lid, and you're not gonna get these shards in your arm. So I recommend doing that. That's a great way to kind of extend the life of the old filter without getting all these fiberglass shards in your arm every time you clean it. And you'll find this to be true out there on your route. If you haven't experienced it yet, you're going to get those itchy arms with the fiberglass shards in there. And you want to avoid this by, of course, long sleeves or wrapping that lid in the cellophane, and it'll save you a lot of pain, anguish, and frustration for sure. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, swingingpoolearning.com. The banner, there's a podcast icon. Click on that, and there'll be a drop down menu of over 1900 podcasts for you to listen to. And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at PoolGuyCoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a rest of your week. God bless.