Summer Pool Care Tips That Save Time And Money

Summer doesn’t just make pools warmer. It makes them harder to manage, easier to mess up, and way more visible to the people paying the bill. We talk through what really changes once swim season arrives: heavier bather loads, more sunscreen and organics, faster chlorine loss, and a sharp rise in “can you come today?” customer calls before parties and weekends.

We also get practical about keeping water clear when conditions get extreme. You’ll hear our take on “chlorine enhancers” that help chlorine last longer by preventing algae and reducing what chlorine has to fight, including borates (around 30 to 50 ppm), mineral options like PoolRx (with key cautions around high chlorine when it’s dissolving), and the one-two punch of enzymes plus phosphate removal. If you’ve been chasing cloudy water, fighting recurring algae, or watching free chlorine disappear midweek, these tools can act like an insurance policy during peak heat.

Then we zoom out to the summer math: why the common “lose 1 ppm of free chlorine per day” idea can fall apart under a high UV index, warm water, and active swimmers, and how to use a CYA-based minimum target like the 7.5% guideline to stay ahead of problems. If you want stronger summer pool maintenance habits, better chlorine stability, and fewer emergency cleanups, this one is built for you.

Subscribe for more pool care and pool service pro tips, share this with a friend who’s battling summer water, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s the biggest problem you see every summer: algae, low chlorine, or customer pressure?

Summer pool care gets harder because swim season changes everything, from bather load to UV burn-off to how fast chlorine can drop. We share the practical tools we use to keep pools clear under pressure, including chlorine enhancers, smarter chlorine targets, and a mindset that expects more customer calls.  
• swim season timing shifts and why that affects pool routes  
• bather load as the biggest summer variable for water balance  
• chlorine enhancers that help prevent algae forming  
• borates at roughly 30 to 50 ppm as an algaestat and pH buffer  
• PoolRx mineral technology and why high chlorine matters at startup  
• enzymes plus phosphate remover as the one-two punch  
• UV index, warm water, and long days accelerating chlorine loss  
• the 7.5% free chlorine to CYA guideline and how borates can change the target  
• why summer brings more complaints and last-minute party urgency  
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Transcript

Welcome And Summer Pool Focus

0:14

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. Here are some things to keep in mind in the summer as far as pool care goes to make your life easier. And of course, summer adds a whole new wrinkle to pool care. And I'll go over some things to keep in mind or some things you should have in place during the summer season. 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. In my service area, things have changed pretty dramatically over the last four or five years as far as when the summer season actually begins. It used to start late April. I can remember these days clearly where it was really hot out and people were using their pools already. On Memorial Day weekend, it was very common for people to have pool parties. But recently, in the last few years, May has been pretty mild

Coaching Program For Pool Pros

1:21

actually. It almost still feels like fall or winter in some days, you know, where the temperature doesn't get above 60 during the day, and at nighttime it drops back into the 50s. It's kind of strange how that's happened. But in my service area of Southern California, this has been the pattern, which means, of course,

Why Swim Season Keeps Shifting

1:41

that the season starts later, but it also goes longer now. And so in even in October, there's some days that are 90 degrees. And truthfully, in California, you can't really predict the weather because earlier in this year, in February, we had some 90 degree days also, and in March as well. I think we even had 100 degree weather whole week when we were in the 90s or 100 in March. So it's one of those kind of strange things. And of course, if February and March were at 100 or 90 degrees, it's still not considered swim season because the following week will be back in its normal 70s or 60s, and people just generally don't use their pools when it's hot just for a few days. So since our season starts later, I would say in summer for us here would be June 1st all the way through the end of September. Which is interesting because the way the schools are set up now, they actually start school at the beginning of August. I think the first week or so of August is when school starts here in my area, which means that the most families will stop using their pool when the kids go back to school. And it's a really short season now in California, where you have maybe June, July, and August, a three-month season if you're using the calendar when school starts as your gauge. When in the past it used to be May all the way to September was our season. So we went from a five-month season down to about a three-month season where the pool has a potential of being used quite a bit during the summer. The reason why I spend a lot of time talking about this is because pool use is the number one thing that's different in the summer versus the fall, winter, or springtime. And you have to account for pool use on your pool route, and it has to be something that you can manage because heavy pool usage is a big concern when it comes to chemistry, balancing the water in the hot water. The fortunate thing about most pool routes is that you're not gonna have, you know, if you have 80 pools, you're not gonna have all 80 pools being heavily used. Now, during COVID, that was a whole different story. I think the pool usage went up, you know, tremendously during that time. But people are back to normal now where they're pretty busy traveling, doing things. But there are a lot of accounts that will have heavy usage, so

Bather Load Changes Everything

4:07

you have to account for that. The fact that you have to really be mindful of the pool usage now versus in the winter time when you're not worrying about it. So, how does this change how you manage the pools? Well, it changes in many ways, and the number one thing to keep in mind is that the chlorine level needs to be at a certain level to be effective. Now, I'll mention here the enhancers. I was gonna save that for later, but I think it's important that I talk about enhancers now and when to put them in the pool. Of course, before the swim season starts, you should start using these enhancers, put them in the pool so that you can utilize their full potential. When I say enhancers, what exactly am I talking about? I'm talking about products that make the chlorine last longer in the pool. And the term chlorine enhancer is what I'll use here. There are several of these that I really recommend. The first one would be borates in the water, the 50 parts per million. You can get borate boric acid powder from my source is it's the company I get it from is called doodadesel.com, and I go on their site and just put boric acid and I order the 40-pound buckets

Chlorine Enhancers Before Swim Season

5:17

and they get delivered by FedEx. So doodadesel.com is my source for borates. You can get borate test strips on Amazon, and what you want to do is make sure that you are at 30 to 50 parts per million in borates, and this will be something that will allow the chlorine to be much more effective in the pool in the

Borates For Algae Control And pH

5:37

summer. And the way the borates enhance the chlorine is that they're an algae stat, so algae doesn't form when you have borates in the water. It's also a pH buffer, so the pH won't rise as rapidly with the borates in the water. And I like adding it with boric acid powder, it's pretty simple and easy, just broadcast it in the pool, and that is how you would add the borates at that point. And it's one of the enhancers that's pretty easy to use that has really no effect on nothing really affects it, or it doesn't have any side effects, I should say, for the water. The next enhancer that I would recommend would be the Pool RX. It's a mineral technology. They basically put it in your skimmer pump basket, and for four to six months, you don't have to worry about algae in the pool. In most cases, algae won't form because of the minerals, the copper in there will keep algae out of the pool. There's a couple cautions with the product, of course, if you're using it in season, is that you don't want the chlorine level to go above three parts per million when you first put it in the water, because the high chlorine can interact with the copper and cause the kind of green hair effect that you hear about. And that's really it because the high chlorine reacts with the copper. But if you put the polar X in there, even when there's bathers that weak, as long as the chlorine level stays low under three parts per million, in my opinion, that's a safe spot.

PoolRx Minerals And Key Cautions

6:55

You don't have it at 10 parts per million, that's not going to happen, and you don't have to worry about any kind of side effects. And typically, if you put it in the pool with elevated chlorine, let's say it's at 10 parts per million, if no one swims in there for a week or so, that of course won't be a problem because the minerals will have time to dissolve and solution at that point. But the pull rex is an easy alternative to borates that you can put into the pool that's going to help the chlorine be extended during the summertime and help with those heavy bather loads as well. And the third enhancer is a combination of two products: a a phosphate remover and an enzyme. And they do sell blended products with both of these in there already together. I call it the one-two punch. Basically, you have the enzymes that help eliminate the organics in the water, and you have the phosphate removers that eliminate the food source for algae, which are phosphates, and this will also make the chlorine more effective because the chlorine is not being consumed or used up, fighting both of these things in the water, microalgae and the organics in there. And this is something that you can easily add to the pool at any time. So those three are my go-to enhancers, and the reason why they're effective is

Phosphate Remover Plus Enzymes Combo

8:14

because they prevent algae in the pool, basically. All three of them prevent algae from forming. So the worst thing you can be battling in the summertime is algae in the pool, besides the higher bather load, which uses up the chloride rapidly and also has an effect on the water quality, suntan lotion, and all this is going into the system. That's why the enzymes are really great in the summer. But it also will allow you with these enhancers to keep the chlorine pretty steady and level, even with a heavy bather load in the pool. It's like an insurance policy. If you don't use enhancers on your pool route, there's a good chance that after a heavy bather load, a party, or a lot of you know, four or five kids in the pool, that that chlorine will zero out in that pool, and then a couple days later algae will start forming, and then a couple days later you'll have you know a cloudy pool with algae in the pool. How do I know this? I've gone through this before, and this is exactly what happens when you have a heavy use pool without enhancers, and the chlorine level goes to zero. What else happens in the summertime? Well, two things happen in conjunction with each other that make summertime more challenging, especially in certain areas like Texas. This is very common, and that is the longer days with longer sun exposure, Arizona would be in this position as well, and the extremely high UV index. Bob Lowry has stated many times in various podcasts with me that you're going to lose about one part per million of free chlorine per day, just as a normal thing. So if you start the week on Monday with 10 parts a million, by the time you get to Friday, you're going to be at five parts a million. But there are some factors that will actually cause this to accelerate, and that is a high UV index, is one of them. Warm water, temperature, bathers, all this

UV Index And Rapid Chlorine Loss

10:09

will affect it. The one part per million is basically it just it is based on the fact that the pool is really not being used much and you're in normal weather conditions. So if you have a high bather load, a you know warm water from the sun heating it up, and then you have a high UV index, that free chlorine level is going to drop much more rapidly than one part per million. I had someone email me from Texas one time, and he had a 30,000 gallon pool, and he was putting in like one and a half, two gallons of liquid chlorine daily in the peak of summer, and he was like, I don't know what's going on here. I've been putting this chlorine in every single day, and every day it's like at one part per million, and when I added it, it goes up to eight or nine parts per million, then it's back down to one the next day. Well, the UV index, and of course, his bather load from his kids were so high that that chlorine was being used up pretty dramatically every day. And this is not unheard of in those areas where the UV index is really high, and you have long summer days, that the chlorine level does not hold in the pool really well. And that again, why the enhancers are definitely important in those situations, but it's not anything unusual. There's no water leak, there's nothing wrong with your cyaneric acid level, it's just the fact that the chlorine is being used up because even if you have cyaneric acid in there, it slows down the degradation from the sun's UV rays, but it doesn't stop it. It's not like a force field, you know. The cyaneric acid, I think people have this impression that it's like this blue force field across the pool, and then the sun's UV rays bounce right off of it. In reality, the higher the UV index, the quicker the coin is still going to burn off in the pool. It just slows down the burn rate, it doesn't eliminate it entirely. So keep that in mind that in the summertime, that one part per million per day equation kind of goes out the window, and you may be losing two or three or four parts per million per day, depending on, of course, the use of the pool, UV index, and the water temperature in that pool. I will say this that the 7.5% formula that Bob Lowry preached before in the past and still is something that we use in the industry to some extent as a minimum gauge of how much free chlorine should be in the water. So I should say that if you have a pool with a cyaneric acid at 100 parts per million, you would need to keep the free chlorine at 8 parts per million per day. If you had a pool with 80 parts per million of cyaneric acid and do this, multiply that by 7.5%, you would need to keep six parts per million of free chlorine in the pool each day. Now the nice thing about the enhancers, and Bob Lowry only had borates as part of his formula, but I'm almost positive that you can

Using The 7.5% Chlorine Rule

12:59

extend this part of the equation out to cut to cover the other two types of enhancers that I mentioned here, because they do have a similar effect that borates have on the water. But with Bob Lowry's uh theory that the borates are helping enhance the chlorine, that percentage goes to 5%. So if you use that percentage, if you had a hundred parts a million of cyaneric acid in the pool, you would just need to keep five parts a million of free chlorine in the pool. So the enhancers kind of pay for themselves by saving chlorine usage and dosing. You won't have to add as much chlorine to the pool with the enhancers. But I will say that they do help and they're a great insurance policy. I can't tell you how many times I've been to a pool where they had it heated to 90 degrees, didn't tell me they were having a party. I had a you know, I had the borates in there at 50 parts per million, and the chlorine zeroed out. And when I got there, I read zero chlorine, but the pool looked fine. It didn't even look like it was cloudy, or actually it looked like it still had chlorine in it, but it didn't because it got zeroed out. But the borates at 50 parts per million kept the algae from forming in the pool, kind of giving me a grace period to get the chlorine level back up, and that's why it's so crucial because one thing in the summer is the heat. Just about every part of the country in the summer heats up, and this is definitely uncomfortable to work in. What makes it even more uncomfortable is the fact you get to a pool and it's completely covered in algae, and you're spending an extra 15 minutes there with a six-inch steel brush, brushing the pool down, treating it for algae, and then you get to a pool later in the day, and the same thing happens. And so you have three or four pools that you're brushing and fighting algae in. That's going to wear you out. You multiply that multiply that by five days a week, and your summer becomes very long and very tiring. But with the enhancers, you can eliminate a lot of that extra labor and extra worry, as that will allow the chlorine to be much more effective in the pool. One last thing I should mention is that in the summer, customers notice they have a pool. It may sound like a no-brainer, but most of the year you're coasting, the customer does is just paying you, and they don't never go in their backyard. This is kind of very common here, you know, from maybe late October all the way through till March. Customers just don't know they have a pool basically. So no one bothers you. You don't have any issues with customers complaining. But in the summertime, the complaints increase by like a thousand percent. So if there's a pool that's dirty or has algae in it, I remember this one and I mentioned this before. I got a call from a customer in July that his pool had algae in it. You know, he was complaining and he wanted me there right away to treat it. So I get to the pool.

Summer Complaints And Party Pressure

15:47

I thought it was an emergency because sometimes it really is an emergency, and the pool's covered with algae. I get there and I see literally maybe a three-inch sliver of algae, mustard algae, on one of the pool steps. And you know, he was calling and complaining and just basically, you know, wanting this taken care of because it was an emergency, and it was like a little sliver of algae. Didn't bother me too much because I felt a little more relief than anything. Yes, it bothered me that he called me out there for something as trivial as that. But those calls aren't usually trivial in the summertime, and you're gonna get a lot more of these calls about algae in the pool, the pool not looking good, there's a party coming up the next weekend, they want the pool looking great. All these things will multiply in the summertime. So you have to be ready for this and have the mindset that in the summer you're going to have to really turn it up and you're gonna have to be on in the summer for all of these different variables. The higher bather load, the longer days, the high UV index, the heat, and more customer calls and more parties in the summer. And thankfully, here our season has kind of shortened a little bit because of the weather change and the early start of the school year, but every service area is different. And of course, pools can be used year-round here basically if they need it, if they wanted to be. And our seasons have have definitely extended past September. Used to be like after Labor Day, the pool use dropped off like a rock, but there's still a lot of pool use after Labor Day here, all the way into October. It's just one of those things where the season has changed a little bit, but summer is still hitting every year, and these problems of summertime are very common, and they're usually the same everywhere across the nation. And it's something to be aware of that summertime definitely is a little bit different than other times during the year. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, going to the banner, and clicking on the podcast icon on top. And from there, you'll have a menu of over 1900 podcasts to download and listen to it at your leisure. 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.