Building a Rain Season Plan for Your Pool Service Business

Rain can turn a normal pool route into a week of damage control, but it doesn’t have to. We walk through a practical rainy season plan built for pool service pros who want fewer missed stops, fewer angry calls, and fewer “mud pool” nightmares. The starting point is simple and overlooked: research your area’s seasonal rainfall trends and compare them to current forecasts, so you’re planning with data instead of vibes and news hype. 

From there, we get specific about what actually breaks pools during storms. We talk about backyard layouts that funnel dirt into the water, how elevated planters overflow onto the deck, and why even “a little” mud can lead to weeks of filtration issues and fast surface staining from metal-laden soil. We also share a straightforward response plan when mud does happen: filter cleaning, running the system, using clarifier when needed, superchlorination to prevent organic staining, and adding a metal sequestering agent to protect the finish. 

Overflow panic calls are another rainy season classic, so we cover how to educate customers and keep your day from getting hijacked. Most overfilled pools aren’t emergencies, but some properties have grading and drainage problems that can push water toward doors. We explain two simple draining setups customers can use safely: a submersible pump staged at the equipment area or a hose spigot on the plumbing that drains while the pump runs, plus why preventative draining often backfires when forecasts miss. 

We also talk shop on when rain is simply too heavy to work in, how to shift your schedule using the 10-day forecast, and how to keep winter chlorine levels strong enough that a pool can survive a missed week without zeroing out. If you want a calmer rainy season and a smarter pool maintenance routine, listen now, subscribe, and share this with a pool pro who needs a better storm plan.

We break down how rainy weather disrupts pool service and how to plan your route so you miss fewer stops and avoid turning small problems into expensive cleanups. We share practical ways to prevent mud runoff, handle overflow calls calmly, and keep winter chemistry strong enough to survive a missed week.  
• checking five-year average rainfall and current season forecasts to build a game plan  
• setting a written rain policy and clarifying what counts as a rainout  
• walking backyards to spot planter overflow and slope runoff risks  
• preventing mud pools that cause staining and filtration problems  
• responding to mud with filter cleaning, clarifier, superchlorination, and metal sequestration  
• educating customers about overflow and when it is not an emergency  
• using a submersible pump or equipment-pad hose spigot to drain safely  
• deciding how much rain is too much to work in and when to stop mid-route  
• shifting route days around the forecast to avoid repeated missed services  
• keeping winter chlorine levels higher so pools can handle a missed week  
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Transcript

Welcome And Rainy Weather Basics

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Fly Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about your pool service and rainy weather. It's never too early to talk about rain because of course you get the monsoon rains in Arizona, Florida, the humidity causes rain. And here in California, we do get actually some rain in the summer, but we mainly get our rain in the winter time. So I'm going to go over some aspects of rain and your pool route. 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 thing you should do is to find out the average season rainfall for the last five years in your area. This is really critical in kind of getting a game plan. Also, you would want to Google or chat what the predicted rainfall is for the upcoming season. This will get you prepared for it because if you're like me, you're probably pretty obsessed with the weather, and I'm kind of a weather nut. I have like three different

Coaching Program And Support Options

SPEAKER_00 2:16

weather apps and I check all the time. Mainly because we don't like wind here. Wind is really bad in Southern California. We have windy days and the pools get destroyed. But also for the heat, for example, the whole month of you know, this last month of July, we've had almost 100 degree

Use Rain Data To Plan

SPEAKER_00 2:36

weather days every single day of the month. So it's good to know the weather to be prepared for it. And I'll just give you an example of what I researched for my particular area. And you can duplicate this in your area, and I highly recommend you do this so you kind of understand the rainfall predictions and what what you should set yourself up for. So basically, going back the last five years, 2021-2022, we had 12.4 inches of rain in Los Angeles County. 2022-2023, we had 28 inches of rain, which is pretty wet, much wetter than normal. Then the following year after that, 2023-24, we had 25 inches, 2024-25, we had only 7 inches, so that was kind of a dry year. And then last year, or this actually current year, 2025-2026, we've had 19 inches of rain, and they're predicting there's a 50% chance that we're gonna have a wetter than normal uh season. So there's a good chance that this coming season, 2026-2027, will either be, you know, maybe a 25-inch season or a 20-inch season. This is important to know because when you have consistent rain days back to back or week to week, you really have to set your route up so that you can weather these storms and not have too many missed service days. Now let me back up a little bit and let me give you some tips to prepare the backyards for really heavy rain and the customers as well. Because if you have new customers or if you're new to the business, really education and clarity are really important for a rainy a rain program. Now I have a service agreement, it's a one-page agreement. It does cover rainy days in there briefly. If you want a copy of the service agreement, you can email me at David at Slimmingpoollearning.com, and I'll get that over to you in a couple of days usually when I catch back up. I get a lot of emails, so I'm a little behind sometimes, but I will get that agreement over to you. And having a clear rain policy is really important. And having a clear policy of how much rain is too much to go out and work in, how much rain

Set A Clear Rain Policy

SPEAKER_00 4:53

you're you can tolerate is also important for your business. So let's talk first about preparing the backyards. And this is something you can do now before it starts to rain, especially if you have a new account or if you have existing accounts and you've never had really torrential rain yet, but you're put it's predicted. Like I said, last year here it was okay, it was a little above normal. Then the year before it was a dry year, but we we did have some extremely wet years prior to that, and this caused a lot of mud runoff in the pools. And what I mean by this is that certain backyards have planters, the pool may be flat, or there may be areas where there may be runoff, and then you can have mud wash into the pool. And this is something you want to prevent for sure. Getting mud in the pool, even a slight amount of it, really turns the pool, you know, a grayish brown

Prevent Mud Runoff Into Pools

SPEAKER_00 5:44

color. It could also cause filtration issues for weeks at a time, and it really can cause staining in the pool. So a lot of the dirt has metal ions in it, and if it gets into the bottom in large amounts and settles there, staining can appear pretty rapidly within actually a couple days as the dirt settles down there. Even the automatic cleaner can be overwhelmed because sometimes some of these rainstorms are really windy as well, and chances are the automatic suction cleaner will get clogged up and not pick up the dirt. So it's really important to prevent dirt from getting in the pool. Now, there are certain pools where this can happen, and you have to kind of know from experience what you're looking for. What I look for is any kind of dirt slope behind the pool with maybe a six inch or maybe even a s no no barrier at all between the pool and the slope itself. There may be a planter also that's elevated maybe a foot off the pool area, maybe six feet from the pool. Those elevated planters can fill up with water that can run over the planter and into the cement and into the deck and into the pool very easily. That's happened before. So whenever there's any dirt near the pool, think about four inches of rain in your head and what that would do to that area and how much of the dirt would actually run off and get into the pool. And it's likely that you can identify these pools early and make corrections for them. Even with pools of grass around them, I found this to be a problem where the runoff is so bad, the buildup in the grass is so much that it creates a big puddle of mud in the grass, and that runs off into the deck, into the pool as well. So prepare yourself for all these areas ahead of time because you want to prevent mud from getting in the pool in the first place before it happens and causes a lot of problems for that pool. Now, if you do get a mud pool, the best thing you can do is of course clean the filter, put some clarifier in there if you can, get the cleaner working, and then I usually superchlorinate it just to prevent any organic staining in the pool. Put a metal sequestering agent in there as soon as you can to get any metals that may stain the surface out. A good preventative thing you can do also, and this will actually lower the chlorine in the pool, so just be careful. But I do like the Biodex Aquadex 50 product. It's a pretty good stain sequestering agent, but it does destroy the chlorine level in the pool, so don't overuse it and make sure you superchlorinate when you do this. But running the filter, cleaning the filter, sometimes replacing the filter elements, the cartridges or grids, is a factor as well. If the pool gets a lot of mud in there, and let the customer

Fixing Mud Pools And Stains

SPEAKER_00 8:23

know that it's gonna take a couple weeks maybe for the the mud to clear up, depending on how bad it is. But this happens, and I've had mud pools before. But just explain to the customer that this is something that's preventable, and you notice that their planter is gonna be a problem in the rainy season if they want to get sandbags temporarily, but maybe the landscaper can build a barrier around that area, that would be good. The second thing is that you have to educate the customers not to panic when the pool fills up with water and overflows with water in a lot of cases. I've had this as well, where they call you panicking, saying, Hey, my pool is overflowing onto my deck, and you know, can you come over and drain it? This is a serious problem. Now, very rarely is it a serious problem, unless you know I've had this happen where the pool was built, not sure what the builder was thinking back then, it was an older pool, and then you have the deck area, and then you have the backdoor patio sliding door six feet from the pool, and you don't have any drain, there was no drains there, and it was not slanted to pull the water away from the door area. And so when it rained really hard at this customer's home, he would put sandbags by his

Overflow Calls And Drain Solutions

SPEAKER_00 9:34

sliding glass door because water would actually run into his house. He had this beautiful marble floor, it wasn't gonna ruin it, but it was just a hassle to have you know dirt and mud coming into his house. And this is something to consider as well that there are some cases where water can intrude into the customer's home if the pool is built in a way where this is allowed to happen. But in most cases, if the pool fills up and starts overflowing onto the deck area, there's really no danger to the property. The pool can hold that water, it's not a big deal. Now the pool won't operate too well with that much water in it, of course. The skimmer won't work, and of course, there's gonna be some dirt and mud washing in from the deck in that case, not a huge amount, hopefully, but it's not an emergency situation to where you have to go over there and drain the pool in most cases, and you're gonna be busy anyway, so running over the accounts, draining it is not something that you would want to do all the time. But if you have pools set up that way, and you'll know this after a rain season, which pools are gonna overflow and cause a little bit of a problem. Go ahead and purchase a submersible pump for the customer, charge them for it, have it there at the at the equipment area, have a garden hose connected to it, and teach the customer how to use the submersible pump, how to put it on the first step, how to plug it in, how to turn it on, and how to use that pump so it can they can drain some water out themselves. And that's the first thing I would do in a case where the pool may overflow. This also may be area dependent, but a lot of builders in my area when they pressurize the pool, they leave they put a hose spigot right by the above the pump or near the pump, somewhere on the plumbing, and they leave it on there. And this hose spigot is actually very handy in draining water from the pool. So, what I would suggest you do also as a second alternative, if you don't need the submersible pump, if you have this on the equipment, go ahead and attach a garden hose to this already in in the rainy season, and then teach the customer how to drain the pool. Now it only works when the pump is running, so you may have to teach them how to turn the pump on, which is pretty easy in most cases, and then tell them to open up the hose spigot, and this will drain the pool water as the pool's running. Of course, make sure they turn off that spigot, otherwise it'll drain too much water out. I wouldn't recommend doing any preventative draining before the rainstorm. I've had customers do this before. There's some logic behind it, but there's also the fact that a lot of the forecasts miss their mark, and so they may be watching the news in California, it's pretty crazy. It's like Stormwatch 2026, and they have dramatic music playing, and that they come on all anxious, like you know, it's gonna be flooded. And sometimes what happens is that they're predicting three inches of rain and nothing happens, like zero rain comes sometimes, as it's happened. So if the customer drains their pool down two or three inches, expecting three inches of rain and it doesn't happen. Well, they have to fill their pool up at that point because now the pool's low on water. So I wouldn't really recommend preventative draining of a pool because you can't trust the forecast in my area at least. And really, in the winter time, if the pools are running with a lot of water, maybe almost to the top of the tile line, it's not a big deal in my opinion. I don't really drain the pools, they'll eventually evaporate slightly. And if we're having a lot of rainstorms in a row, if you teach the customer how to drain their pool ahead of time, I think that is more than enough and something they can handle on their own in that case if it's necessary. Let me talk now about rain and how much rain is too much to go out in. This is a personal thing and it's something that you need to kind of decide for yourself. To me, if it's gonna rain more than half an inch to three-fourths or one inch of rain, it's too wet really to do anything. Now you can check the skimmer baskets and check the chemicals and go out there and show up at these stops really quick and go through your day pretty rapidly. But anything more than half an inch of rain, it just becomes really unsustainable. And what if it rains like for three hours and it stops? You go out and continue your route at that point. I would say usually no, you know, if you're getting heavy rain for the most part of the morning, two or three hours of rain, I wouldn't, of course, go back out because you probably have already covered some of your pools already before it started raining. Now, do you pull the plug before you even go out there? Sometimes you'll look out the window

When Rain Is Too Much

SPEAKER_00 14:24

and it's just cloudy out, but the predicting three inches of rain, I usually go if it's not actually raining raining in the area, because again the forecast could be off and the sun could come out an hour later. So you want to make sure you do go out, and when it starts raining, you have to decide when to pull the plug while you're out there. Now, if it's already raining and pouring in the morning, then of course you don't go out at that point. Now, what happens if you have you know consistently weeks of rain at one time? You can't just skip your pools or not do the pools for two or three weeks in a row. So, what I've developed is kind of a method to where I look at the forecast, and again, this is something that's really important that you will look at these forecasts ahead of time, look at the 10-day forecast and see, you know, it's raining on Thursday, two inches of rain. I obviously can't do my Thursday pools, there's too much rain. The following week it's raining on Thursday, also predicted, you know, another inch of rain, but it's not going to be raining on Wednesday that week. So what I would do is just do my Thursday pools on Wednesday. And if Thursday doesn't rain, then I would just do the Wednesday pools that day, but then I would skip the Wednesday pools that day. Kind of play by ear and figure out you know what's the best day to move these pools to. Now, if you are getting rain back to back, you can't actually go out and service the pools when it's pouring. You just have to have the right rain gear. And sometimes you're gonna

Rerouting Stops During Wet Weeks

SPEAKER_00 15:49

have to just grin and bear it and go out there in the rain and service these pools because if you have three weeks of rain coming, you really can't, you know, move pools around and it's really hard. And so sometimes you're gonna have to actually go out there in the rain and service the pools the best you can at that point. But a lot of times you can move pools around and you can do the Thursday pools early in the week, and if it doesn't rain on that Thursday, you can actually do the pools that you normally would have done that day if that makes sense on the day that it was supposed to rain and didn't rain. But if it rains on that Thursday, then it's not a big deal because you've already done the Thursday pools the week after. You just want to kind of play with your route so that you're not missing two weeks in a row at a pool, and if you have to skip a pool on a different day, you know it's a winter time, it's rainy, customers understand this, and no one's gonna hold you to it, and you have to kind of just be flexible in the rainy season in your area. You should also have your pool set up to handle misservices. So if you notice that it's gonna be a really wet season, and in the wintertime, you don't really need a lot of chlorine in the pools to operate these pools and keep them from getting allergy. Usually the temperature is dropping already by the time the rainy season hits here. But you do want to chlorinate the pools to a point where they can miss two weeks if you need to. So I always make sure I have a really good chlorine reading in the wintertime. I don't let the pools run down to one point one part per million or two parts per million. I still keep them at a pretty good chlorine level so that if I'm out there, I I make sure that the pool can be f is going to be fine and not run out of chlorine. The last thing you want to do is have a pool zero out, start to get cloudy, start to get ugly, and you you know it's raining in the rainy season. You have other things to worry about than bringing a pool back that turned when it's very preventable by adding extra chemicals during the rainy

Winter Chlorine Strategy For Misses

SPEAKER_00 17:39

season and making sure that you have the automatic cleaners in the pools operating correctly, that everything you know can operate kind of automatically while you're not around, or if you can't get to the pool. Unfortunately, usually the first rain is always the worst because that will wash all the dirt off the trees onto the you know deck, and the first rainstorm, big rainstorm, is usually the messiest rainstorm where most of the dirt and debris from the trees comes off into the pool. Once you get past the first one or two rainstorms, the pools stay relatively clean. One thing we have here, we get a lot of worms in the pool. You know, for some reason, I I researched it, I kind of know why they do this, but they'll crawl out of the ground and then they'll crawl into the pool and drown. And you have a whole bottom full of worms, and this is something that is typical here. But other than that, there's not a lot of stuff that gets into the pools after the first first or second rainstorm. So it's relatively not a bad thing if pools missed in the rain, unless it's really windy. Sometimes that happens here as well. We get wind and rain. But typically,

First Storm Mess And Worms

SPEAKER_00 18:46

you know, the pools stay relatively clean in the rain, and they just overfill with water here, so it's not a big deal if you miss the pool one week because of a heavy rainstorm. Long as you get it the next week, you're fine. And the customers know, and no one really goes back there anyway when it's raining, a rainy season here. It gets dark early, you know, at five o'clock, it's pitch black already out there, and so no one really worries about their pool that much. So don't overthink it. Don't you know feel like okay, I gotta get this pool done, it doesn't matter. I was like that, and I got to a pool one time and it was like raining, torrential rain, and I'm in my rain gear, and the customer's like, what are you doing here? Go home, you know. So don't overdo it and don't kill yourself out there in the rain. There's no real reason to do it. Just kind of have a schedule and a program and stick with it, and you'll be able to weather the rainy season in your area pretty easily if you're prepared for it. If you're looking for other podcasts, then go to my website, swimmingprolearning.com. On the banner, click on the podcast icon. There'll be over 1900 podcasts for you to download or listen to 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 rest of your week and God bless.