There is a great feeling a pool owner gets starts the “opening the pool” process that they do this time once a year turning a dirty mess into a beautiful crystal clear oasis that makes you proud to show off to neighbors and family and hopefully, you can keep it that way and even improve the look. How to Get Crystal Clear Pool Water?
- Maintain good water circulation
- Shock your pool at least once per week.
- Add DE powder/Filter Media Additives to your Sand Filter/DE filter
- Change to a smaller pump or a Variable-Speed to improve filtering
- Use a Clarifier once a week
- Scrub pool walls & floor as maintenance plan
- Use a Preventative Algaecide
The easiest way for a pool owner to make their swimming pool crystal clear all throughout the season is to head off any trouble before it happens and that extra work is worth it when people react to how crystal clear and beautiful the water in your pool looks.
How to Get Crystal Clear Pool Water
Your swimming pool looks great it’s chemically balanced, scrubbed clean and opening day is right around the corner. You stacked up new reagents for your liquid test kit fresh bucket of chlorine tables along with other chemicals like pH plus and algaecide. The pool water is clean and sanitized but something is missing. The pool water looks flat and not appealing.
Making your sand filter more effective is all about slowing it down. And usually, all that calls for is a little be of preventative work on your end. By backwashing your filter more often, switching filter media, and taking advantage of chemicals like decalcifiers and clarifiers, you can improve optimal pool filtration giving the pool crystal clear water look under the sun or as my Mom use to say “the water looks like its dancing
How to Maintain Crystal Clear Pool Water
Maintain good water circulation
Water that doesn’t circulate properly gets poorly filtered, which means more debris and cleaning. And when water doesn’t flow freely through the pool system, it doesn’t distribute chemicals evenly. When that happens, balancing your water becomes a lot harder. So how can you maintain the best water circulation possible?
- Run your pool filter pump at least 8 hours a day
- Clean out your skimmer basket frequently
- Empty out your pump and filter basket more frequently
- Consistently clean your filter by backwashing more frequently
- Monitor and troubleshoot any unexpected PSI changes
Shock your pool at least once per week.
This keeps your sanitizer levels stable, which keeps your pool cleaner. In the world of pool filtration, DE filters reign supreme. They’re the most sensitive and have a reputation for producing visibly cleaner water. And do you want to know what makes that possible? A special powder that increases filtering sensitivity and creates a stronger bond to contaminants
Add DE powder or Filter Media Additives to your Sand Filter/DE filter
By adding DE powder you can increase the clarity of your pool. Just add 1-3 cups of DE powder when you backwash or replace your sand. Adding powder makes your sand filter 4x more effective, allowing it to filter contaminants down to 3 microns.
In addition to your routine backwashes or cartridge rinses, you should regularly use cleaning products that help break down oils and scaly buildup inside the filter. Not only will this boost your filter’s overall performance, but it will also help your filter media last longer. Routine use of pool enzymes will also help keep oily buildup under control.
Use a smaller pump or a Variable-Speed Pool Pump
Slowing the pumping rate through the filter with a smaller-sized pool pump or a variable-speed pool pump will keep the pool water in the filter media for a longer period of time keeping the pool water from channeling and moving through the filter at a rate that won’t be efficient.
Use a Clarifier or Pool Water Polisher as part of your regular maintenance plan
Use a Preventative Algaecide but it is best used as a preventative measure. Its main advantage is that it does not change the pH of the water, but at the same time, it prevents algae from growing and developing in your pool. What’s more, the algaecide works in tandem with a chlorine sanitizer to keep pH levels balanced.
Make Scrubbing the walls and floor of your swimming pool part of your maintenance plan. In the last part of summer brush your pool down with a long-handle pool brush 2x a week. Even with filtering, pools can have spots such as corners or around the ladder where water circulation is not as good. As this can allow algae and bacteria to grow, the walls and floor of your pool need to be brushed and vacuumed at least weekly
How do I Make My Pool Water Sparkle
Once you create a sparkle in your swimming pool you’ll want to maintain that look all through the summer season and that will be tough to do unless you are disciplined enough to put some work in. If you follow these steps it’s possible to do, without breaking the bank or breaking your back!
Regularly check the chemical levels
Most people think that if the pool is balanced at the beginning of the season then the chemistry won’t change except chlorine and maybe pH. That would be a huge mistake. There are plenty of variables that will affect the balance of your swimming pool all through the summer.
- Temperature
- Usage
- Power interruptions
- Rain storms
Pool testing is a simple process but a very necessary maintenance process all you need to do is buy a reliable test kit from your local Pool supply store. Dip the tester in your pool water, add the solution provided into the beaker, cap it all off, and watch the color of your water change. The kits provide a comparison chart to tell you important readings, such as the free chlorine and total alkalinity levels. In order for your pool to sparkle it needs to be stable and disinfected.
Monitor your water level
Generally, people don’t notice their pool’s water level until it’s too low or overflowing. Always make sure your water level is roughly in the middle of your pool skimmer. If your water level is too low, your skimmer will gulp air mixed with water eventually losing prime and creating a negative pressure in the Filtering system. If it’s too high, the skimmer may cease to function correctly.
How to Use Pool Clarifier
If you want to increase filtration efficiency for your cartridge pool filter or sand filter. Just add a clarifier! Clarifiers will coagulate microscopic particles in your water, making it easier for your filter to remove them as the water passes through.
Clarifiers are compatible with all filters. However, use caution when using it with filter media that already has a high filtration ability, as it can cause your filter pressure to rise quickly. Pools using superior filter media usually won’t require a clarifier in the first place.
Don’t wait until you develop cloudy or dull-looking pool water, just add a reliable Pool Clarifier for quick and easy water clarification. It works by coagulating particles such as fine dust oils, or other contaminants as small as under one micron, that are unable to be normally filtered. Adding a weekly maintenance dose of Pool Clarifier will help keep your water sparkling clear throughout the swimming season.
A clarifier or sometimes called a Pool Polisher can be added during your maintenance schedule say once per week depending on pool usage. Smaller particles are accumulated together into larger particles, which allows the filter to remove those particles that would otherwise be too small to filter out.
Mix and pour a clarifier into a pool walking around the edge and adding as you go. Clarifiers add positively charged ions into the water. These positive ions act almost like tiny magnets inside your pool, attracting negatively charged debris particles. As the particles group together, this helps form large clusters that your pool filter can easily filter out. You’ll have a clean, clear, and yes Sparkling Pool!
JimGalloway Author/Editor
