Getting Started

Most pools reported as leaking are evaporating. The order a professional works in: rule out evaporation, split plumbing from structure with the pump, then dye test the shell.

Low pH corrodes heaters and etches plaster, and it is usually an alkalinity problem wearing a pH mask. How to tell which you have, and which of the three fixes the pool in front of you actually needs.

"How much chlorine" is three different questions wearing one coat: the routine top-up, the recovery of a pool that has slipped, and the shock dose that breaks chloramines. Each has a different arithmetic, and all three start with a number most people guess.

A pool maintenance schedule is a frequency decision for each task, not one checklist. What belongs on the weekly visit, what belongs on a monthly interval, how seasonal work reshapes the year, and how to set the right frequency for a particular pool.

A salt water pool is a chlorine pool with its own chlorine factory, and that shifts the work rather than removing it. What to test, why pH keeps climbing, how to verify and add salt, and how to keep the cell clean without cleaning it to death.

High pH is the most common chemistry correction on a route and the one most often done by feel. Why pool pH keeps rising, which acid to carry, how to lower it without overshooting, and when alkalinity is the real problem.

Yellow algae looks like sand or pollen, brushes away in seconds and is back by the next visit. How to identify mustard algae, the treatment sequence that clears it for good, and how to stop it travelling between pools on a route.

Every dosing decision you make rests on a reading, and most bad doses start with a bad sample rather than bad chemistry. What the six readings actually tell you, when a strip is enough and when it is not, how to draw a sample worth trusting, and how often testing needs to happen.

Black algae is cyanobacteria, not algae, and it survives treatments that clear anything else because it builds a cap over itself and roots into the surface. How to identify it, the sequence that actually removes it, when it stops being a chemistry problem, and how to keep one infected pool from becoming five.

Rinsing a filter is not cleaning it, and a filter that never comes back to its clean starting pressure is not dirty — it is finished. The proper procedure for cartridge, sand and DE, and how to tell those two states apart.

Cloudy water is a symptom, not a diagnosis, and the five things that cause it call for different — sometimes opposite — responses. How a professional works out which one they are looking at before anything goes in the water, and what the job really costs to do properly.

A green pool is a chlorine problem before it is an algae problem. How a professional works one back to clear: what the readings tell you, the dose that actually holds, when to vacuum to waste, and how to quote the job so it pays for the time it really takes.

Closing a pool is a sequence, and the order matters more than any single step. Here is how a pool professional works through it - balancing the water days ahead, clearing the plumbing, choosing winter chemicals that survive four months in the dark, and setting a cover that holds through a freeze.

Whether pool work needs a licence turns on three things: what the work is, whose pool it is, and which state you are standing in. Here is how those lines are drawn, what the categories actually mean, and how to get a definite answer for your own state in an afternoon.

A pool service truck is a workspace you drive between twelve and twenty times a day. What belongs on it, how to separate chemicals so nothing can go wrong in a hot bed, and how to lay it out so the tools you touch every stop are never behind the ones you touch twice a year.

The first hire is where an owner stops being the whole business — and where a profitable route can quietly stop being profitable. When the numbers support a second person, what to look for, and how to structure the first ninety days.

Two owners charging almost the same price per pool can end the year in completely different places. The difference is rarely the rate on the invoice — it is route density, chemical cost and what the owner's own hours are worth.

How pool routes are actually priced, what pushes the multiple up and down, the due diligence that protects a buyer, and why the ninety days after closing decide how much of the book you keep.

Which policies a pool service business actually needs, the two exclusions that catch pool operators specifically, and what the coverage costs before anyone tries to sell you an upgrade.

What actually belongs in a pool service business plan: the route-density arithmetic it should be built on, the assumptions that sink first-year forecasts, and the sections each reader really turns to.

What it really costs to start a pool cleaning business, how to license and insure it, how to price your first accounts, and how to build route density from day one.

What the job is really like, which skills and certifications actually matter, how to get hired with no experience, and how pay progresses from helper to lead technician.