Good morning Arizona, I don't know if it's just me or if you've noticed that it was pretty windy over the weekend.
When I was cleaning a pool on a Monday a couple years back, it was a pretty bad pool, it had a bunch of trees over the pool and I had left and literally that day, the wind came and it blew a lot of the leaves into the pool and the baskets were just packed and when the pool equipment turned on throughout the whole
week, there wasn't, it didn't allow enough water to come through the baskets to run the pool equipment and so the pool equipment, the pump would over heat because it wouldn't run enough water.
And those pumps, if they don't have enough water going through it, it'll actually eventually get hot enough inside that pump to boil water and when that happens, all of the joints on your pump, they need new seals.
I even have one here to kinda show you. You'll leak where the pipes come into the pump and they'll even expand.
So just a little thing that customers can do or people can do after a wind storm that would save you a lot of money is to just empty your baskets.
So I'm gonna kinda go through it, we're talking about wind and how it wreaks havoc on us.
So, if you have wind or a storm, there's a few things you need to check.
We all know, our skimmer baskets that are in the deck, just pull those out, dump in the trash can, put it back in, make sure that that helps bring in all of the leaves from the top of the pool into the skimmer basket.
In your skimmer, there's usually a wier door or a skimmer door that when the pool is on, it'll open up and it'll allow leaves to come in and sit in here.
If you don't have a skimmer door, when your pump shuts off, all the leaves in your skimmer just go right back out into your pool and it looks dirty.
It doesn't even look like the cleaning system was on.
So clean your baskets, make sure there's no cracks in them and then make sure the skimmer door is working or that you have one.
Most people don't realize they don't have one because it's hard to see if they're there.
Vacuums- these vacuums work great until there's sticks or rocks in your pool.
So if the trees are breaking sticks off into your pool, you need to look at the bottom of the vacuum and see if there's any debris in there.
Now, when you're pool equipment's on, you don't just pull this out of the water.
You need to make sure your pool is off and then you pull it out of the water and then you stick it back in and the way to make sure there's no air in the lines.
Any air in your pool system could cause your pump to deprime and stop working and so you gotta be very careful when you pull these vacuums out that you don't allow air to get into the system.
Sometimes as a pool guy, I would just bring it up toward the surface but don't bring it out of the water and just look and see if there's something stuck in the bottom.
But I would say make sure you shut your pool equipment off because there is a lot of pressure and suction and you could get your finger stuck in there.
And then your pumps- you need to make sure your pump baskets are cleaned and I'm gonna kinda go through a pump with you here just to kind of show you how to make sure it's clean.
So here's an older pump that we've pulled out a pool.
You just pop open the lid, open it up, pull your basket out and make sure it's clean and make sure there's no cracks.
If you've got a lot of debris in here and so much that it cracked the basket, you're gonna need to make sure that the impeller is not clogged because if the impeller inside the pump is clogged, you're not gonna have any water flow and you're not gonna have any pressure on your filter so make sure again, the pump is off.
Stick your finger in there and just see if you can feel any debris.
Then once you've got all of it out, sometimes you get a little screwdriver and pull out that debris.
Then once you've got it all out, put your basket back in and then you need to reprime this pump.
Now the way you do that, some of them will just take off once you put the lid on, but most of them, you have to put some water in the hose and throw your lid back on.
Make sure there's no leaves around the o-ring and around the side because that will bring air into your pump.
So make sure it's clean.
Put it back on, turn it on and make sure it actually primes up and starts running and then shut it back off and it'll be ready for it tonight or whenever you have it turn on.
If you have some leaks to look for, it's usually right here.
The pump coming out or the water coming in and then in the bottom, when your pump seal goes bad.
So clean your baskets, it'll save you a ton of money and your pool will look a lot better and it doesn't take very long.
Thanks guys! Arizona stay classy!
