Once you get your pool opened for the season, it’s important to keep up with standard pool maintenance to ensure a safe and healthy pool for everyone. Your swimming pool will need attention to maintain it on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. That’s why it’s smart to become familiar with how to keep your pool maintained from the start. To make this process easier, creating a pool cleaning checklist can help you keep track of what has been done and what needs to be done in the future. We’ve put together a weekly, monthly, and quarterly pool maintenance checklist to help make keeping your pool clean easy this year.

There are routine cleaning measures that should be completed on a weekly basis to keep your pool maintained and properly cleaned. The following should be essential tasks in your weekly pool maintenance routine:

• Skim off any leaves, dirt, and debris: Skimming should be the very first item on your pool maintenance checklist and can be performed every day for optimal results. Use a skimmer with a long handle to reach all leaves, insects, and other debris that have gathered on the surface of your pool water. It’s best to remove this debris while it’s floating at the top before it sinks below the water and becomes harder to remove. Allowing this to sink and settle at the bottom of your pool can cause potential stains that can be tough to remove. That’s why skimming your pool is recommended weekly, if not daily.
• Brush all areas of the pool walls and floor: Once you have completed skimming, you can move onto brushing all areas of your pool. Debris and especially algae can frequently gather on the walls of your pool, ladders, steps, and more. Use a brush to scrub all the debris off of these places and push it towards the main drain in your pool so that it can be vacuumed up more easily.
• Vacuum the pool: After skimming and brushing your pool, now you can use an automatic or manual vacuum to remove the remaining bits of dirt. If you own an automatic vacuum, all you need to do is plug it in and it will do the rest of the job for you. If you have a manual pool vacuum, follow the instructions given for proper cleaning of your pool.

Other weekly tasks that should be on your pool cleaning checklist include:

• Testing the pool water and balance if needed
• Empty the pump basket and skimmer basket
• Check pressure gauge

Once you have completed your weekly pool maintenance tasks, now it’s time to start thinking about your monthly tasks. The following are essential tasks to have on your monthly pool maintenance log:

• Check for any leaks: When checking for leaks, we recommend looking at the pump, valves, and any other pool equipment that is used regularly. If you find that there is a leak or a problem with one of these things, it’s best to call a pool professional so that it can be properly fixed.
• Test salt levels: If you have a saltwater pool, testing salt levels is necessary so that you can adjust the levels, as necessary. You can do this with an at home kit or bring in a sample of your pool water to a local swimming pool store for testing.
• Lubricate O-rings: With normal wear and tear, it’s important to lubricate O-rings on the pump’s filter, lid, and valves to improve longevity. If you find that any of these rings are cracked, it’s best to remove them and replace with new.

On a quarterly basis, you should be checking the different filters in your pool and changing if necessary. The filters you should check include:

• Cartridge filter
• D. E. filter
• Sand filter

Along with checking these filters to ensure they are working properly, now is the time to check the timer to set for the correct season. If you need assistance with this, contact a swimming pool expert or technician to help you with the process.

While keeping up with pool maintenance is important, having fun in your pool is just as important! Global Pool Products carries all American made products to help you have fun in your pool including inground pool slides, swim up bars, and pool handrails.