Keeping Your Commercial Swimming Pool Clear and Safe

A shutdown pool in the middle of vacation season can cost you in the form of bookings and negative reviews alike. Commercial swimming pools present unique challenges when it comes to maintenance and cleaning. They carry stringent regulations and have staunch disinfection needs. Even a slight chemical imbalance can be catastrophic. Shoddy maintenance leads to genuine health risks, as can inaccurate depth markers and signage. This is also why using something strong like magnetic tape to keep all correct signage in place is so important. Not only this, but most pool managers lack appropriate training, particularly about water-related illnesses like Giardia and Shigella. However, there are things that can be put in place to help prevent a commercial pool from being shut down.

Preventative Maintenance

Your filtration system is one of your most important pieces of equipment. It will keep your water clear and pathogen-free while helping to maintain your chemical balance. Pool water must be flushed from all parts of the pool, so it should be chosen according to pool size and turnover rates. Surface water tends to be the most polluted, requiring skimmer gutters.

A well-run pool will have a certain degree of automation. Dosing pumps will help maintain high standards, particularly once they’ve been adjusted to fit your unique requirements. Hygiene and water values change constantly, so an optimised installation is needed to inject metred solutions into the water accurately. Chlorine, acid, and enzymes can be controlled hands-free so that problems can be managed before they become hazardous. An automated pH analyser supports this process, tracking hardness, alkalinity, and total dissolved solids.

Even when your equipment is automatically analysed, manual water testing will be needed. These will need to be recorded for inspection.

Water Replacement

When your pool water has high acid or alkaline levels, it can cause skin and eye irritation, impede your disinfection strategy, and stain the surfaces of your pool. When this happens, you may need to partially empty and refill it with fresh water.

Algae Control

Aquatic organisms can create havoc with your pH balance. It can become to overrun that normal levels of chlorine no longer work. Cleaning a severe growth is no easy task because some varieties grow all the way into the pores of pool surfaces. Algaecide can be used to kill and prevent growth, but this must be paired with an increase in free chlorine.

Routine Maintenance

Your routine should include mechanical checks of equipment and pool surrounds. Missing or cracked tiles and delaminated surfaces need immediate care. Manual removal of surface debris and slime will ensure that your automated processes don’t create an imbalance. All chemical dosing and analysis equipment needs its own preventative care so that it’s always in clean working condition. Ultraviolet lights should be inspected, and paved areas should be cleaned.

Pool Chemical Handling

The employees handling your pool chemicals need eye protection, respirators, and protective clothes. Spillage can cause contamination if it’s returned to the bottle, so it’s best to handle chemicals over a plastic sheet that can be disposed of correctly. Inhalation and skin contact can be harmful, so educate your staff on safe handling habits.

Pool overloading can cause pollution build-up and discomfort, so high volume periods need to be suitably managed. Every pool environment has its own needs and chemical requirements, which change throughout the year. Staff must know them intimately. Commercial pools create their own ecosystems, but constantly changing conditions make them delicate and prone to imbalance. Once you have a comprehensive understanding of how that biome changes and why, your procedures will become far more intuitive.