Pool Stains, Filter Pressure, Pumps, Heaters, and Hiring

Hey! It's Erin, and this is the PoolBoss podcast.

Welcome to the very first episode of the show. I'm glad you're here.

This show is for people who run a pool route. By the end of this episode, you'll have six things you can use at the pad this week. A three-minute stain test. A clean-pressure number for every pool. A simple rule for filters. A stopping rule for pumps. A first check for every heater call. And a job posting that finds you a tech who stays.

Here's the plan. Number one, the stain test, so you know what you're treating before you buy anything. Number two, the two-minute pad walk-around and the clean-pressure baseline. Number three, filters. When to vacuum to waste, and when to repair or replace. Number four, pumps. What to check when a pump won't prime, and when a variable-speed pump is worth recommending. Number five, heaters. Why they lock out, and how to answer the solar question at the gate. And number six, writing a tech job description that tells the truth.

Every section ends with a quick recap. And at the end, I'll give you one thing to do this week.

Let's go.

Number one. The stain test.

Your customer calls. There's a rust-colored streak under the handrail. And the question under the question is, what did you do to my pool?

That stain has most likely been forming since spring. It didn't show up on Tuesday. It became visible on Tuesday. But before you explain any of that, find out what it is. Color won't tell you. Iron reads rust-brown, and so does a season of oak leaves. Copper reads blue-green, which looks a lot like algae. And manganese reads purple-black, so people shock it for a week thinking it's black algae.

So do this instead. Take a five hundred milligram vitamin C tablet. Press it flat against the stain and hold it for thirty to sixty seconds. If the spot lightens, it's metal. Iron, copper, or manganese. Now take a chlorine tab and do the same thing on a different part of the stain. If it fades under the chlorine, it's organic. Leaves, berries, that kind of thing.

Here's why that matters. Those two answers need opposite chemicals. Chlorine sets a metal stain harder. And ascorbic acid does nothing to an organic one. So the one bottle off the shelf is wrong about half the time.

And if neither tablet moves it? It's not a stain. It's scale or etching. Run your thumbnail across it. A stain is smooth. Scale is rough. That's a water-balance problem and a pumice stone, not a stain chemical. Tell the customer up front and you skip a wasted treatment.

Okay. Say it's metal. First, let free chlorine drop close to zero. This is the step people skip. Chlorine re-oxidizes the metal as fast as the acid frees it, so the two cancel out. Then broadcast about half a pound of ascorbic acid per ten thousand gallons over the stain. Pump running, filter on recirculate. Most metal stains lift within an hour.

Then add a full dose of sequestrant before the chlorine comes back. The acid didn't take the metal out of the pool. It moved it from the plaster into the water. Raise chlorine without a sequestrant and it lands right back on the plaster. So dose the sequestrant, wait the label time, and bring chlorine up slowly over two or three days. Keep swimmers out until chlorine is back in range. Figure forty-eight to seventy-two hours.

If it's organic, it's simpler. Raise chlorine to shock level, brush the stain, and run the pump overnight. It usually clears in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. If nothing moves after a full day, run the vitamin C test again. It probably wasn't organic.

Now, where's the metal coming from? Iron and manganese almost always come in with the fill water, usually a well. Above about zero point three ppm of iron, expect trouble on a pool that gets topped up all summer. Copper usually comes from a copper algaecide, or from a heater running on water below about seven point two pH.

A tech with forty-one pools around Scottsdale and Fountain Hills got the rust-streak call on an account that had been clean for four years. Vitamin C lightened it in under a minute. The cause was a well the owner started using for top-ups. The stain was gone that afternoon. What kept it gone was one note on the pool's record. Fills from well. Sequestrant every sixty days. On any pool that has stained once, plan a maintenance dose every four to eight weeks.

And on a takeover pool, photograph every stain, chip, and crack on the first visit. A dated photo from before the customer noticed it is the one thing that ends the "what did you do to my pool" call.

So, quick recap. Vitamin C lightens it, it's metal. Chlorine lightens it, it's organic. Neither one, it's scale or etching. For metal, drop the chlorine first and add sequestrant before it comes back. And photograph stains on day one.

Number two. The two-minute pad walk-around.

Every tech looks at the equipment pad. Not every tech leaves a number behind. A pad you glanced at tells you nothing next Tuesday. A pad where you wrote down eighteen psi tells you something the moment you write down twenty-four.

Here are the five checks, in the order you already walk the pool.

One. Water level. Mid-skimmer is the target. Low water starves the pump and can run a heater dry. Two low readings in a row on the same pool, go look for a leak.

Two. Skimmer basket and pump basket. Write down what you found, not just that you emptied them. "Pump basket full of leaves, no trees nearby" tells you something's going on. "Emptied pump basket" tells you nothing.

Three. Filter pressure. One reading before you touch anything. If you backwash or clean, one more after. The second number proves the work did something.

Four. Leaks at the pad. Check the lid O-ring, the unions, the multiport valve, and the ground under all of it. A dry white crust under a fitting is a slow leak that dried out between visits.

Five. Run state. Is the pump running when it should be? Is there an error code? Does anything sound different? A bearing whine gives you two or three weeks of warning, if somebody writes it down.

Once it's a habit, the whole thing takes under two minutes. The only new habits are reading the gauge first and writing down what you found. What eats your time is the opposite. You notice something, stand there four minutes deciding if it matters, and leave without writing it down. You paid the four minutes and got nothing.

Now, that filter reading. It's the most useful number on the pad.

You know the rule of thumb. When the filter reads eight to ten psi over clean, clean it. The catch is the word "clean." Clean is different on every pool. One pool runs ten psi with a fresh cartridge. The pool three streets over runs eighteen, because it has a smaller filter and a bigger pump. Use one flat number on both, and you clean one filter too often and the other way too late.

So set a baseline, once per pool. Clean the filter properly. Get the air out. Run the pump at full speed. Read the gauge. That's this pool's clean baseline. Write it on the pool's record. Then watch the gap. Twelve psi baseline? Pay attention around twenty to twenty-two. Eighteen psi baseline? Twenty-four is still fine.

On a takeover, don't inherit the last company's number. Set your own. Reset it when you change the element or the pump. And on a variable-speed pump, note the speed. A reading at eighteen hundred rpm and one at three thousand rpm don't compare.

And a free diagnosis. If the pressure barely moves after you clean, the problem was never dirt. Look for a closed valve, a clogged impeller, or an element that needs replacing.

Here's the payoff. A two-truck operator runs a hundred and fifty pools around Goodyear and Buckeye. One Buckeye pool has a twelve psi baseline. Early July, the tech reads twenty-one, backwashes, and it drops to thirteen. Normal. Three weeks later, it reads nineteen, just four days after a backwash. On its own, that's a normal July reading. Next to the baseline, it's a filter that's stopped holding its clean pressure. On a DE filter, that usually means a torn grid. That pool got quoted on a Tuesday, instead of turning into a Saturday callback with a cloudy pool.

When you find something, tell the customer the same day, with the number in the sentence. "Your filter is running nine psi over clean four days after a backwash, so I want to look at the grids." And let repetition turn a note into a quote. The same finding a third time, or twice in a month, gets priced.

Recap. Five checks, same order, every stop. Set a clean baseline per pool and watch the gap. And write down what you found, not just what you did.

Number three. Filters. Two decisions here. Which way you vacuum, and whether a filter gets repaired or replaced.

Vacuuming first. Most guides teach the technique and never mention the valve. But on a route, the valve is the part that costs money. Vacuum to waste, and it costs water. Vacuum to the filter, and it costs filter. Always pick the same one, and you're overpaying on about half your pools.

The valve goes on waste in four cases. One, dead algae after a chlorine treatment. It's fine and light, and a sand filter passes a good share of it back into the pool an hour later. That's the most common one by a mile. Two, fine silt or dust after a windstorm. It blinds a cartridge or packs a DE grid in one pass. Three, a load so heavy you'd expect to backwash twice mid-vacuum. And four, the pool needs water replaced anyway. High cyanuric acid, high salt, or high dissolved solids. Then you do the drain and the cleanup in one visit.

Outside those four, vacuum to the filter and keep the water.

Know the math before you turn the handle. A manual vacuum moves about forty to sixty gallons a minute. Twenty minutes on waste is eight hundred to twelve hundred gallons. That's four to six inches off a fifteen thousand gallon pool, and two to four hours on a hose to refill. And lose a third of the water, and you lose a third of the stabilizer, salt, and calcium. So plan a top-up dose.

The filter cost follows you around. A heavy load can push a sand filter from a twelve psi baseline past twenty in one vacuum. Backwash a DE filter mid-route, and it needs a recharge. That's fifteen to twenty-five dollars of powder and twenty minutes you didn't plan. A cartridge has no waste port, so you're pulling and hosing the element. And every stop after that starts on a filter that's already halfway to dirty.

A few habits keep the load off the floor. Prime the hose over a return jet until the air stops burping out. Stop the pump before you move the multiport handle. Switching under pressure kills spider gaskets. Move about one head-length per second, because speed stirs silt back up. Overlap each pass by a third, like mowing. And on waste, stop at the skimmer throat. Take the filter pressure before and after, and write both down.

Here's one I love. An operator with forty-eight pools around Fresno and Clovis picks up his Monday route after a windstorm. One pool has close to three inches of silt and dead algae on the floor. DE filter, twelve psi baseline. The reflex is to vacuum it to the filter. He goes to waste. Twenty-five minutes, the pool drops about four inches, he leaves the hose running on the customer's spigot, and writes down twelve psi before and thirteen after. The filter's untouched, and the eleven stops behind it run normal.

Now the second decision. Repair or replace.

The rule is, repair the part, replace the vessel. Seals, gaskets, gauges, and valve parts are consumables. The tank is a pressure vessel.

Five failures cover almost every call. A spider gasket, about thirty minutes and a fifteen to fifty dollar part. A tank O-ring or clamp band, about a hundred to a hundred and fifty all in. A pressure gauge, about the same. Laterals or DE grids, about two hundred to five hundred. And a cracked tank.

Then three thresholds. Age. Under about ten years old, repair what's in front of you. Repetition. A second failure on the same tank inside a couple of seasons means it's time to talk replacement. And cost. When the repair passes about half the installed price of a new filter, replace it. You also get a fresh clean baseline.

A cracked tank is always a replacement. That tank holds ten to twenty-five psi every hour the pump runs. A patch holds for a while, but it can't restore the wall's strength. It becomes the weakest point in a vessel that pressurizes every day. And if it lets go, it lets go with force. A repair that's fine at rest and shaky under pressure is a delay with your name on it. Say that plainly, and most customers who push back on an eleven hundred dollar filter agree within about thirty seconds. They were arguing with the price, not the physics.

Your readings help here too. Pressure that won't come down after a proper cleaning means the media or elements are done. Pressure that suddenly drops with the same pump means water is getting around the filter. Think bypassing valve, failed internals, or a leak.

And put both prices on one quote. An operator with a hundred and five pools around Ocala had a sand filter running twenty-two psi against a fourteen psi baseline for three weeks. Then it started weeping at the clamp band. A forty dollar part and thirty minutes. But the tank was fourteen years old, and it was the second leak in two seasons. So one quote, two lines. A hundred and fifty to reseal it, or eleven hundred to replace it. The customer picked the replacement that afternoon.

Recap. Vacuum to waste for dead algae, fine silt, a load too heavy, or a pool that needs water anyway. Otherwise, to the filter. Repair the part, replace the vessel, and never patch a cracked tank. And price both options on one quote.

Number four. Pumps.

A pump that won't prime can turn a twenty-five-minute stop into an hour. So you need two things. The order to check, and a point where you stop.

Here's the order, cheapest first. One, water level. Below the middle of the skimmer mouth, the pump is pulling air, and nothing else matters. Two, the strainer basket, the lid, and the impeller. Kill the breaker, pull the basket, and reach into the impeller eye with a finger or a bent wire. If it won't spin freely, you found it. Three, the lid O-ring. It's four to eight dollars, and it fools people. A dry or cracked O-ring can hold water with the pump off and still leak air under suction. Four, a suction-side air leak at a union or threaded fitting.

Now, is it trapped air or a leak? Watch the bubbles. After a restart, the basket churns for twenty to thirty seconds while the air you let in purges out. Still swirling with fine bubbles after thirty seconds? Air is coming in the whole time.

To find it, trickle water from a garden hose over each suction joint. Start at the pump and work back toward the skimmer. When you hit the leak, the bubbles thin out within a few seconds. Shaving cream works too. It gets sucked into the gap and leaves a dimple.

Now the stopping rule. If a pump hasn't pulled water within about ninety seconds, shut it off. The shaft seal is cooled by water moving through the pump. Run it dry, and the seal faces overheat and glaze. A glazed seal weeps, and that drip ends up in the bearings. That's how an eight dollar O-ring call becomes a full teardown. A humming pump gets even less time. Five to ten seconds. If it hums and only starts after you nudge the shaft, the start capacitor is going.

Ninety seconds is also a route rule. Past that, you're gambling forty minutes of a day with eleven stops left.

When you leave a pump off, kill the breaker, not just the timer. Otherwise the schedule starts a dry pump at six in the morning. Close any suction valves you opened. And add chlorine, because a pool with no circulation in July goes green fast.

Keep a small bin on the truck. Lid O-rings, union O-rings, a spare basket, O-ring lube, and thread sealant. That turns most no-prime calls into a four-minute fix. Anything that means opening the motor is a quote. That covers a grinding bearing, or water dripping between the pump and the motor.

Here's how it plays out. An operator with a hundred and seventy-five pools around McAllen and Edinburg saw the same symptom twice in one week. First pool, bubbles that never clear. The tech runs a hose along the suction line. At the second union, the bubbles stop. A six dollar O-ring, four minutes, solid prime. Second pool, same bubbles. But the hose test walks the whole line and nothing changes. At ninety seconds, he shuts it down at the breaker, writes down what he ruled out, takes a photo, and adds chlorine. It goes out as a pressure-test quote. Twelve minutes, instead of forty chasing a leak that's probably underground.

Now, when a pump does need replacing, that's your moment for the variable-speed talk.

Recommend one when at least one of three things is true. The season is long. The old pump is an oversized single-speed. Or the utility pays a rebate. If none of those is true, say no. Also say no for a customer about to sell, or on a pump that was sized right and put in last year.

Typical savings run fifty to seventy percent against a single-speed, and payback is commonly about two years. But runtime months decide that, not pool size. A twenty thousand gallon pool in Palm Desert pays back in about two seasons. The same pool in Cleveland takes five or six years. The pump didn't change. The runtime did.

So quote the band for the pool's size. About a hundred and eighty to four hundred and twenty dollars a year under fifteen thousand gallons. Three fifty to eight fifty up to twenty-five thousand. Seven hundred to fourteen hundred above that. The pump costs about three times a single-speed, so the band answers the sticker shock.

Check the rebate before you quote. Some programs need approval before the old pump comes off, and a same-day swap can void it. Put the net number on the quote. Fourteen hundred with a three hundred dollar rebate applied is a different talk from fourteen hundred, even though it's the same money. And if the job changes the electrical circuit, price in a licensed electrician.

Raise it on the visit where the pump is already failing. "Your pump seal has been weeping for three weeks and this motor is eleven years old. When it goes, you're replacing it anyway. A variable-speed would cut the power bill enough to cover most of it in about two seasons." That's a recommendation. And never promise a dollar figure. Give the band and say what it depends on.

Recap. Water level, basket and lid, lid O-ring, then the air leak. Bubbles after thirty seconds mean a leak. Stop at ninety seconds, kill the breaker, and add chlorine. And recommend variable-speed when the season is long, the pump is oversized, or there's a rebate.

Number five. Heaters.

The customer says the heater locks out every morning. Your first move is a pressure gauge, not a screwdriver.

Here's why. Every gas heater has a flow switch. It's a safety device. It stays open until enough water is moving through the heater to carry the heat away. If it doesn't close, the heater never opens the gas valve, and it shows an ignition failure code, even with a perfect gas side. The heater isn't saying the gas is bad. It's saying it never got permission to light.

So the most common cause of a lockout is low flow from a dirty filter or full baskets. Read the pressure against that pool's clean baseline. A cartridge that runs eleven psi clean is in trouble at twenty-one. A sand filter that runs eighteen clean is fine at twenty-one. Eight to ten over baseline is your clean-the-filter number, and on a heated pool it's your lockout number too. A lot of heater calls are a zero-parts fix inside your normal stop.

If flow checks out, go down the list. Gas supply, like a closed valve or an empty propane tank. Then the igniter or gas valve. Then a dirty flame sensor. Then blocked venting, often a bird's nest or a wasp nest. If the burner never lights, think gas, ignition, or flow. If it lights and drops out after a few seconds, think flame sensor. And a morning-only lockout is often timing. Start the pump ten to fifteen minutes before the heater is allowed to call.

Now, where you stop. In most states, the gas line, burner, venting, and line-voltage wiring need a licensed gas or plumbing contractor. A pool service license doesn't cover it, no matter how handy you are. Check your state board.

Two Gulf Coast pools show how this goes. An operator with a hundred and forty pools around Sarasota and Bradenton got the same complaint twice in a week. The Sarasota pool is a cartridge system with an eleven psi baseline, reading twenty-four. The tech cleans the cartridges, pressure drops to twelve, and the heater fires. Zero parts.

The Bradenton pool shows the same code. But the baskets are clear, and pressure is thirteen against a twelve psi baseline. Flow is fine, so he stops. He photographs the controller display, writes down the readings that rule out flow, and calls the gas contractor he already works with. That stop took eleven minutes and made no money. It kept a two hundred and ten dollar a month account.

Here's why. Plenty of gas and air-conditioning companies also do pool service. Tell a homeowner "you need a heater guy" and walk off, and you've handed a competitor a warm intro. So own the handoff. Name the specialist, make the call, say what you ruled out, and say when you'll be back.

One more. A heater that heats slowly or keeps tripping its high-limit often has scale on the heat exchanger. That's a water-balance problem from months back. A new heater runs about twenty-five hundred to forty-five hundred dollars. It's the most expensive thing your dosing touches.

Now the other heater question. Usually in October, the customer asks about heating the pool, and solar comes up.

Start with one question. How many days a year do you want to swim? Under about twenty, gas is the right call, even though it costs the most to run. Most of the season, a heat pump. A longer season with no running bills, solar. That's the whole comparison in three sentences.

A heat pump runs about three thousand to eight thousand dollars installed. It costs about a third of propane and half of natural gas to run. But it pulls heat from the air, so below about fifty degrees outside, it barely gains. Warm-up times go in the quote. Gas takes hours. A heat pump takes twenty-four to seventy-two hours. Solar takes days, and only sunny ones.

Solar costs the most up front and next to nothing to run. It adds about ten to fifteen degrees and stretches the season a month or two at each end. What kills a solar job is area, not budget. Panels need fifty to a hundred percent of the pool's surface, unshaded. So a four hundred fifty square foot pool wants two twenty-five to four fifty square feet of panel. If that space isn't there, say so at the gate. A fast no costs ten minutes. A quote that dies at the roof check costs a week. And tell every heated-pool customer to use a cover, because evaporation gives the heat back overnight.

Your install rule is short. Take the plumbing. Sub out the two-forty volt electrical. Refuse the gas work. Every time. An operator with eighty-five pools around Tucson got this call on a sixteen thousand gallon pool. The customer wanted March and October, not January. South-facing roof, no shade. He quoted the panels and plumbing himself, priced a heat pump next to it, and said the electrical goes to his electrician. He won the solar job and kept the weekly service.

Recap. On a lockout, check flow first. Baskets, then pressure against the baseline. If flow is fine, stop at the gas side and own the handoff. On the heating question, ask how many swim days they want, check the panel area, and say the warm-up time out loud.

Number six. A tech job description that tells the truth.

Most tech postings are a copied template. Maintain cleanliness. Strong work ethic. Team player. They describe no actual day. So they pull in people picturing a poolside job. Then those people meet a forty-pound bucket of cal-hypo and a hundred-and-eight-degree afternoon, and they quit.

Your posting needs six parts. One, the route and the real stop count. Fourteen to sixteen stops a day on a home route, or nine to eleven if it runs commercial. Two, the tasks, named. Test and balance chlorine, pH, alkalinity, and cyanuric acid. Brush, vacuum, empty baskets, clean filters, and log readings. Three, the physical side. Lifting forty to fifty pounds, afternoons over a hundred and five, and gates all day. Four, license and driving needs. Five, the pay structure and what moves it. And six, who they report to and what gets measured.

Say the hard parts out loud. The heat, the lifting, and the Saturdays are what end a hire. Hide them, and you fill the seat faster and lose the person inside a month.

An operator with ninety-five pools across Fresno and Clovis learned this the hard way. He hired off a template that promised "flexible outdoor work." The guy quit in the third week of July, after his first hundred-and-eight-degree afternoon. The rewrite said it plainly. Fourteen to sixteen stops. Afternoons over a hundred and five. Two Saturdays a month in storm season. It drew fewer applicants. The one who answered stayed two years.

Then score every interview the same way. Five lines, one to three points each. Reliability, like a job held two years or more. Chemistry basics, like knowing chlorine and pH are different problems. How they handled an unhappy customer. Whether they ask about the heat and the route. And their driving record. Twelve or better is a hire. Nine to eleven gets a working interview. Under nine is a no, no matter how good the chat felt.

Before the first shift, pull the driving record yourself. And run a paid half-day working interview. Four or five stops. Watch whether they close the gate, brush before they vacuum, and talk to a homeowner who walks out.

Recap. Put the real stop count, the heat, and the Saturdays in writing. Score every candidate on the same five lines. And pay for a half-day ride-along before you hire.

Alright, let's wrap it up. Here are your takeaways.

One. Two tablets, three minutes. Vitamin C means metal, chlorine means organic, and neither means scale or etching. Photograph stains on the first visit.

Two. Do the five-check walk-around at every stop. Set a clean-pressure baseline for every pool, and watch the gap, not the number.

Three. Vacuum to waste for dead algae, fine silt, or a heavy load. Repair the part, replace the vessel, and put both prices on one quote.

Four. On a pump that won't prime, check in order and stop at ninety seconds. Kill the breaker and add chlorine. Recommend variable-speed only when the season, the pump, or a rebate makes it pay.

Five. On a heater lockout, check flow before gas. When it's a gas problem, own the handoff. On the heating question, ask how many days they want to swim.

Six. Write the job posting with the real stops, the real heat, and the real Saturdays, and score every candidate the same way.

And if you only do one thing this week? Pick your five biggest pools. Clean each filter, read the gauge at full speed, and write that clean-pressure baseline on the pool's record.

That's it for today. Thanks for listening to the PoolBoss podcast. I'm Erin. See you next week.